THOSE WHO RETURN
(L'ombre)
by Maurice Level
translated from the French by: Bérengère Drillien
V
CLAUDE had come to the country, like a city man would, for a few days’ rest, but with the intention of living there, and finding among these simple folk the forgetfulness, and quiet happiness that come from hard work, and freedom from care.
His mother had left him the farm, left it entirely to him, with an income of 12,000 francs, a fortune in that part of the country, where, Montaigu on the one side and Fontenay-le Comte on the other were almost big towns.
Not far from the farm, was the dwelling-house, with a kitchen garden, and a fine lawn. He could live there, perfectly content, looking after the farm, and breeding cattle.
The next day, he went round his property, crossed fields, visited stables, stopping to look at the oxen sprawling on the straw.
As he was anxious to learn all he could, he expressed surprise that these should be lying at ease, lazy, fat, and well-cared for, while the others, harnessed to carts full of straw, were working with foam-flecked nostrils, and heads bent beneath the yoke.
“We are fattening these, master,” explained Père Chagne. “All they have to do is sleep and eat their fill. We only want them to get fat. In two months’ time they will be sold to a butcher. They will go Paris way… Maybe you’ve eaten some of your own beasts there, without knowing it… That cow is in calf… oh, don’t be afraid, they are quite gentle… They know their names, and are as obedient as dogs. Indeed, I am sorry to let those two over there go… But what’s the good?”
When he had been all over the estate, drunk a glass with the laborers, patted the babies’ cheeks, and looked over the muddy pond where ducks were swimming, he asked to see his house.
As they crossed a little copse, he saw it, half-hidden by two great cypress trees. Their branches covered with dark needles, almost touched. A thick growth of ivy covered the front of the house, and encroached upon the roof, and the closed shutters, washed by many rains, and roasted by many suns. Ragged plants grew all over the garden. Pale, scentless flowers were dotted among the weeds that had killed the grass, and, without the scrunching of the gravel underfoot, they would not have known that there were paths around the lawn. Everything had grown anyhow, around the empty house in its lonely corner; the trees had become gigantic, and under the shade, which increased year by year, flowers, on which the sun never shone, were but sickly growths, with ailing petals and leaves that withered quickly.
Claude looked at the rickety bench, the empty kennel, in front of which lay a rusty chain. The farmer chose a key from his bunch, and, while he thrust it in the lock, offered what he evidently considered a necessary explanation:
“It looks dismal like this, because it hasn’t been kept up…no one ever comes here. But it is really pretty when everything is tidy. Years ago, when the paths were graveled, the beds full of flowers, and the trees cut and pruned, it was a beautiful garden. If the master will only send for a gardener, it will soon be put in order again…”
As he spoke, he pushed against the door with his shoulder. The wood was damp, the lock rusty, and the door would not open. He kicked it, and it turned on its hinges. Then he drew back, saying jokingly:
“It didn’t want us to go in, you know…”
As he crossed the threshold, and encountered the damp, sour smell of the atmosphere, Claude started back.
It smelt of mildew, of old wall-paper, and of cretonne. Without putting a hand near it, it was easy to tell that the paper was soaked and velvety to the touch, and peeled off under the fingers. His voice echoed in the dark rooms, and he hardly dared move because the sound of his footsteps was so painful to the ears.
Although the sun was blazing out in the garden, the light that came in here seemed dismal. The old-fashioned drawing-room, the dining-room, the billiard-room, all breathed desertion. The pictures on the walls were covered with a thick veil of damp, so carefully laid on that it was impossible to see what was portrayed beneath; the mirrors only sent back the ghosts of reflections; nothing was out of order. The chairs, ranged in lines along the walls, were covered with moth-eaten velvet; on small mahogany table, the dust had collected thickly, like a cover, so equal, and evenly spread, that it was easy to see no hand disturbed it for many years.
Claude wanted to think of these rooms as they were when they were inhabited, he wanted, by a thousand and one little things, to discover the routine of the life that had been lived there.
Certainly, he could see his father in the billiard-room, or seated in front of the black bureau in the big drawing-room; but which was his mother’s room? What chair had she sat in, to dream, on winter evenings when the lamps were lit? For she had lived here. How well inanimate things guard their secrets!
Even children who have lost their mother when quite tiny, know her. As soon as they are old enough to understand, some one will show them a portrait, a jewel she loved, the table where she used to keep her work. They will say to them:
“At such and such a time she used to do this, at other times, that. This was her favorite place…” They will repeat the words she used to say. The children end by hearing the dear dead voice, by knowing what gave her pleasure, and they love her memory almost as much as they would have loved her presence.
He had known nothing of all such things. He had nothing but his memories of his mother, and, as she had died when he was four, almost before he had learned how to kiss her, to keep her deep down in the eyes of his memory, he never remembered her other than ailing, sad, and quiet.
He thought perhaps the old farmer might remember her:
“I suppose it is here my mother used to sit?”
“It depended. When she first came, she used to run about the garden, to go to the farm, and amuse herself looking after the animals, and feeding the fowls. She was very merry…Afterwards…well…”
“Yes, when she fell ill, after my birth…”
“Well, not exactly…”
He hesitated, and went on in a lower voice:
“Not exactly…not exactly…”
Claude did not notice the hesitation and embarrassment of the worthy man. He was thinking:
“That is it. There was no reason for her sadness. I am like her, and, like her I shall depart, fed up, tired of life… Poor mother!...”
