Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  At last we separated, making an appointment for duty for the next day, and Don Ramon took me off to admire the interior beauties of the edifice. When he had shown me the crypt, del Cristo de abajo, and deciphered the Arabic inscription on the baptismal font, and when, standing before the high altar, he had informed me that it contained the relics of the martyrs Emeteric and Celedonia, he did not hide from me any longer that I owed him two reals, for the day, for the loan of the small bowl and for the place that I had occupied in the saint’s niche, I told him that so far as the bowl was concerned I should prefer to buy it. But he replied that it was not for sale, and that if I wished to keep the same place for begging I must continue to hire the bowl from him. With that, he explained that the position itself and two others in the main porch, were his property, and that the rules of the fraternity did not allow anyone to occupy them without making an arrangement with him. He had acquired them by rendering a thousand services in money and kind to beggars who were drunkards, or did not take their profession seriously, and who died from their vices before they had time to pay their debts.

  He further explained that it was an unprecedented honour to beg in the cathedral porch. It was an honour that had been solicited by persons in many ways of more importance than I without their being able to obtain it, and that I personally owed my good fortune to the recommendation of his friend José and to his own great interest in me. Thus I understood that if Don Ramon withdrew his patronage from me I was a ruined man; in other words, a man to whom nothing would be left but to go and beg in the arcades of the old city.

  Of course the whole thing had to be paid for. I was not so foolish as to wonder at it any longer, and the readiness with which I acquiesced in Don Ramon’s demands found its immediate recompense. When it was agreed that I should give him a fourth part of my daily takings, his voice assumed a honeyed accent and he gave me a glimpse of a life of pleasure. He was very close, but fair; and he did not lie.

  I had no cause to regret giving way to him, for under his patronage the next week passed in perfect happiness. He did not wish me to return to cousin José and his wife Augustias, who would not fail, he said, to pick my pockets, and he led me off to his own place where I took up my abode, not uncomfortably, between two old boxes. Here there was a fairly clean bed and some bedclothes that were not altogether unhealthy. He arranged for his garret to be given a fresh coat of whitewash; and from the windows in the roof we had a magnificent view of the Muelle del Calderon and the open sea. The two stories below us swarmed with poor people, and since Don Ramon rented the place for a mere song, it brought him in a considerable sum by the end of the year.

  From time to time lodgers knocked at our door, and more often than not we were called upon to decide some question of dispute which had arisen between them. When sentence was pronounced the dispute was settled. I never heard during that week, a coarse word, nor was our rest disturbed by any violent quarrel. Don Ramon kept his tenants in hand by holding out the hope of a place in the main porch.

  I passed my mornings at the cathedral, and it seemed to me that this mendicancy was the most amusing thing in the world, for I began to know the worshippers and their peculiar ways, and I myself ventured, after they had given me something, to utter a few witticisms. In the afternoon I stretched myself in our garret and quietly read Cervantes’ novels in Spanish with the object of improving my knowledge of this beautiful language. At six o’clock I went with Don Ramon to a queer wine shop in the old city where we took an appetiser. Here he was sure to meet a number of customers in low water through gambling, to whose assistance he came in exchange for a signature on a piece of paper, as was only fair.

  We went home to dine and Potage, who was Ramon’s cook, would prepare for us a stew or fish pie to which we invariably did full justice. In the evening we passed an hour at a dancing establishment; in the inferior places it is true, but we made as much noise as anyone else in applauding and in shouting, “Ollé! — !” and in demanding “Fandango! Fandango!”

  Afterwards we returned home for the night. Don Ramon shut himself up in a small room either to sleep or to make up his accounts for the day, while I listened to Potage’s stories which were the finest in Spain after those of Cervantes. Potage was a youth of fifteen. I have never seen anyone so lively as this cripple without legs. In reality he was not a cripple without legs. His lower limbs were slightly deformed, and it would be difficult to say with certainty whether it was this deformity which had necessitated Potage’s transformation into a cripple without legs; that is to say, as a sort of little human animal who could not move about without a wooden platform on rollers and clumps on his hands; or whether as a consequence of this method of locomotion bound, as it were, to a vehicle, his lower limbs had become deformed.

  Don Ramon could not tell me anything about him, for he did not remember seeing him in public other than as a cripple. Potage’s parents, who were dead, had made the boy an object of pity at a very early age. Don Ramon adopted him first because it would have gone to his heart to allow a poor orphan, so rich in promise as Potage, to disgrace himself with all the vicious boys in the city, and then because a cripple without legs in a church porch is, it seems, a highly profitable investment.

  To excite the patriotic compassion of the people Potage used to declare as he held out his hand that his condition was the result of an operation rendered necessary by an accident at a bull fight. In the end he believed the story himself, and it was this story embellished in the most engaging and vainglorious fashion that he was ready to tell anyone who would listen to him. I myself was never tired of hearing it and this in itself incited him to give a freer rein to his imagination. And I was amazed at his powers of invention as I accompanied him into a fascinating world of arenas and toreadors.

