Next day, Bérangère did not come downstairs. At luncheon, my uncle preserved the same silence. I tried many times to make him talk, but received no reply.
My curiosity was too intense to allow my uncle to get rid of me in this way. I took up my position in the garden before he left the house. Not until five o’clock did he go up to the Yard.
“Shall I come with you, uncle?” I suggested, boldly.
He grunted, neither granting my request nor refusing it. I followed him. He walked across the Yard, locked himself into his principal workshop and did not leave it until an hour later:
“Ah, there you are!” he said, as though he had been unaware of any presence.
He went to the wall and briskly drew the curtain. Just then he asked me to go back to the workshop and to fetch something or other which he had forgotten. When I returned, he said, excitedly:
“It’s finished, it’s finished!”
“What is, uncle?”
“The Eyes, the Three Eyes.”
“Oh, have you seen them?”
“Yes; and I refuse to believe . . . no, of course, it’s an illusion on my part. . . . How could it be possible, when you come to think of it? Imagine, the eyes wore the expression of my dead son’s eyes, yes, the very expression of my poor Dominique. It’s madness, isn’t it? And yet I declare, yes, I declare that Dominique was gazing at me . . . at first with a sad and sorrowful gaze, which suddenly became the terrified gaze of a man who is staring death in the face. And then the Three Eyes began to revolve upon themselves. That was the end.”
I made Noël Dorgeroux sit down:
“It’s as you suppose, uncle, an illusion, an hallucination. Just think, Dominique has been dead so many years! It is therefore incredible . . .”
“Everything is incredible and nothing is,” he said. “There is no room for human logic in front of that wall.”
I tried to reason with him, though my mind was becoming as bewildered as his own. But he silenced me:
“That’ll do,” he said. “Here’s the other thing beginning.”
He pointed to the screen, which was showing signs of life and preparing to reveal a new picture.
“But, uncle,” I said, already overcome by excitement, “where does that come from?”
“Don’t speak,” said Noël Dorgeroux. “Not a word.”
I at once observed that this other thing bore no relation to what I had witnessed the day before; and I concluded that the scenes presented must occur without any prearranged order, without any chronological or serial connection, in short, like the different films displayed in the course of a performance.
It was the picture of a small town as seen from a neighbouring height. A castle and a church-steeple stood out above it. The town was built on the slope of several hills and at the intersection of the valleys, which met among clumps of tall, leafy trees.
Suddenly, it came nearer and was seen on a larger scale. The hills surrounding the town disappeared; and the whole screen was filled with a crowd swarming with lively gestures around an open space above which hung a balloon, held captive by ropes. Suspended from the balloon was a receptacle serving probably for the production of hot air. Men were issuing from the crowd on every hand. Two of them climbed a ladder the top of which was leaning against the side of a car. And all this, the appearance of the balloon, the shape of the appliances employed, the use of hot air instead of gas, the dress of the people; all this struck me as possessing an old-world aspect.
“The brothers Montgolfier,” whispered my uncle.
These few words enlightened me. I remembered those old prints recording man’s first ascent towards the sky, which was accomplished in June, 1783. It was this wonderful event which we were witnessing, or, at least, I should say, a reconstruction of the event, a reconstruction accurately based upon those old prints, with a balloon copied from the original, with costumes of the period and no doubt, in addition, the actual setting of the little town of Annonay.
But then how was it that there was so great a multitude of townsfolk and peasants? There was no comparison possible between the usual number of actors in a cinema scene and the incredibly tight-packed crowd which I saw moving before my eyes. A crowd like that is found only in pictures which the camera has secured direct, on a public holiday, at a march-past of troops or a royal procession.
However, the wavelike eddying of the crowd suddenly subsided. I received the impression of a great silence and an anxious period of waiting. Some men quickly severed the ropes with hatchets. Etienne and Joseph Montgolfier lifted their hats.
And the balloon rose in space. The people in the crowd raised their arms and filled the air with an immense clamour.