Ah, how he loved her at that moment, the mother, who used to fondle him, and smooth his hair with her white hands, saying softly, tenderly: “Poor little fellow!” in exactly the same voice as he had said “Poor mother!”
And, with a longing to get nearer to her, to feel her presence through the mystery of time and space, inquired:
“Do you remember her, Père Chagne?”
“As though I saw her before me.”
“Am I like her?”
“Oh! no…”
Seeing that his young master was hurt by his reply, he corrected himself:
“Perhaps you are something like her…after all.”
“At any rate I am not like my father?”
“Oh no! that’s very certain…oh, no, no…”
This assertion filled him with the deepest joy.
VI
FOR two months Claude lived with no other care than that of watching the grass grow, the wheat ripen, and the vine sprout. When the grass and the wheat were cut, and the grapes gathered, he watched the approach of Autumn.
The weather was still summer-like, but the nights, which were drawing in, heralded winter. The fields, where nothing now interrupted the view, spread out to right and left, the hill-sides covered themselves in fog, and the forest clothed itself in the red-brown tint of a newly baked loaf. By degrees Nature was teaching him her joys, and her secrets, filling him with wonder.
He saw none but the farm people, and thoroughly enjoyed sharing their quiet life. The children amused him, and sometimes he would sit for long hours besides the herds, silent like them, learning the cries that call the cattle together, or rouse the attention of absent-minded dogs. One day he stopped beside a brook whither a girl was leading some cattle.
She was sixteen or seventeen, with rough hands, and sunburned arms, round hips that undulated as she walked; her bosom swelled under the tight blouse, and her face was covered with freckles, and laughed at him from under her tangled eyes.
The day before he had hovered near her, without daring to address her with the same shyness that made him hesitate to speak to a girl in Paris. She saw him as he passed along, blushed and said:
“Good-day, master!”
He replied:
“Good-day, my child.”
Politely, she picked up her bag, the pointed stick she used as a goad, and her ball of wool, stuck through with knitting-needles, and prepared to go away. He held her back:
“Are you afraid of me, child?”
“No, master.”
He began to laugh, and sat down on a tree trunk; she remained standing, and he said:
“There’s room beside me.”
She took up her knitting again, and sat down: he asked her:
“Do you often come here?”
“Of course, master, you know very well I do.”
She meant nothing by this, and did not intend him to know she had noticed his by-play, but only to express the thought, that as he was the master, who knew everything that was going on on his estate, he must also know that. He did not understand her meaning, and blushed in his turn. He had always been timid with women, and the ragged dress of this one did not prevent him from feeling confused. With an unexpected fusion of ideas, the memory of his fiancée crossed his mind, and, suddenly, without the least idea why this question came to his lips, he said:
“Are you going to be married soon, child?”
She looked at him:
“I don’t know.”
“Haven’t you got a sweetheart?”
“I’ve no time for that.”
The answer amused him, the girl looked prettier, and he took her hand. He was going to speak again, when a voice made her raise her head:
“Hi, Marie! Come and do the washing…the boy will look after the cattle.”
She rolled up her stocking, took her bag and the white stick, and got up. Claude was annoyed at her departure, and murmured as he would have done to a lady in a drawing-room:
“You’ll come again to-morrow?”
She did not reply and joined her father. Claude hailed the old man:
“Are you all right, Père Gravelot?”
“If it please you, master.”
And, touching his cap, the old man pushed his daughter along in front of him.
Since then, he had often returned to the same spot, pensively, with burning head and twitching fingers, a prey to desires which he could neither express nor wholly disguise. But such shades of feeling are more within the scope of town rather than country women, and this country girl did not seem to notice them, unless it amused her to watch the growth of his fancy…
Time passed, the shooting season began, and, as much for the sake of forgetting a flirtation that was absorbing his time as for the pleasure of something new, Claude no longer came to the meadow beside the water.
Old Chagne had taught him how to fill cartridges; every evening, he sat at his table, beside the lighted lamp, and got his provision ready for the next day. As soon as daylight came, he was off across the plain. One day, when jumping across a ditch, he clumsily caught his gun in something, and it went off, just breaking the skin of his hand. As he had neither bandages nor antiseptic with him, he went to M. Coutelet, the village apothecary.
This was an old man with a reputation for learning. The country people asked his advice before consulting a doctor, and after doing so, consulted him forthwith, to find out if the prescription was any good. Claude knew him by sight, having caught a glimpse of him bending over his counter in the dim light of his shop, weighing out powders and ointments with careful fingers, and he had often wondered about the old man, with his long hair, and clean-shaven face.
He went in; a peasant was waiting for some medicine that was being made up:
“Your servant, Sir,” said the apothecary, and stopped tapping a bottle, “what can I do for you?”
“Only to bind up my hand…but finish with this good man first.”
He sat down and looked at the jars that stood in a line on the shelves. As he finished what he was doing. M. Coutelet gave the peasant advice:
“Give a dose every hour to your wife… and do not let her go out on any account.”
He shook the bottle, corked it carefully, gummed on a label, crinkled a green paper cap for it with his nimble fingers, gave it to the man, and went to the door with him:
“Now, Monsieur, I am at your service.”