  Potage’s father was a picador, that is to say, a poor devil marked down to be caught on the horns of a bull after his horse had been gored to death; and in fact that is exactly what happened to him, so that he was maimed for life, and he and his family were obliged to change their occupations.

  Potage, as the descendant of so famous a family, never ceased to dilate upon the paternal exploits and his own. When he was quite young he organised, so he declared, matches for amateurs in the villages, and had already won many triumphs. He had no doubt that one day he would have received the alternative, which is the honour awarded to acknowledged matadors in the Madrid arenas; an honour which confers upon them the right to succeed each other alternately in any ring or any bull fight whatsoever.

  The prospect of a brilliant career was suddenly brought to naught by an unlucky blow from a real taro de muerte, a monster bull who might have given pause to any troop of toreadors in Spain, but who was powerless to intimidate Potage. Nevertheless Potage lingered too long singeing the beard of the toro de muerte, he declared jestingly, and the bull sent him up into the clouds on the tip of his horns, and when Potage came to earth again he was a cripple.

  It was a sight to see Potage on his rollers, rushing to and fro, to left, to right, acting in dumb show the complete battle as he returned to the attack on the bull, making extraordinary pirouettes and flying leaps with his little platform, and always falling on his rollers and clumps.... We took a great liking to each other, and I have never had cause to regret it.

  And thus I passed my life, convinced that I was regarded as dead, and that consequently my worst enemies had ceased to persecute me and my house; convinced, too, that my mother would be left in peace, and resolved to continue, at least until the end of hostilities, a life for which, after all the vicissitudes through which I had passed, I was feeling a greater predilection every day. Even the image of Amalia was beginning to grow faint in my memory, though not in my heart where I always found it vivid enough when I sought for it. Cut off and forgotten by the world, sordo-mudo, deaf and dumb, no longer reading the newspapers, ollé, as Potage would say, life was worth living. But alas, it was not to last long.

  One evening when I returned for supper
I found Potage putting the finishing touches to a succulent caldereta — veal stew — which wafted a pleasant odour through the garret.

  “There’s a letter for you, Senor,” he said.

  “A letter for me!” I cried, astonished to hear Potage use the word senor so ceremoniously.

  “Yes, yes,” he answered, and pointed to a large packet covered with black sealing-wax. I darted forward and read on the envelope: “To Monsieur Herbert of Renich.”

  “Damn it all,” I groaned. “Who brought this?”

  “Don Ramon himself,” returned Potage, stirring the appetising mess with his wooden spoon.

  “Who told Don Ramon that my name was Herbert of Renich?”

  “Don Ramon knows everything,” he replied simply as he tasted his decoction.

  I trembled in all my limbs. It was a large and heavy envelope, heavy.... I looked at it without being able to make up my mind to open it. I examined the seals, but the cipher bore so complicated a design in more or less Gothic characters that I was unable clearly to distinguish a single letter. At last I broke the seals and opened the envelope. Inside was another envelope sealed in the same manner, and I read not without consternation, as may easily be imagined, these words: “To be delivered into Captain Hyx’s own hands.”

  Oh mother.... Oh God.... Oh, mother of God.... Well, but... it can’t be.... I was directed to take this letter to Captain Hyx at a moment when, as I knew, he was mad with anger against me, and when I was hoping that I should never see him again as long as I lived.... And who dared send me such a commission?

  No longer knowing what I did, I turned round with a wild look in my eyes; and I caught sight of Potage, who quietly pointed to a sheet of paper which had slipped out of the envelope and fallen at my feet. I picked it up and read:

  MY DEAR MONSIEUR HERBERT,

  You will find Captain Hyx, in all probability, in the Cies Islands. In any case, it is only in those islands that you will be able to learn what you must do to join him. The matter is urgent. The enclosed letter must be delivered into Captain Hyx’s own hands by you personally within a week from this day.

  Yours truly,

  VON TREISCHKE.

  P.S. — I have the pleasure to inform you that if you are in need of money Don Ramon will hand you five thousand marks which I will lend you.

  I fell my full length on the mattress. Those people knew that I could refuse them nothing since they held my mother in their infernal power. I was confounded. It was in vain that Potage tried to force me to eat some of his excellent caldereta so as the sooner to bring me to myself again. I could not eat anything... for a long time.

  When I was able to speak I said:

  “But, tell me, how did the Huns know that I was in hiding here?”

  “Oh, hang it,” returned Potage with a smile, “you are the only person here who doesn’t know that Don Ramon is in their pay.”

  CHAPTER XV

  A DIFFICULT COMMISSION

  I WEPT LIKE a child and Potage endeavoured to console me like an elder brother.

  “I knew quite well that you were a gentleman,” he said. “A wretched card strung round a man’s neck doesn’t hide his qualities of heart and education. When I saw you in Don Ramon’s hands I said to myself that you must have had some love affair, or committed a crime of just vengeance, and I pitied you because I knew that Don Ramon who is a miser would, sooner or later, sell you for a few pesetas. But since it has to do with the Huns, you can’t find fault with him, for if they were looking for you, he only did his duty in giving you away, seeing that he’s been in their service for no end of time.... As for myself I’m not in the pay of anyone, but have to give my earnings to Don Ramon. I assure you that I’m fed up with the life that I’m leading, and if you’ll take me away with you, wherever you go, I’ll follow you like a faithful dog and be ready to serve you and to die for my master, if it’s absolutely necessary!”