For a moment, the screen showed us the two brothers, by themselves and enlarged. With the upper part of their bodies leaning from the car, each with one arm round the other’s waist and one hand clasping the other’s, they seemed to be praying with an air of unspeakable ecstasy and solemn joy.
Slowly the ascent continued. And it was then that something utterly inexplicable occurred: the balloon, as it rose above the little town and the surrounding hills, did not appear to my uncle and me as an object which we were watching from an increasing depth below. No, it was the little town and the hills which were sinking and which, by sinking, proved to us that the balloon was ascending. But there was also this absolutely illogical phenomenon, that we remained on the same level as the balloon, that it retained the same dimensions and that the two brothers stood facing us, exactly as though the photograph had been taken from the car of a second balloon, rising at the same time as the first with an exactly and mathematically identical movement!
The scene was not completed. Or rather it was transformed in accordance with the method of the cinematograph, which substitutes one picture for another by first blending them together. Imperceptibly, when it was perhaps some fifteen hundred feet from the ground, the Montgolfier balloon became less distinct and its vague and softened outlines gradually mingled with the more and more powerful outlines of another shape which soon occupied the whole space and which proved to be that of a military aeroplane.
Several times since then the mysterious screen has shown me two successive scenes of which the second completed the first, thus forming a diptych which displayed the evident wish to convey a lesson by connecting, across space and time, two events which in this way acquired their full significance. This time the moral was clear: the peaceable balloon had culminated in the murderous aeroplane. First the ascent at Annonay. Then a fight in mid-air, a fight between the monoplane which I had seen develop from the old-fashioned balloon and the biplane upon which I beheld it swooping like a bird of prey.
Was it an illusion or a “faked representation?” For here again we saw the two aeroplanes not in the normal fashion, from below, but as if we were at the same height and moving at the same rate of speed. In that case, were we to admit that an operator, perched on a third machine, was calmly engaged in “filming” the shifting fortunes of the terrible battle? That was impossible, surely!
But there was no good purpose to be served by renewing these perpetual suppositions over and over again. Why should I doubt the unimpeachable evidence of my eyes and deny the undeniable? Real aeroplanes were manoeuvring before my eyes. A real fight was taking place in the thickness of that old wall.
It did not last long. The man who was alone was attacking boldly. Time after time his machine-gun flashed forth flames. Then, to avoid the enemy’s bullets, he looped the loop twice, each time throwing his aeroplane in such a position that I was able to distinguish on the canvas the three concentric circles that denote the Allied machines. Then, coming nearer and attacking his adversaries from behind, he returned to his gun.
The Hun biplane — I observed the iron cross — dived straight for the ground and recovered itself. The two men seemed to be sitting tight under their furs and masks. There was a third machine-gun attack. The pilot threw up his hands. The biplane capsized and fell.
Then the ground shot up with a dizzy speed, devastated, shell-holed fields, swarming with thousands of French poilus.
The biplane came down beside a river. From the shapeless fuselage and the shattered wings two legs appeared.
And the French plane landed almost immediately, a short way off. The victor stepped out, pushed back the soldiers who had run up from every side and, moving a few yards towards his motionless prey, took off his mask and made the sign of the cross.
“Oh,” I whispered, “this is dreadful! And how mysterious! . . .”
Then I saw that Noël Dorgeroux was on his knees, his face distorted with emotion:
“What is it, uncle?” I asked.
Stretching towards the wall his trembling hands, which were clasped together, he stammered:
“Dominique! I recognize my son! It’s he! Oh, I’m terrified!”
I also, as I gazed at the victor, recovered in my memory the time-effaced image of my poor cousin.
“It’s he!” continued my uncle. “I was right . . . the expression of the Three Eyes. . . . Oh! I can’t look! . . . I’m afraid!”
“Afraid of what, uncle?”
“They are going to kill him . . . to kill him before my eyes . . . to kill him as they actually did kill him . . . Dominique! Dominique! Take care!” he shouted.