“It is only a scratch,” said Claude, untying the handkerchief in which he had swathed his hand, “a fragment of powder tore the skin a little…”
“A little! Plague take it! You are pretty cool about it! Why your hand is covered with blood.”
“No, no, it’s a scratch, I tell you. It’s here…the rest is the color of my skin.”
“Ah, that’s very curious,” cried M. Coutelet. “Will you allow me to look? It is really strange.”
Claude frowned. He did not care to have too much notice taken of this peculiarity. The apothecary made no further remark, took a wad of cotton-wool, sponged away the blood, and while he spread a square piece of lint on the little wound, said:
“You are passing through here, I expect?”
“No, I am living at Trois-Tourelles.”
The old man looked up:
“So, you are M. de Marbois? I might have known…”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t look like one of our village folk.”
He placed one end of bandage on the hand and rolled it around.
“Have you lived long at Saint-Fulgent?”asked Claude.
“Forty-seven years,” answered the old man; “it’s a lease, you see. You are surprised to think any one can exist in such a hole, when life is so full of activity in Paris. But you don’t make your life, it is served out to you. I came here when I had finished my studies, to wait for something better. And the waiting has lasted nearly half a century. But when all’s said and done, it does not matter where you live, provided you do live. When you have your books, your microscope, and your memories, when you do all the good you can…”
“I believe you are right,” said Claude, “and I myself have made up my mind to live at Saint-Fulgent.”
“You have a fine property, and plenty to keep you busy. If you will take the trouble, you will make money out of your estate. The country-people round here, are honest and hard-working, but behind the times. I have studied different methods of modern agriculture, and if I had the time and money… But perhaps if I had the one, I should not have the other,” he finished with a laugh.
“You are a philosopher.”
“Philosophy is the tip life leaves you, when on the point of departing,Monsieur Claude.”
“You know my Christian name?”
“I carry all the parish registers in my head.”
“You probably knew my parents then?”
“I knew your mother best,” replied M. Coutelet, with a slight hesitation; “she was not very strong…poor lady…”
“Alas!” murmured Claude, “and did you know my father too?”
“Not so well…”
“What a voice!”
“We had not the same political opinions,” M. Coutelet explained, “my plain speaking had something to do with that…”
“Don’t excuse yourself; I understand all the more that people do not get along with him, because I…”
“In short, we were not in sympathy,” concluded M. Coutelet as he dried his hands.
After which he began to speak again of Mme. De Marbois. Claude listened attentively to him. Twelve o’clock struck, and still found him sitting there in a chair, stopping the conversation when a customer entered, resuming it as soon as he had gone;
“And you were saying?”
The old man went on with his story.
“If I may, I will come and see you sometimes, and we will talk about her,” suggested the young man, as he rose.
“With pleasure, as often as you like.”
And that is how they became great friends.
VII
Out of the ten rooms in his house, Claude only occupied four, the drawing-room, the dining-room, the big bedroom, and a kind of office and library combined that smelt of moldy wood. And he very rarely entered that room, for the damp, speckled paper, and the dried flowers he had found between the leaves of a book, borrowed from the shelves, the last time he went in, had filled him with a strange feeling of depression.
The book was by de Maupassant. An ivy leaf marked the middle of the story, entitled Apparition. He began to read it.
As soon as he had read the first few words, the strangeness of the story piqued his curiosity. His was a soul that delighted in mystery, a mind ready to be seduced by the marvelous, and as soon as he read the description of the château, he noticed that it was strangely like his own house:
“The house seemed to have been abandoned for twenty years. In some extraordinary fashion, the gate, which was wide open and rotting away, still managed to stand upright. Weeds filled the paths, and hid the flower-beds on the lawn…”
He stopped reading, and looked pensively out of the window, through the dust-encrusted panes. The garden was still the same as the day he had arrived, and he muttered:
“Strange! …any one would think he had known Trois-Tourelles.”
He went on reading:
“The room was so dark, that at first I could not make out anything. I stopped struck by the moldy, sickly odor, as of rooms uninhabited, and condemned…dead rooms.”
This time the feeling was so strong that he shut the book, and drew his hand along his brow. Urged on by a force, superior to his will, however, he opened it again, and went on reading, but with his nerves on so much edge that he ground his teeth, and although the day was cold and damp the perspiration trickled down between his shoulders.
“…At last, as my eyes had grown quite used to the darkness, I gave up all hope of seeing more clearly, and went to the writing-table.
I seated myself, let down the flap, and opened the drawer of which I had been told. It was crammed full…”
“Now then! Now then!” said Claude, aloud, “you are not going to let yourself be influenced by this sort of thing!”
He took the book, and replaced it on the shelves, but, far from disappearing, the feeling of uneasiness became more pronounced. This unfamiliar house of his, where each wall seemed to shut in shadow and silence, disturbed him. A door, set in a corner, drew his attention, and he went up to it. He had hardly touched the handle, than it turned on its hinges, and the sour smell of a wine-cellar came straight at him, as though hunted forth by some underground breath.
He began to tremble. If there had not been the sound of cart-wheels on the road, he would not have dared to go in.
The window made a rectangular patch in the darkness. He opened it, and pushed back the shutters; the branches of the great cypress, fixed firmly against them, held them back. He took this to be a warning not to pursue his investigations any further, and drew away. But curiosity was stronger, and with his head full of the story he had just read, he went to the writing-table, and let down the flap.