  I looked at him sadly and endeavoured to dissuade him from any such intention.

  “My dear Potage, I lead a life which is scarcely to be envied, and it is surrounded by such dangers that a poor cripple like yourself could not possibly be of use to me. I am none the less grateful to you from the bottom of my heart for your kind impulse, and if, one day, I get out of the frightful adventure into which fate has thrown me, I will remember you....”

  “Adventure,” he cried. “Adventure. I want to share your adventure.”

  And without my noticing how it was done, he had already divested himself of his platform on rollers and his clumps and leapt to his bandy legs. One of them was, in shape, convex and the other concave, but he assured me that the irregularity would soon disappear if he devoted some little attention to it, and I should be satisfied. Nevertheless he declared that he would not give up all his “stock-in-trade as a cripple” and that he intended to take away with him his platform on rollers and his clumps which might come in handy in certain emergencies such as, for example, “when he wanted to get along quickly.”

  Meantime Don Ramon came in and laughed to scorn my intention of taking Potage with me, for truth to tell the poor boy had cried so bitterly that I no longer had the heart to refuse his request. He threatened no less than to throw himself and his wooden platform from the top of the Muelle del Calderon into the sea if I declined to accept him “in my household” as a servant.

  As a matter of fact he did not stand upright, and I reckoned that if he were called upon to do anything for me, the task would be more quickly and cleverly done by the cripple that he was, or that he had become, than by a Potage on unsteady legs moving in circles. But that was not the point; the point was that he was attached to me, and greatly upset. I am easily moved and easily give way. I should eat my heart out if the Huns and Captain Hyx gave me time! I took over Potage. Don Ramon transferred him to me for a thousand marks. It was an acquisition that consoled me to some extent for the loss of my rags and tatters, my card, my garret, the cathedral porch, and for having to start again in a business that I had looked upon as buried and out of sight like myself but which still had many surprises in reserve for me.

  So I should have to return to Vigo! I felt sure that the letter to Captain Hyx which was in my keeping concerned his wife, and that Von Treischke relied on me to bring to the Captain’s knowledge the fact that she whom he believed dead was, in reality, safe and sound. Of course the packet which I was to take to him contained proofs of it; proofs collected by Von Treischke himself with the assistance, no doubt, of Mrs. G — . And thus Captain Hyx was to surrender Amalia if he wished to receive his own wife in return. How simple it was.... How very simple. Rejoice, then, Herbert of Renich....

  Alas! why this feeling of dread, this trembling in every limb in an affair which was so simple?... Because I was unable to understand why it was not equally simple long ago. And, as I thought of it, I felt that it had become too simple much too quickly....

  I had come to mistrust simple things and my simple mind.... I turned over, to no purpose, all the possible lines of argument which might explain why the Huns and Von Treischke did not proclaim to the world in general and to Captain Hyx in particular: “Mrs. G — whom you accused us of putting to torture is alive.” And I tried to explain to myself, also to no purpose, why Mrs.

  G — had refused to write this information to her husband when I begged her to do so.

  And then I gave up trying to understand why I was charged with a commission which was so simple, necessitating that I should travel by a route, itself a mere trifle — the unapproachable route to the Cies Islands! — when a simple communication sent to a neutral embassy or legation would do the business in five seconds... in five seconds.

  By the Virgin of the Pillar, as Spaniards say in French novels, what was going to happen to me at Vigo?

  We took the train, Potage and I, for Vigo that very evening. I put on a fairly presentable check suit. Potage had become, at my request, a cripple again, but certainly the handsomest cripple in the Asturias. He had unearthed i
n a bazaar in the old town a wine-coloured velvet jacket and waistcoat embroidered with black tags and braidings and a sash of crimson silk. The collar of his shirt was of dazzling whiteness, and fastened by two big pebbles which sparkled like real diamonds. He had carefully combed his hair and tied it behind into a small pig-tail; the sign of the profession among the champions of the arenas. And he sported a sombrero calanes, a little rough round velvet hat with a turned-up brim fastened under the chin by a strap. He looked like the half of a splendid toreador of old when toreadors wore their ancient national costume.

  Wherever I went Potage brought me a considerable amount of attention. In the railway stations he surprised everyone by the smartness of his ways and service. He darted among the baggage like a meteor, and carried my portmanteau and packages on his wooden platform with extraordinary skill. We were looked after and given our tickets before anyone eke. He clambered nimbly into the trains and took his seat while people thought he was still on the platform.

  His natural liveliness cheered the gloomiest faces around me and by exciting a number of jests was very welcome to me at that moment, for I felt that I was again falling into the depths of depression. At first everyone was astonished, but afterwards they congratulated me on my choice of so singular and yet so clever and attractive a servant, so that I did as everyone else did — I congratulated myself.