Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  At the sound of this battle, of the shouts, of the moans of the wounded and dying, some officers ran up and gave orders to the men to open fire, without knowing whom or what they were firing, at the risk of shooting one another point-blank. They next rushed to Moabit, yelling like savages. All the men who were still able-bodied, wild with rage, tearing themselves in the brambles, the impenetrable bushes, leaping into the underwood, maddened by the thought that they were fighting against a mysterious force, a new forest weapon invented by the Three Brothers, had dashed forward whooping as though they were storming a battery. Oh, that assault of Moabit! Sergeant Born-drunk could still hear it ringing in his ears, with the shouts of the infantrymen and the thunder of the trees, for the trees around them growling, rumbling and roaring, as though they were the storm itself. One would have thought that the trees were defending themselves. And, from time to time terrible blows were let fly out of the trees by the Three Brothers, whom they never saw and at whom they kept on firing!...Blows that would fell an ox!...A chap by your side would go down, without so much as an “Ah!” before you knew what was happening!...The most awful bludgeoning blows, raining down from the trees and ending you flat to the ground, with a crash!...

  He himself, Sergeant Born-drunk, was grazed by one of those blows, only grazed, fortunately, but enough to split his ear and make him sit on the ground, like a baby, and see stars!

  But there were others who wouldn’t stir a limb for many a long day and some who would never stir at all...Oh, they would remember the Three Brothers and the siege of the Black Woods!...And nobody would ever know how the forest had managed to defend itself like that!...Not to speak of the animals, which also had fought like mad: animals by the hundred, which seemed to have taken refuge in Moabit as in a fortress and which delivered sallies, rushing upon the soldiers, coming from every side; wild-boars, wolves, running in every direction, spreading disorder in the ranks; herds rushing blindly before them, knocking down and trampling on all that stood in their way.

  The colonel was found, at daybreak, in the condition described, at the very spot from which he had vanished. Then they picked up the dead and wounded and came home.

  Sergeant Born-drunk finished his story, while the passing-bell continued to bewail this ill-fated and, from every point of view, deplorable expedition.

  Gertrude went away, but did not go straight back, first calling on Mme. Mûre and Mme. Bache and on Mme. Valentin’s cook, whom she found in tears because of “that poor M. de la Terrenoire, who was so fond of the mistress.” And, in this way, she learnt all the events of yesterday and the day before.

  Greatly relieved, she returned to Coriolis’ tower with a glad heart.

  “Well?” asked Coriolis, as soon as he caught sight of her, while Madeleine prepared herself to hear the worst.

  “Well, it’s nothing.”

  “How do you mean, it’s nothing?”

  “Why, it has nothing to do with him. They’ve been in the forest hunting the Three Brothers, who have escaped from prison and who have hanged the examining-magistrate, just as they hanged Camus and Lombard and that poor M. Blondel! The Three Brothers defended themselves and knocked thirty of them on the head. There, are four killed.”

  “Nonsense!” exclaimed Coriolis, returning to life, while his heart began to beat with an immense delight. “You don’t mean it! And what about Balaoo?”

  “Balaoo? Who’s talking of Balaoo? Don’t I tell you that he was out of it?”

  “Oh!” cried Madeleine, in gratitude to Providence. “Oh, can it be possible?”

  “It’s as I tell you, sure as I hope to be saved!” rejoined the old woman, with amazing effrontery, for she knew quite well what to think of the mysterious defence of the forest and the battle of the trees.

  Coriolis and Madeleine embraced. Then Madeleine, hesitatingly, said:

  “All the same, he was thundering in the forest last night.”

  “The soldiers must have frightened him,” said Gertrude.

  “And then perhaps he is sad,” said Coriolis, in a sig nificant tone. “He has been away too long and he dares not come in. You ought to go and fetch him, Madeleine.”

  Madeleine did not wait to be told a second time. Fifteen minutes later, she was walking, with short steps, through the paths in the forest, calling; in her softest, voice:

  “Balaoo!...Balaoo!...Balaoo!...”