A heap of different things lay there; empty cases, little cardboard boxes, letters thrown down anyhow, and a few books. Already he was smiling at this fears, when at the back of the drawer, he found a packet, carefully tied up. It contained letters, a bunch of dead flowers, and a photograph.
“Some relation,” thought he.
It was the portrait of a serious-looking man of about sixty, with a gentle, rather sad expression. He dived into his memory, but could not remember ever having seen the face, and yet he felt that it was not quite strange to him. On the other side of it was a date: 9th August, 1880,…and he was born on 9th April, 1881. Measuring time by the length of his own life, he thought:
“How old it is!”
Upon which, he put everything tidy again, and went back into the library to finish the story he had begun to read; the book, the title of which he had forgotten, could not be found anywhere.
This trifling incident made him think. Was it not the picture of his own life, this sudden glimpse of something, as bruskly removed from his sight? For the first time since his arrival, he was linking the present with the past, and less certainly than in Paris, but irritating, nevertheless, came the usual hesitation.
When night came, he ate his supper without appetite, and as soon as he had swallowed the last mouthful, returned to the library. But he fingered volume after volume in vain, searched all the shelves, tried to remember where he had put the book, but could not find it. He was getting angry, when Mère Chagne came in on tip-toe, and said:
“It is M. Coutelet who has come to call upon the master, if it does not disturb him!”
M. Coutelet! What did he want with him at that time of night?
He thrust back the books anyhow, dusted his hands, and replied:
“Very well, I will come…or stay…ask him if he will come up here…”
M. Coutelet apologized for coming out at such a late hour:
“If I am at all in your way, do not mind saying so. I was walking along, smoking my pipe, and, looking up, saw a light in your house, and rang the bell, just on chance…”
“You did very well,” replied Claude; “do please sit down.” The old man sat down in an armchair:
“It made me feel quite strange, seeing a light in this room.”
“Why?” asked Claude.
“Because for twenty-five years the shutters have never been opened…I can understand that you like to sit in this room; books are the greatest friends a man can have, and if I had the good fortune to own such an extensive library, I should spend the whole of my time here. Your mother was very fond of this room; sometimes I used to come and chat with her here. I borrowed her books, and I believe I have read the greater part of them …Do you read much?”
“I? very little…too little…but I am going to get to work and will ask you to help me choose to begin with…Perhaps even you can do me a service now. Just imagine! half an hour ago I was reading a book. I had to go into another room, and replaced it on a shelf. Now I can’t find it, and I am very interested in a story which I may never be able to finish…If only I remembered the title…”
“What was it about?”
“A story about…”
He related the first few pages. M. Coutelet interrupted him. “That is Apparition by de Maupassant, and the story is in the volume entitled Clair de Lune. It should be here.”
He took the lamp, got on a stool and pointed to a row of books, glanced at several, and said:
“I don’t see it; a book that is out of its place is as good as a book that is lost, but if you are anxious to hear the end, I can tell it to you.”
Claude listened to him more and more attentively.
When he had finished, he remarked in a low voice, his chin in his hands:
“That’s a strange adventure…and the sort of story I should write if I could write. I like tales of mystery, they respond to the thoughts that occupy my mind, I find in them points of contact with my deeper self. The mysterious attracts and terrifies me all at the same time; in spite of myself I seek it…”
“Heredity is a curious thing,” mused M. Coutelet; “your poor mother liked that sort of book; and the last I ever saw in her hands was the very one you cannot find.”
“The fact that I glanced through it, might be a warning then, a word from Behind the Veil?” murmured Claude.
“I do not believe in the manifestation of immaterial forces,” smiled the old man. “Once upon a time, I used to dabble in Spiritualism, and…”
He stopped. Claude looked him straight in the face:
“Go on…”
“And,” went on M. Coutelet, in the tone of a man who regrets he has spoken lightly, “my opinion to-day is that there are things on which it is better not to dwell; it is only wise.”
“Wisdom and truth are not always the same,” objected Claude, “and I, who am only an ignorant, primitive fellow, am inclined to believe in a sort of fatal link, if the word does not displease you, used in this sense, between the fact that I chose the very book my mother loved to read, and the fact, guided by the hero of the story, I discovered in a room which otherwise I never should have entered, a writing-desk crammed full of letters, and the portrait of a man, whom I do not know, but whose face I swear is familiar to me…”
As he spoke he had gone to the inner room, had opened the writing-desk, and taken the photograph from the drawer. M. Coutlelet took it and looked at it, then at Claude, and gave it back without a word. His face wore a look of surprise, and his manner was a little nervous.
“Do you know who it is?” asked the young man.
“No…”
“Are you sure?”
“Are you ever sure of anything?” replied the old man.
The lamp, which stood on a little table, lighted up the carpet on the floor; in front of the two men the writing-desk gaped open, the curtains, black at the top, less soiled at the bottom, hung before the windows; a picture on the wall was crooked, and a thick spider’s web was stretched across an angle, like a fragile nest.
“Is this not exactly the scene described in Apparition?” said Claude. “Does not this room strike you as uncanny? …I hardly dare to raise my voice, and you, yourself…”
“How amusing,” murmured M. Coutelet.
A smile curved Claude’s lips:
“Come, M. Coutelet! Tell the truth; you know whose photograph that is. What’s the good of denying it? I read faces better than books.”
