The Devil’s Laughter

by Frank Yerby

  “. . . No difficulty in finding lodgings within walking distance of each other, overcrowded though Paris is. Your money, of course, turned the trick. With enough money, anything is possible in Paris. Marianne is busy, cleaning both your lodgings and ours. They are both humble, but sufficient, I think. Yours is above a furniture-maker in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine—in sight of the Bastille, which in itself is enough to sustain a man in his resolution to overcome all tyranny. . . .”

  Except, Jean thought, the tyranny of a hopeless love. . . .

  “Ours is but little further along,” he read, “in the same district. Below it, on the rez-de-chaussée, is the press which I have already set up. I have hired journeymen printers, bought supplies; I await only your coming to begin.

  “One word of warning: look to your dress, that it be not too fine. The Paris mob grows hourly more restive. Good clothes alone now are enough to brand a man, as they attribute fine dress to nobles and exploiters, by which last they mean any rich bourgeois as well. I saw, only yesterday, a man of some seventy winters forced to kneel and kiss the ground before a bust of Necker, of whom he had been accused of speaking slightingly.

  “The mob has given me many a qualm about the rightness of our cause. I, for one, question the wisdom of disposing of even a Comte de Gravereau to place in his stead a herd of villainous, bearded, evil-smelling, murderous brutes, who, I swear God, have never been peasants or indeed aught else but the brigands they are now. . . . No woman is safe; I accompany Marianne to the baker’s, armed with pistols. In which regard, I urge you to bring your own, and a plentiful supply of ammunition; for, by my lost faith, you will need it. . . .

  There was more; but Jean had ceased to read.

  Tomorrow, he thought, to Gravereau, to bid adieu to my poor sister. A letter, left in her hands for Nicole. For I—I cannot. . . . If I saw her again, everything—her marriage vows, every oath I’ve ever sworn would be like snow in the noonday sun.

  Do you feel it, my love? This death inside your heart? The silent screaming more terrible than that of any tortured wretch because it goes on and on for ever and there is no relief for it anywhere?

  All my life, my family and my friends have complained of my mockery and my laughter. How long has it been now since I laughed—or even smiled? Weeks—since last I saw you. I must make an end to it—an end to—us. . . . First, the letter. . . .

  He got up from the bed, found ink, paper, quills, the sandbox. He put them on his desk and sat before it. Two hours later, he was still sitting there, staring at the almost blank paper. All it had on it were the two words: “My Own . . .”

  He took out his penknife and put a new point on the quills. They had been well pointed in the first place, and his hand shook so that he botched the job. He dipped the pen into the ink-well, forgetting to wipe it on the edge as he drew it out, so that a string of drops sprayed across the paper.

  “Enfer!” he swore, and crumpled the sheet. He threw it into the waste-basket, drew another towards him.

  But he wrote nothing upon it, nothing at all.

  I am facile with the pen, he thought bitterly; but where is all my facility now?

  He sat there, in the cold room, before his desk, sweating. He was on the edge of something, and almost he knew what it was. He remembered something that d’Hiver, an actor who had frequented the Marin soirées, had said once in reply to the question whether or not he felt the emotions he depicted on the stage.

  “Of course not!” the actor had laughed. “If you really feel— it paralyses you.”

  Real emotion—this dreadful excess of feeling I have, he thought, stuns the senses. I see her face, even in the darkness of my mind, and there aren’t any words left—nowhere in the world. Yet I must write it—I must!

  But like many another less fluent man all he wrote was:

  “I love you. I always shall. Forget, and forgive, one who adores you and who signs himself, forever, Jean.”

  He got up in the morning and rode towards the Château Gravereau. It took him a long time, because all the roads were choked with peasants and vagabonds. At the sight of his rich dress, they snarled at him:

  “Aristocrat! Ere long we’ll make an end to the likes of you!”

  But they offered him no violence. That was yet to come.

  The servant who opened the door showed a white and frightened face that calmed a little with recognition.