I did not shout: what warning cry could reach the man about to die? But the same terror brought me to my knees and made me wring my hands. In front of us, from underneath the shapeless mass, among the heaped-up wreckage, something rose up, the swaying body of one of the victims. An arm was extended, aiming a revolver. The victor sprang to one side. It was too late. Shot through the head, he spun round upon his heels and fell beside the dead body of his murderer.
The tragedy was over.
My uncle, bent double, was sobbing pitifully a few paces from my side. He had witnessed the actual death of his son, foully murdered in the great war by a German airman!
CHAPTER V. THE KISS
BÉRANGÈRE NEXT DAY resumed her place at meals, looking a little pale and wearing a more serious face than usual. My uncle, who had not troubled about her during the last two days, kissed her absent-mindedly. We lunched without a word. Not until we had nearly ended did Noël Dorgeroux speak to his god-child:
“Well, dear, are you none the worse for your fall?”
“Not a bit, god-father; and I’m only sorry that I didn’t see . . . what you saw up there, yesterday and the day before. Are you going there presently, god-father?”
“Yes, but I’m going alone.”
This was said in a peremptory tone which allowed of no reply. My uncle was looking at me. I did not stir a muscle.
Lunch finished in an awkward silence. As he was about to leave the room, Noël Dorgeroux turned back to me and asked:
“Do you happen to have lost anything in the Yard?”
“No, uncle. Why do you ask?”
“Because,” he answered, with a slight hesitation, “because I found this on the ground, just in front of the wall.”
He showed me a lens from an eye-glass.
“But you know, uncle,” I said, laughing, “that I don’t wear spectacles or glasses of any kind.”
“No more do I!” Bérangère declared.
“That’s so, that’s so,” Noël Dorgeroux replied, in a thoughtful tone. “But, still, somebody has been there. And you can understand my uneasiness.”
In the hope of making him speak, I pursued the subject:
“What are you uneasy about, uncle? At the worst, some one may have seen the pictures produced on the screen, which would not be enough, so it seems to me, to enable the secret of your discovery to be stolen. Remember that I myself, who was with you, am hardly any wiser than I was before.”
I felt that he did not intend to answer and that he resented my insistence. This irritated me.
“Listen, uncle,” I said. “Whatever the reasons for your conduct may be, you have no right to suspect me; and I ask and entreat you to give me an explanation. Yes, I entreat you, for I cannot remain in this uncertainty. Tell me, uncle, was it really your son whom you saw die, or were we shown a fabricated picture of his death? Then again, what is the unseen and omnipotent entity which causes these phantoms to follow one another in that incredible magic lantern? Never was there such a problem, never so many irreconcilable questions. Look here, last night, while I was trying for hours to get to sleep, I imagined — it’s an absurd theory, I know, but, all the same, one has to cast about — well, I remembered that you had spoken to Bérangère of a certain inner force which radiated from us and emitted what you have named the B-rays, after your god-daughter. If so, might one not suppose that, in the circumstances, this force, emanating, uncle, from your own brain, which was haunted by a vague resemblance between the expression of the Three Eyes and the expression of your own, might we not suppose that this force projected on the receptive material of the wall the scene which was conjured up in your mind? Don’t you think that the screen which you have covered with a special substance registered your thoughts just as a sensitive plate, acted upon by the sunlight, registers forms and outlines? In that case . . .”
I broke off. As I spoke, the words which I was using seemed to me devoid of meaning. My uncle, however, appeared to be listening to them with a certain willingness and even to be waiting for what I would say next. But I did not know what to say. I had suddenly come to the end of my tether; and, though I made every effort to detain Noël Dorgeroux by fresh arguments, I felt that there was not a word more to be said between us on that subject.
Indeed, my uncle went away without answering one of my questions. I saw him, through the window, crossing the garden.