“As a matter of fact,” replied the apothecary after a moment’s hesitation, “that face is not unknown to me…I must have seen it long ago…but after all these years, it is impossible to tell you where and when…”
Claude lifted the lamp, and noticed his white face:
“My word, M. Coutelet! you would not tremble more if you saw a ghost!”
“There are no such things as ghosts,” answered M. Coutelet, trying to laugh.
At the same moment, the light shone on the mirror, reflecting Claude’s face:
“No, no,” pronounced the old man with strange eagerness, “you must not believe in ghosts.”
Claude looked at his reflection in the glass, then at the photograph, and murmured in a voice hoarse with feeling:
“Are you sure? …Tell me, is it this light or a tendency of my imagination to exaggerate things? …It seems to me that we are not two men here, but three, that the face I am looking at in the glass is not mine, and that it resembles the photograph…”
“Let that be, let that be,” said M. Coutelet firmly, “you are the dupe of your imagination…How do you think there could be any such resemblance? …Come, let us go and have a smoke in the garden. The atmosphere of rooms long uninhabited is unhealthy in every respect. The fresh air will show you life as it really is and not as your novelists imagine it; and chance, which is responsible for many things, has not allowed you to find the de Maupassant book again. That sort of literature is bound to be bad for a bundle of nerves like you. I will find something better for you.”
“Very well, let us look,” said Claude, going towards the library.
“Later…some other time…tomorrow,” proposed M. Coutelet.
“If I were as nervy as you say I am,” said Claude, “do you not think I should see other reasons than a mere desire for the evening air, in your eagerness to leave this room?”
Then he blew out the lamp, drew aside to allow his guest to pass, shut the door, and locked it, and when they were on the stairs, continued:
“And, after all, it is only one more mystery…a little more shadow to follow other shadows…”
“It really grieves me to see you so upset,” said M. Coutelet, as they reached the gate.
“Sooner or later, it had to come,” answered Claude with sorrowful irony…
“As well as the fact that I was too happy in this village.”
VIII
Claude pushed open the door of the chemist’s shop, just as M. Coutelet was drawing the shutters to. It was night; the rain was sweeping over the houses, a gust of wind nearly threw the shutters against him.
“I don’t want to find fault,” cried M. Coutelet, “but you have fixed on a bad day to go out, and I was not expecting you in a gale. Take off your mackintosh. What a state you are in! Go behind, I will light the fire. Good Lord! Where have you been! You have torn yourself, you are hurt…”
“I? Where?”
“There…”
“No, I’m not,” snapped Claude, “you know it’s the color of my hands.”
“I’d forgotten,” confessed M. Coutelet without taking offense at the exasperated tone of his young friend.
Claude dropped into a chair, while the apothecary threw logs on the fire, and held out his hands to the flame:
“A glass of rum?” suggested M. Coutelet.
“No, thank you, I never touch spirits.”
“Perhaps you are right; but you will not mind if I am less wise…”
He swallowed a mouthful, and sat down.
“Now, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“You have no idea?”
“Not the least in the world…”
Claude looked at him, incredulous; he repeated:
“I assure you.”
“I thought everybody knew already,” said Claude. “Something…an incident happened this morning which is going to compel me to leave this place. I will tell you about it, frankly; promise that you will be frank with me.”
“I promise you.”
“You know little Marie Gravelot, the farmer’s daughter? She is a nice little girl, gentle and intelligent, to put it plainly, she attracted and interested a lonely fellow like me. I sometimes went to find her in the meadows. We chattered and laughed, now and again, I gave her a trifle to buy herself fineries. Well, this morning, maybe because these last few days I had felt so depressed, maybe because I liked her…I went near her…very near. She was not frightened.”
“The girls of this canton are not over prone to timidity,” remarked the old man, smiling.
“The fact remains,” went on Claude, “that I was going to kiss her, when as I bent over her, I suddenly had the thought to put my fingers round her neck. She began to laugh and said: ‘You aren’t going to strangle me, Monsieur Claude?’ And, urged on by some demon, I answered: yes, I am.”
“Of course, you were joking,” cried M. Coutelet.
“Nothing of the kind. Any such thought was far from my mind. The words I said were the expression of my desire, and that is where the thing becomes incomprehensible. Unreasoning, calm, with a definite knowledge that I was about to kill, I began to press so hard that she flung away from me, frightened. My fingers still gripped her… She threw herself backwards, and slipped so, that, thank God, she twisted my arm, and I let her go. At once the fit of madness, which had seized upon me, vanished. I kneeled down beside her, not to harm, but to help her, as much troubled at her hurt as I was horrified by the attack, as though I had not been author of both. She got up, and, seeing me beside her, unable to guess at the mysterious upheaval that had taken place inside me, she left her cattle and ran away. I followed her, so bewildered, so dazed that I did not know what I was doing, and passed her house without knowing it. Some women were gossiping on the doorstep; when they saw me they stopped talking; the child hid her face in her apron, but as I was passing the group, I heard her father growl:
“ ‘He thinks they are all like his mother…’ ”
“I thought I should leap upon him. No doubt I ought to have done so. But my shame was so great, that I pretended I had not heard, and went on my way.”
“Only, since then those words echo in my head, and I feel I shall never have any rest until they are explained… And I have come to you; you knew my mother…do you know what they mean?”