  “What ails you?” Jean growled at him; “you look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “The people, sir,” the butler whispered; “they’re growing ugly. There have been threats. . . . My lord’s not too popular hereabouts. . . . Thank God, my lady’s so kind. They adore her. I fear me we’d have been attacked before now, if it weren’t for her . . . She’s in the petit salon. . . . Go in, sir, she said I need never trouble to announce you, sir.”

  Jean Paul walked into the little sitting-room. At the sound of his booted feet, two women rose from their chairs and turned to face him. Thérèse—and Nicole.

  Dear God! Jean wept inside his heart; why must she be here now!

  “Jean!” Thérèse said, “I’m so glad you came . . . We—we’ve been so frightened. . . .”

  “Why?” Jean got out, unable to tear his gaze from Nicole’s face.

  “Augustin,” Thérèse said, “the coachman—Nicole told me he was the one who—who hurt your face. He’s run away, and joined the people. Now he’s stirring them up against us. They haven’t done anything but mutter threats at us, but . . .”

  “And at your house?” Jean said quietly to Nicole.

  “Nothing, yet,” she whispered.

  Jean felt himself trembling. Strange, he thought, anything she says, two words “Nothing yet”—and my bones turn to water within me.

  “1 think you exaggerate the danger,” he smiled. “I know the people hereabouts. They’re good folk, many of them are my friends—”

  He stopped, watching Nicole’s blue eyes widening, feeling as much as seeing how they searched his face. From where he stood, he could see her mouth softening, hear the quick, explosive onrush of her breath. And when he raised his eyes again, he saw the terrible hunger in her eyes.

  With you, too, he thought bitterly, it’s like that. God help us both. .

  “Jeannot,” she said, her voice high, taut, strangling, “why did you come?”

  “To say good-bye,” Jean said.

  She didn’t move or speak. But ten feet away across that room, Jean saw the anguish in her face, saw her eyes blurring, misting over with her tears, and her, hanging there, swaying a little, her gaze locked with his, unwavering, speaking through that purest communication that has no need for words, that is beyond words, above them.

  “Nicole,” he rasped, “please, I—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake go and kiss him!” Thérèse sobbed. “Don’t just stand there!”

  An instant later, Nicole was in his arms, kissing his face, his throat, his eyes, with soft, wet lips that clung and broke, and clung again, tasting of salt and tears.

  He found her mouth and cherished it with his own, feeling it moving under his, forming words that came out muffled, broken, whimpering:

  “To Paris—I know—Thérèse told me—to sit in the States—but Jeannot, Jeannot—I cannot—I will not—bear. . . .”

  But he stopped her words altogether, bruising her mouth with a savagery that was strangely all tenderness, spinning the world about their heads in terror and loss and rage and anguish, until Thérèse’s sob-choked, “My God!” came over to him, and he released Nicole and stood back.

  “It—it is better so, little Nicole,” he murmured. “If I stayed here, near you . . .”

  “I should destroy you,” she said simply. “We should destroy each other.”

  She stood there, looking at him, and her eyes were very clear.

  “You must go,” she said slowly. “I understand that. The country has to be saved, and only you and men like you can do that. But say you’ll come back to me—say
it—No, No! Don’t talk of Julien to me! He is all Thérèse told you, good and kind and wise. . . . Too wise, I think, to hold on to a woman who doesn’t want him. He’ll set me free, if only you’ll come back to me, Jeannot. . . . Tell me you will, tell me!”

  “But how?” Jean said, “how can he, Nicole? You married him in good faith, in the church. You have children—and therefore no grounds for an annulment. You know how he can free you, Nicole? The only way? By dying. Do you want that, Nicole? Answer me! Do you?”

  She stared at him.

  “Yes!” she said fiercely. “For you, yes!”

  “Nicole!” Thérèse gasped.

  Nicole half turned towards her.

  ‘I’m sorry,” she said brokenly; “I wish I could say I didn’t mean that, Thérêse. But I did—then, at that moment, I did. There was a wickedness a very great wickedness, the worst. But you see, dear Thérèse, as far as Jean is concerned, I don’t know right from wrong any more. I’m lost. I don’t know day from night or what time it is or even what year. . . . I only know that I am dying of wanting him so, and that when he is gone I shall truly die, not all at once, but by slow inches, over the space of months, perhaps—until I am all dead finally, and at peace.”