I gave way to a movement of anger and exclaimed to Bérangère:
“I’ve had enough of this! After all, why should I worry myself to death trying to understand a discovery which, when you think of it, is not a discovery at all? For what does it consist of? No one can respect Noël Dorgeroux more than I do; but there’s no doubt that this, instead of a real discovery, is rather a stupefying way of deluding one’s self, of mixing up things that exist with things that do not exist and of giving an appearance of reality to what has none. Unless . . . But who knows anything about it? It is not even possible to express an opinion. The whole thing is an ocean of mystery, overhung by mountainous clouds which descend upon one and stifle one!”
My ill-humour suddenly turned against Bérangère. She had listened to me with a look of disapproval, feeling angry perhaps at my blaming her god-father; and she was now slipping towards the door. I stopped her as she was passing; and, in a fit of rancour which was foreign to my nature, I let fly:
“Why are you leaving the room? Why do you always avoid me as you do? Speak, can’t you? What have you against me? Yes, I know, my thoughtless conduct, the other day. But do you think I would have acted like that if you weren’t always keeping up that sulky reserve with me? Hang it all, I’ve known you as quite a little girl! I’ve held your skipping-rope for you when you were just a slip of a child! Then why should I now be made to look on you as a woman and to feel that you are indeed a woman . . . a woman who stirs me to the very depths of my heart?”
She was standing against the door and gazing at me with an undefinable smile, which contained a gleam of mockery, but nothing provocative and not a shade of coquetry. I noticed for the first time that her eyes, which I thought to be grey, were streaked with green and, as it were, flecked with specks of gold. And, at the same time, the expression of those great eyes, bright and limpid though they were, struck me as the most unfathomable thing in the world. What was passing in those limpid depths? And why did my mind connect the riddle of those eyes with the terrible riddle which the three geometrical e
yes had set me?
However, the recollection of the stolen kiss diverted my glance to her red lips. Her face turned crimson. This was a last, exasperating insult.
“Let me be! Go away!” she commanded, quivering with anger and shame.
Helpless and a prisoner, she lowered her head and bit her lips to prevent my seeing them. Then, when I tried to take her hands, she thrust her outstretched arms against my chest, pushed me back with all her might and cried:
“You’re a mean coward! Go away! I loathe and hate you!”
Her outburst restored my composure. I was ashamed of what I had done and, making way for her to pass, I opened the door for her and said:
“I beg your pardon, Bérangère. Don’t be angrier with me than you can help. I promise you it shan’t occur again.”
Once more, the story of the Three Eyes is closely bound up with all the details of my love, not only in my recollection of it, but also in actual fact. While the riddle itself is alien to it and may be regarded solely in its aspect of a scientific phenomenon, it is impossible to describe how humanity came to know of it and was brought into immediate contact with it, without at the same time revealing all the vicissitudes of my sentimental adventure. The riddle and this adventure, from the point of view with which we are concerned, are integral parts of the same whole. The two must be described simultaneously.
At the moment, being somewhat disillusionized in both respects, I decided to tear myself away from this twofold preoccupation and to leave my uncle to his inventions and Bérangère to her sullen mood.
I had not much difficulty in carrying out my resolve in so far as Noël Dorgeroux was concerned. We had a long succession of wet days. The rain kept him to his room or his laboratories; and the pictures on the screen faded from my mind like diabolical visions which the brain refuses to accept. I did not wish to think of them; and I thought of them hardly at all.
But Bérangère’s charm pervaded me, notwithstanding the good faith in which I waged this daily battle. Unaccustomed to the snares of love, I fell an easy prey, incapable of defence. Bérangère’s voice, her laugh, her silence, her day-dreams, her way of holding herself, the fragrance of her personality, the colour of her hair served me as so many excuses for exaltation, rejoicing, suffering or despair. Through the breach now opened in my professorial soul, which hitherto had known few joys save those of study, came surging all the feelings that make up the delights and also the pangs of love, all the emotions of longing, hatred, fondness, fear, hope . . . and jealousy.
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 349