“Your mother was an admirable woman…gentle, charitable…and not very happy…”
“I know, I know…But the remark I quote refers to something else…It is not my mother’s personality that I seek to know at this moment, but something of her life. If that man said such a thing lightly, he’d better look out for himself…Otherwise, I will go away, and no one will ever hear of me again…You see what your silence means.”
“Are you going to treat a chance word, spoken in anger, so seriously?”
“Instead of trying to soothe me, give me an honest answer. I have been too long on the brink of my life’s mystery to draw back the moment I see any chance of solving it…Besides it is no good arguing; either you will tell me, or I will force that rascal to do so; no matter to what lengths I have to go, I will get the truth out of him. Perhaps I may avoid some serious solution, some irreparable act, in coming thus to you…For I swear to you, N. Coutelet, that if I leave your house without learning anything, I will go through with this matter to the end! You understand what that means, and that no one can foresee how far threat will take a man like me.”
He spoke with savage resolution, almost in a whisper, refusing to meet the other’s eye. The apothecary felt that he meant what he said, and that if he wished to avoid trouble, he himself must speak now. He did so, sadly, and kindly, in the tone of a man whom age and experience has rendered indulgent:
“Faith! my dear fellow, you are putting me in a sad fix. Before condemning village gossip with the vehemence of a Parisian, you should realize that villagers judge the life of Paris with a somewhat primitive sternness…the people here learn morality at church; to them it is the same for everybody, as though life did not make a point of complicating everything, even morality, so much so that they can hardly forgive Our Lord for having defended the woman taken in adultery.”
“So that was it!” cried Claude with his clenched hands on his mouth.
“No, no! Of course not! …I chose that example to make you see how much more difference there is than people think, between the mentality of country and town people. Your mother was a model wife.”
“Well?”
“Peasant curiosity goes farther back than marriage. You and I only ask a woman to give an account of her life from the moment she takes a husband. They go deeper into the past, pick it to pieces, with a severity which is…oh! less wicked than childish…and consider as sinning what to us is mere incident…”
He stopped, hoping that Claude would not compel him to into further details, but, buried deep in his arm-chair, his hands spread flat on his knees, Claude did not open his mouth. So he went on, correcting sentences and words, keeping back the revelation of truth.
“Suppose you married here; suppose you married a young girl? Everybody would want to know where she lived before, who her parents were, and how they got their money. A widow? What her first husband had died of, and if she had been a good wife. A divorced woman? The reasons for divorce, and if the verdict were for or against her. A woman who was none of these things and had lived an independent life?...”
“I understand,” said Claude slowly and distinctly… “My mother loved my father before she married him…”
M. Coutelet replied by a vague nod.
“Go on,” Claude insisted, “there is something else, and you have told me too much not to tell me all.”
“You are right,” said the old man; “and you would make a mountain out of what is a very frequent thing. Your mother was poor. A friend bought the house where you live, and the farm around it, in order to provide for her… She lived an irreproachable life here. Occasionally the friend came to see her, and went away again. It was then that M. de Marbois knew her,...loved her,…and married her…You know enough of the peasants by now, to realize how severely they would judge such a marriage…Now you know as much as I do.”
“Just one more word. Was this friend ever heard of after my mother’s marriage?”
“No. He died a short while before.”
“Ah! exclaimed Claude. “Death certainly does arrange things well…but let us go on…So my mother was rich?”
“I do not know, my dear fellow, I really do not know,” murmured M. Coutelet, visibly embarrassed.
“Let us go on then,” said Claude, smiling, “and could you tell me…about…when the friend died?”
“The end of August or beginning of September, 1880.”
“What a memory!” said Claude admiringly.
M. Coutelet bent down to take a log from his wood-chest; Claude watched him and went on:
“The death must have caused a deep impression on you, for you to remember the date so exactly, thirty years after.”
“Sometimes you forget important dates in your own life, and remember the date of an incident that concerns some one else. For instance, I remember…”
“Don’t trouble to tell me about things that I can very well conceive,” said Claude.
“The fact is you are a terrible examining magistrate!” M. Coutelet tried to speak jokingly. “You turn my answers inside out.”
He finished what was left in the glass beside him. With a hand on his shoulder, Claude pressed him into his chair again.
“Examining magistrate? What a word to use!... Yes, I am naturally curious, but haven’t you repeatedly told me that in a small town people attach importance to small things?...Thus, perhaps, you could tell me, what the…friend…died of?”
M. Coutelet pushed back his chair, and rose, suddenly; then he sat down again, and replied:
“I don’t know…”
“I should like to know,” murmured Claude. “Would you believe it, when I heard the date of his death, and compared it with that of my birth…”
“What beastly weather!” complained M. Coutelet, going to the window. “Excuse me while I fasten the shutters; the wind will blow them away.”
“Yes…yes…do!” answered Claude.
Then, as M. Coutelet came back to the fire, he went on in a careless tone:
“So you don’t know what he died of?”
“I’ve no idea…”
“Did he not die here, then?”
“Yes,” murmured the old man, more and more embarrassed.
“And no one sent for you, who knew my mother, and were as good as any doctor in this village? Think, M. Coutelet, that we are confronted by facts now, which are easily verified, and that it would be absolutely useless to try and hide anything from me.”
“As a matter of fact, my reticence was due to a desire not to worry you…The gentleman in question died of an accident…he was found one morning lying on the floor of the library…a clot of blood probably…”
“Now we’ve come to it!” ejaculated Claude with a sigh.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. Thank you for the information you have given me and which I will try to utilize. I feel better already for having spoken to you… But the rain is stopping, the wind too…I will go home again.”