  And it was not long before she saw Balaoo come timidly towards her, his clothes in disorder, hanging his head, with a repentant face. Sniffing and moaning, he fell on his knees, muttering, as in the days of the Forest of Bandong, when, after perpetrating some piece of mischief, he returned to the maternal hut, where a good beating awaited him:

  “Woonoup brout!...Woonoup brout!...Brout! Brout!”(*)

  (*) Woonoup brout, in the language of the larger apes, means “mercy,” as Professor Garner tells us. — AUTHOR’S NOTE.

  “Talk like a Christian, you savage!” said she, with tears in her eyes.

  “Mercy!” he sighed, in his gentle, gong-like voice.

  She took him by the ear and brought him home.

  All the same, he had hanged M. Herment de Meyrentin.

  He was given seven days in the black hole, which he fully deserved.

  BOOK THE THIRD — BALAOO MAN-ABOUT-TOWN

  Chapter XVII

  WHEN PATRICE ARRIVED in Paris, at 7.15 in the evening, there was no one to meet him at the station. He was surprised at this, although, during the three years since his future father-in-law had left Saint-Martin-des-Bois, Coriolis’ behaviour towards him was such that he need not have been surprised at anything.

  First of all, he was kept away from Madeleine. True, she and her father paid two or three visits to Clermont; but the young man was never invited to go to them in Paris. After two years, as Coriolis kept on postponing the date of the marriage on inadequate pretexts, the Saint Aubins became curious to know what could be happening at their relations’. They applied to a private-enquiry office, which soon supplied them with information of so absurd a character that they regretted paying for it in advance.

  Nevertheless, in course of time, some of this information was confirmed. For instance, it was quite correct that Coriolis never went out without taking young Noël with him and that he appeared, somewhat late in the day, to have acquired an insane liking for that shy and silent lad. He was letting him study for the bar!

  Noël studying for the bar! Upon my word! Noël was a law-student and Coriolis accompanied him to all the lectures!

  What did it mean? And what was hidden behind this last freak of the ex-consul at Batavia? The Clermon Saint-Aubins were wondering, in consternation and alarm, when, suddenly, the marriage between Patrice and Madeleine was fixed.

  Coriolis hurried things in a frenzied fashion. The wedding would be in Paris, but the old eccentric did not allow Patrice any time for the wooing. He considered that a ridiculous and antiquated custom. The young man was not to come to Paris until forty-eight hours before the ceremony, which would take place very quietly, especially as the Saint-Aubins were detained at Clermont by the father’s gout and could not be present. On the evening of the wedding, the newly-married couple were to go to Auvergne and embrace the old people before travelling on to Italy, where they would spend the honeymoon.

  So Patrice came to Paris by the 7.15 train, as Coriolis had suggested, and found no one at the station.

  He felt “hurt.”

  He had his trunk put on a cab and told the man to drive to the Rue de Jussieu. Here the old eccentric had taken up his abode in an old-fashioned house, on the confines of the Quartier des Écoles, bringing with him his daughter, his old servant, his native “boy” and all his notes and manuscripts on the bread-plant.

  Through the windows of his cab, Patrice gazed sadly upon Paris, which was charming to look at on this fine spring evening; but he did not care for Paris. Paris had always frightened him. There were too many carriages. And, even when you kept off the pavement, you were ne
ver at peace. Lots of people, even ladies, whom he did not know from Adam or Eve, would accost him and ask him things or offer him things which he did not understand and did not wish to.

  When he reached the Rue de Jussieu and the cab put him down outside his uncle’s house, the quiet of the neighbourhood appealed to him. It reminded him of the country. The sparse lighting, the pavement echoing under the feet of a distant wayfarer, the solitude around him: all these suggested to his mind certain streets at Clermont where he used to go for a little stroll between dinner and bed-time.

  He rang the bell. Gertrude opened the door. She seemed neither surprised nor pleased to see him. She simply said, in an indifferent voice:

  “Oh, it’s you? Mademoiselle will be so glad.”