  She looked at Jean, and a slow smile broke the track of her tears.

  “If I shall be at peace even then, my love. I think I shall become one of those ghostly women of the legends, searching the roads by moonlight, wringing my unsubstantial hands, wailing down the wind, calling your name. . . . Will you hear me then, my Jean? Will you come to me finally in the dark realms and still my weeping?”

  “Dear God!” Jean choked.

  “Go,” she murmured, “go, my Jeannot, and do your duty. Honour France by it, and yourself—and me. For this cannot be, and we know it. Now kiss me, quickly, Jeannot, and go.”

  She stood there a long time after he had gone. Then very slowly she turned back to Thérèse. But it was not to her that she spoke.

  “Yes,” she whispered, “honour me, my Jean. For I think soon I shall have some right to be numbered among those who have died for France. For have I not given her the heart from out of my body—all my breath, my hope—my life?”

  There was no need for haste, but Jean rode back towards the villa at a thundering gallop. He drove his mount on furiously with whip and spur, until the horse was covered with lather; he, who had always been kindness itself to his animals. Slowly his mood changed from fury to something very like acceptance—which was a good thing for the horse, else he would have broken its wind, or killed it.

  A day later, he was on the diligence bound for the capital, with the absolute certainty that a chapter in his life was for ever closed.

  And a new one has opened, he thought with faint pleasure, as he sat with M. Reveillon, the prominent manufacturer of wallpapers, outside the Café Charpentier, at the foot of the Pont-Neuf. He had met Reveillon shortly after his arrival in Paris. The manufacturer had thought an order of wallpaper for the flat of a deputy to the States-General important enough to demand his personal attention.

  Pierre and Marianne had already done wonders with the shabby flat in the Rue Saint-Antoine, near the Bastille; but two things had remained for Jean’s own care: a broken balustrade on the landing outside his door, five floors above the street, and hence exceedingly dangerous on a dark night; and the wallpaper.

  Jean found that he liked the bustling manufacturer very much. M. Reveillon was the soul of kindness. He paid the very least of his workmen twenty-five sons a day, an unheard-of wage in Paris; he had kept his whole staff of three hundred and fifty on at full wages the whole of the terrible past winter, though in reality he had work for less than half of them. A liberal and a philanthropist, he had been chosen elector for the Saint Marguerite district. In some ways he reminded Jean of his own father. Yes, Jean mused, I like him very much.

  The wine at the Café Charpentier was good, and they soon found themselves surrounded. M. Reveillon was well known and respected in the quartier, but it was Jean Paul himself who was the centre of attraction. The truth of the matter was that the Parisians were starved for news of the provinces. In its absence, all sorts of wild rumours were flying about. Jean did his best to lay the wildest of these at rest:

  No, he knew of no châteaux burned in Provence. Yes, there had been rioting in Marseilles; but that state of affairs had come happily to an end. Grain riots? Yes—many, but small affairs. . . .

  The talk rushed on in waves. If there is any one thing your Parisian is master of, Jean thought wryly, it’s talk. I wonder how they’ll acquit themselves when the time for action has come?

  He had time now to listen, to fill in the details of the picture. It was alarming, to say the least. All Paris was at fever pitch. Every quartier had seen scattered rioting.

  He was on the point of asking Reveillon what measures were being taken to insure public safety, when he saw a girl coming towards their table. She was a small girl with inky-black hair and enormous dark eyes. She moved very slowly among the tables, offering the faded flowers she had in her hand to first one, then another of the men. Something about the way she moved caught Jean’s attention. There was a curious hesitation to all her movements. Then one of the habitués bought some of her flowers and she gave them to him. Though she was very close to the man, she missed his outstretched hand by several inches, and Jean Paul realised that she was blind.