He slipped into his mackintosh, and, just as he was about to go, changed his mind, put a hand into his pocket, and took out a photograph which he showed to M. Coutelet.
“I showed it to you the other day, and you told me that you did not know who it was. But now, if you think a moment, is it not the portrait of that friend? ...”
“Maybe,” replied the apothecary.
Claude tried to laugh:
“How vague your memory has suddenly become, when it was so true a moment ago.”
“I think perhaps it is the friend,” said M. Coutelet.
He was meditating deeply.
“You wish to add something?” asked Claude.
“No…no…not at all.”
“I thought perhaps you did…You looked so attentively, first at this and then at me…But there…I am not surprised; I have often looked often and long at that picture…”
Then putting an end to the conversation, he opened the door and looked out into the night. It was pitch dark. The lamp which M. Coutelet sheltered with one hand, threw a circle of light on the road. Claude gnawed at his mustache, and could not make up his mind to go.
“If you are afraid you will not find your way,” M. Coutelet proposed, “I have a spare room, and shall be only too delighted if you will use…”
“No, thank you…I must go home…I have work to do…things…”
He said the last words in a mysterious voice that made the old man uneasy.
“Nothing rash now,” he said to him in a fatherly tone.
“Do not worry,” Claude reassured him with a little laugh, “the time is not yet ripe.”
IX
For ten days Claude never went outside the house. Convinced that the incident of little Marie had spread far and wide, he feared the peasants’attitude towards him.
In his own home even, Père and Mère Chagne only addressed him when they were obliged to, or at least that is how he looked at it. He felt a dumb hostility round him, that warned him of danger. Even close to the fire, the bitter cold made him shiver. He ate without appetite, and remained for hours at the window, watching for something, he knew not what, through the rain that fell incessantly. The sound of voices in the road, the scrunching of the gravel path, the tinkle of the door-bell, made his heart beat furiously, and filled him with a terror akin to that of the criminal who momentarily expects the arrival of the police. Winter, moreover, had entered the house and was settling in.
Long before nightfall, the branches of the cypress trees, which had not yet been pruned, drew a dark curtain before his windows. The cavern smell, which had upset him when first he came, and which had been dispersed by the summer sunshine, spread itself abroad again; here and there, velvety patches of mildew, encircled with the damp, stained the wall paper or spotted the sides of the pictures. Yet he had not made up his mind to go away, and with autumn hardly at an end, calculated how many months lay between it and spring, attaching a supernatural significance to his residence at Trois-Tourelles, fully convinced that Fate had given him this house for some mysterious purpose, and watching the hands of the clock go round as one listens to the drip of falling water.
On the fifth day, the postman rang at the gate. Claude pulled aside the curtain, and seeing the man slip something into the box, went downstairs. Mère Chagne was making for the door, but he stopped her:
“Do not trouble, I’ll go.”
The letter-box, from which the paint was peeling and which was all rusty inside, contained a packet of letters, tied together with string.
Newspapers for him, who took so little interest in the political, and for the matter of that, in every-day matters? It struck him as comical, and thinking the postman had made a mistake, he went out on the pavement, and hailed him:
“Hi! Mon vieux! This is not for me!”
The post-man came back; while he was approaching, Claude read the address. Seeing his name, he corrected himself:
“I’m sorry, I made a mistake…it is for me all right.”
“I was thinking too…!” grumbled the postman.
Claude cut the string and looked at the names; there were three copies of the Echo Vendèen. He thought to himself:
“They want me to take it in.”
He glanced through the first page, and seeing nothing that interested him in the least, examined the wrapper.
The writing was strange to him, exactly like any other business hand. He went into the library. The wood fire on the hearth was going out; he opened one of the papers, made a wad of it, set fire to it, and when it was nearly burnt and he could feel the heat of it on his finger-tips, he quickly pulled it from the fire again, and put it out under his foot.
At the bottom of the page was a paragraph, marked with a red X. No doubt, that was what the anonymous sender wished him to read. So he read it. …As he did so, drops of perspiration stood out upon his face.
Saint-Fulgent, 12 August
Yesterday morning, M. Deguy, who was staying at his country house, Trois-Tourelles, was found dead in his library. The deceased was clad in trousers, a nightshirt, a dressing-gown and slippers, like a man preparing to go to bed. There was a certain amount of disorder in the room, but the body showed no marks of violence. The fact that there was an open book on the floor leads to the belief that death, due, either to a sudden clot of blood or the rupture of a blood-vessel, was sudden, and this would explain why Mlle. Colette Fagant, a young artist, with whom M. Deguy had been staying for three days, heard nothing in the next room where she was sleeping. In spite of this the court has refused permission to bury the body, and an inquest will be held.
Claude brushed his hand across his brow and looked round him. In this room, perhaps in the very spot where he was sitting a man had died.
It never occurred to him that the article merely repeated what the apothecary had already told him. In print, the words had a harsher meaning, and several times he repeated his mother’s maiden name: Colette Fagant. He thought it pretty and pathetic, like everything that had to do with her, telling himself that he would rather it were his than de Marbois, which though finer-sounding, and more aristocratic, was brutal and proud.