  “Didn’t they expect me this evening?” asked the bewildered young man.

  “Oh, yes!” replied the old servant. “Your place is laid.”

  They were standing in a great, cold, flagged hall, ending in an enormous staircase with a wrought-iron baluster. Gertrude pointed to the stairs and a voice from above said:

  “Is that you, Patrice?”

  “Of course it is! Who else would it be?” replied the young man, somewhat crossly, though he had recognized the voice of his intended.

  But Madeleine ran down the stairs and threw herself into his arms. Patrice kissed his cousin, whose demonstrations of affection struck him as being a little put-on. She seemed rather anxious than pleased at seeing him.

  He did not think her improved in her looks, because Paris had made her lose her pretty colouring. True, she had developed other feminine attractions, which Saint-Martin-des-Bois would never have given her; but, when you come from the Rue de l’Écu, you don’t shake it off easily.

  Madeleine, on her side, thought that Patrice looked sulky:

  “What’s the matter with you?” she asked, pouting. “You seem displeased at something. Is it because you weren’t met at the station? You don’t know what papa’s like. He’s not overburdened with politeness and nothing would make him depart from his regular habits. On the other hand, he would never let Gertrude and me go across Paris alone, so late in the evening.”

  “I’m not complaining!” said Patrice, compressing his lips. “Where’s uncle?”

  “You’ll see him at dinner. Gertrude will show you your room. Be quick: we dine at eight punctually; you have just five minutes.”

  Patrice’ room was a great, bare room on the second floor. There was a little bed, in between high walls and high, badly-closing windows. The walls were covered with the most wonderful panelling, all chipped and worn: he did not even look at it. There was nothing homely about the room, nothing soft. Not a sign of forethought: not a flower; not a photograph; nothing. He would have liked Madeleine to provide something to show that she was interested in the man about to occupy that room. But not a thing! He sighed and felt very lonely.

  In what a hurry she had kissed him, pushing and hustling him to get it over! And they were to be married in two days!

  He sat down gloomily at the foot of his bed. Gertrude’s voice outside the door made him start up:

  “Are you ready, M. Patrice? Mademoiselle would like to speak to you.”

  He paid no attention to his appearance, did not even look at himself in the glass. He washed his hands and found Gertrude waiting for him impatiently:

  “Come along, sir!” she grumbled.

  And she took him downstairs and pushed him into the drawing-room.

  It contained the old set of Empire furniture which he had known at Saint-Martin-des-Bois. Here again there was not a flower in the vases. And the chairs had their covers.

  Madeleine was standing near the door. She took his hand and said to him, speaking very quickly, in an undertone:

  “Dear Patrice, when we are married, e shall do as we like, sha’n’t we? But here we are at papa’s and we must not vex him. He has become crazier than ever. We must not be angry with him, for he is very sorry at my going away. He could never bear the thought of my marriage. He made up his mind to it at last, as though he had decided to be operated on for appendicitis. He is very unhappy and he wants to get it over and done with. But, until it is over, he won’t have it talked about! So there must be no question of a wedding, at meals or anywhere in the house, That’s settled. You will act towards everybody as if you had come to Paris for two or three days on important business which concerns no one but yourself. Is that understood?”

  She did not even wait to hear his answer. As he stood there, dumbfoundered, she opened the door of the dining room and went in. He followed her as in a dream.

  A young woman of fashionable appearance sat reading by the corner of a window. She raised her head at their entrance. Patrice could not restrain an exclamation: it was Zoé!

  It was really true: he saw before him the little gadabout of the forest! This pretty girl who got up and bowed so easily, so quietly, looking so very Parisian in her simplicity and in the modest and assured taste that distinguished her dress, was the Vautrins’ sister, whom he had seen running along the forest-paths like an untamed hind, with her hair streaming in the wind or blowing over her forehead! By what miracle did he now find her so greatly altered, looking so “proper”?