  He stared at her. He had seen blind beggars before, but this one was different. When she was closer, he saw what that difference was. She was lovely—utterly lovely. He revised his thought consciously, aware as he did so that he was probably the only man in the pavement café who was capable of thinking so. Because the blind flower-girl’s beauty was entirely different from that of any other woman he had ever known.

  It lacks something, he mused, and it has something, and both what it lacks and what it has are different. . . .

  “That’s Fleurette,” Reveillon said, following his steady gaze. “Everyone loves her, poor thing—her affliction has made an angel of her. . . .”

  “That’s it!” Jean Paul said aloud; “she is like an angel, isn’t she—no, not an angel exactly, but certainly nothing of this world. Her beauty is ethereal.”

  “Ethereal?” Reveillon said. “Why, yes—you have something there. Strange I never thought of Fleurette as being beautiful. My taste runs to more fleshy women; and that poor child is mere skin and bones.”

  She was painfully thin, Jean saw, and her clothes were mere rags. But her face was saintly, and what she lacked was any hint of sensuality whatsoever. And what she has, he thought with a surge of deep pity, is the rarest thing in the world, patience, and real goodness.

  “Call her,” he said to Reveillon.

  The manufacturer stared at him. Then he shrugged.

  “Each to his own taste,” he muttered. “Fleurette, come over here!”

  She came at once, using the sound of his voice to guide her. When she was close, Jean Paul stared at her for several seconds before he spoke.

  “Your flowers,” he said gruffly, “give them to me—I’ll take them all.”

  She passed them over, and he gave her a golden louis—a hundred times and more what they were worth.

  “I—I have no small money, M’sieur,” she said, “I cannot change this. . . .”

  eHe had been fascinated by her finger-tips’ deft movement over the surface of the coin. Now he smiled at her, glad that she could not see his broken face.

  “I didn’t ask for change, little Fleurette,” he said. “Take it, and buy yourself some warm clothes.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t! It’s too much and—”

  “Take it,” Jean Paul said.

  “M’sieur is too kind,” she murmured. Her voice, Jean noted, was high and clear and sweet, like certain notes of the violin, and again like little bells.

  “It’s a custom of mine,” Jean laughed. “In every city I always find a certain person who will bring me luck. You’re my luck here,
Fleurette. You pass this way every day?”

  “Yes, M’sieur,” Fleurette said; “here, or wherever M’sieur wills.”

  “Then stand on the corner of the Rue Saint-Antoine and the Rue Saint-Louis every afternoon at fourteen hours,” Jean said; “bring with you a nosegay—no, a boutonnière—and I will buy one every day—for luck, little Fleurette—your luck and mine.”

  “Thank you, M’sieur,” Fleurette said. “You are very kind.”

  “And don’t forget to buy warm clothes,” Jean said. “You’ll catch your death as you are.”

  “I’m used to the cold,” Fleurette smiled. “I don’t think I’ve really been warm in the winter-time in all my life.”

  “Dear God!” Jean whispered.

  “But I shall buy a warm dress and a cloak and shoes. It will be wonderful to be warmly dressed—” She stopped, and her child-like face was troubled suddenly.

  “What is it, Fleurette?” Jean said.

  “I was thinking that I hoped you would approve of my choices, M’sieur. But then I remembered it could only be by accident if I happened to buy pretty things, for I cannot see how they will look.”

  “Tomorrow morning at nine and a half hours,” Jean said, “I will meet you at the same place. Then I will go with you and select your clothes.”

  “Would you?” Fleurette breathed. “Oh, thank you, M’sieur—thank you a thousand times!”

  “Don’t mention it,” Jean smiled. “Till tomorrow, then . . .”

  “Au ‘voir, M’sieur,” she whispered, “and thank you.” Jean was conscious that Reveillon was staring at him; and that the manufacturer’s good, honest face was creased with frowning.

  M. Reveillon was not one to hide his thoughts.

  “Are you,” he growled, “planning to seduce that poor waif?” Jean stiffened in his seat, and his whole face darkened so that the scar became white lightning suddenly, zigzagging down his face. Then slowly he relaxed.