  When he heard, at Clermont, that Zoé had gone to join Madeleine in Paris, the young man did not conceal his views from his intended. And he wrote to her all that he thought of this latest hobby of his uncle’s. But Madeleine replied curtly that she had not been consulted and that, besides, she looked upon her father’s treatment of the poor little orphan — Mother Vautrin was dead — as a kind action. Later, Madeleine again had occasion to write that Zoé was making herself very useful in the house, now that Gertrude was getting old. She said that the child had become quite sensible after breaking every link with the past; and she added that Zoé’s brothers must certainly be dead, or they would have found means of letting their sister know to the contrary. That was what Zoé thought.

  Patrice, while failing to understand how anyone could feel inclined, unless compelled, to be waited on by Mlle. Vautrin, that scion of a too-illustrious family, was delighted with this last communication. The death of the Three Brothers, doubtless slain by the bullets of Major de la Terrenoire’s troopers, reconciled him to the sister; for Patrice would still sometimes wake up in bed, with his forehead bathed in perspiration, from a nightmare in which a curious masked driver took him somewhat roughly by the throat and asked him never again to set foot in Saint-Martin-des-Bois. And, as he had dropped the idea of the intervention of a fourth miscreant, of the mysterious accomplice whom the eloquence of the Clermont public-prosecutor had definitely relegated to the realms of legend, he invariably ascribed to the albino the responsibility for the terrible adventures that had nearly caused his death. It was a good thing that Élie was no more; and Patrice had looked forward to hearing the glad tidings repeated by Zoé’s own lips.

  But he expected to find her in the kitchen.

  And he discovered her in the dining-room, where she seemed quite at home, dressed like a young lady, smiling at him with the gracious condescension of a woman of quality who wished to put him at his ease: Zoé, the savage little sister of the three men sentenced to death!

  He did not know if he ought to shake hands. But she held out hers to him, very simply, and asked after his health.

  He did not have time to indulge in further raptures of wonder. Uncle Coriolis entered the room, followed by a tall and sturdily-built young gentleman, who flung out his chest and displayed a pair of broad shoulders under a well-cut jacket. Madeleine’s sweetheart knew that simian face, with the almond eyes, that Far-Eastern type which always surprises us when it is modified by European fashions, such as the hair smoothly plastered down, with a straight parting...and the single eye-glass. Yes, M. Noël was wearing an eye-glass! Patrice, who had never seen him so near at hand, considered that he had improved. The smart cut of his clothes and his frigid bearing made him look almost distinguished. The peculiar ugline
ss of his face was rather attractive than repulsive.

  “He may be quite good-looking in his own country,” thought Patrice, reflecting that, after all, looks are a matter of latitude and longitude.

  Only he regretted, for that foreigner’s sake, the exceptionally powerful build of the animal jaws.

  Patrice was astonished by Zoé, but the sight of Noël plunged him into absolute stupefaction:

  “He has changed immensely since he worked in the bread-plant orchard,” he thought, bowing somewhat coldly in answer to the ex-gardener’s curt nod.

  And they all sat down to table.

  Coriolis had not been at all demonstrative with his nephew. He asked casually after Patrice’ parents and, without waiting for the reply, pointed to his place, between Madeleine and Zoé. Noël sat between Zoé and Coriolis.

  The soup was followed by an embarrassing pause, which was broken by Coriolis:

  “Perhaps, my boy, when you’ve finished staring like a lunatic, you’ll tell us what you’re surprised at?”

  Patrice was ashamed to be spoken to like that before Madeleine. He had the courage, however, to say, with his nose in his plate:

  “What surprises me is M. Noël’s eye-glass.” Madeleine warned him, with a little kick under the table, that he had made a blunder. But it was too late...His uncle was already going for him:

  “Your father wears spectacles; and I don’t see why M. Noël, whose left eye is weaker than the other, should not wear a concave glass. Astigmatism is not a privilege of the white race, nor is the use of lenses, to correct it.”

  This was said in so harsh and contemptuous a tone that. Patrice was crushed. He tried to hide his confusion under a pleasant smile.