The fire which had flamed up for a moment went out again; bits of charred wood fell from the logs with a sharp crack. Shadows were already gathering in the corners, blotting out the contents of the room. The words in the paper he held open before him ran into one another; he took another, unfolded it, and seeing nothing but a jumble of words, made up his mind that the fact of his not being able to see to read was a warning to seek no further…However, he lit his lamp, so that the light should banish all fancies that assailed him. But so far from bringing him respite, the light only gave a more definite turn to his thoughts. The words of the article were clear in his memory, and he conjured up in his mind the finding of the body lying across the floor. The room was probably in the same state then as it was to-day, and its disorder made the vision more clear. Since his visit to M. Coutelet, he had not quitted it. Pacing up and down between the four walls, moving one thing, pushing back a chair or tables, sleeping half the night on the couch, even eating on a corner of the table, without giving Mère Chagne a chance to sweep.
The night before, as he had not been able to sleep, he had read or tried to read, rummaging around among the books, trying to fix his attention on lines that slid away under his eyes, without leaving the least memory behind them, and, finally, putting the volumes back as fast as they bored him.
A great weariness made him want to lie down, a feeling of desperate loneliness made him afraid to sleep, a sleep that was sure to be heavy and haunted by bad dreams; but above all curiosity to see what the other two papers contained, kept him awake. …
So, he took the second copy, dated September 3, and this time, his eyes fell upon the same red-penciled cross that had drawn his attention to the first article: the heading was in large letters:
THE MYSTERY OF TROIS-TOURELLES
What we drew attention to in our edition of August 18th as “miscellaneous news”is assuming the proportions of a mysterious occurrence. The autopsy on the body of M. Deguy, as ordered by the court, has given no result. We believe we are right, however, in saying that the magistrates have not abandoned the idea of murder, and strange rumors are circulating in the country-side.
We transcribe these merely as information, and not in any way do we lay claim to any one of the somewhat contradictory opinions. In any case, the inquiries which our correspondent is making on the spot, are sufficient to vouch for a certain number of rather disturbing facts.
The house which goes by the name of Trois-Tourelles, and formerly belonged to the Comtes de Chenaille, was purchased two years ago under the name of Mlle. Colette Fagant. The papers drawn up by Maitre Bouzot, a notary at Montaigu, are in order, and the validity of the title-deeds needs nothing to be desired. But as the family of Mlle. Fagant is very poor, and she herself has no fortune, it seemed to us very interesting to find out by what intermediary the purchase was effected. Now it turns out that the purchaser was M. Deguy, and we are betraying no secret, when we say he was looked upon as a very intimate friend of the young lady, by the people of those parts.
What is more, they observed the utmost discretion in their relations to one another. M. Deguy came only very rarely to the house, and the occasions on which he stayed there were even rarer. It was his custom to call in on his way elsewhere, and to treat his hostess with a great and fatherly respect. Sometimes, too, Mlle. Fagant went away, and joined him either at Nantes in the winter, or at Guérande in the summer.
Latterly, a project of marriage between them had been touched upon, and a will drawn up by M. Deguy that left all his fortune to his young friend.
Now people say, and we repeat these rumors with the utmost reserve, that in the meanwhile Mlle. Fagant had made the acquaintance of a young man of noble family, but poor; that this young man had come secretly at least once to Trois-Tourelles, and that, having heard of it, M. Deguy had threatened to destroy the will and to give up all idea of marriage.
The police are on the track of this person, and do not despair of finding him; we shall help them to do so, as far as lies within our power.
Claude let the paper drop; at a distance of thirty years, these details were full of strange significance. The veil, which until that moment had hidden his mother’s past, was torn in twain, and at the same moment a terrible question rose up to confront him: he asked himself without daring a reply, who was the young man of noble family, who had been seen in the village, and whose share in all of this seemed so strange.
He remembered the disparaging way in which his father spoke of “little provincial papers, full of venom and wickedness.” These articles certainly aimed at impartiality, and these were careful not to overstep the limits of mere information, but with what cruelty they inquired into the private life of his mother and with what malicious joy the country-people must have passed the papers round at that time, and read them aloud in the evenings, sitting around the fire.
He took up the third sheet. The same heading, The Mystery of Trois-Tourelles, sprawled across the front page. But, if in the preceding articles the tone had been calm, in this one, it became threatening:
The case of which during four weeks Mlle. Colette Fagant has been the heroine, is legally speaking at an end. What we mean by that is that the law no longer mentions it. But we, as impartial agents, have the right to pursue an inquiry, which public feeling demands. It is to every one’s advantage that full light should be thrown on such a case. The identity of the mysterious X who went, secretly, once at any rate, to the château has not yet been discovered. Does that signify that X only exists in the imagination of the village folk? As far as we are concerned, the answer is not doubtful. The examination was closed at the very moment when people were beginning to talk, and the inquiries were carried out with the most disconcerting nonchalance. Who can say whether a more careful search in the old house, with its many nooks and crannies, would not have yielded unexpected results? To-day, the tendency is to rely on chance alone, that great ally of examining magistrates; and is not that too simple a method, when we are concerned with the death of a man? … And if, as we should prefer to believe, no crime was committed, should not those whom public opinion suspects, be declared innocent in such a fashion, that they themselves could have the law on persons who, not later than yesterday, removed a wreath which had been placed upon the dead man’s grave?
Two cuttings were pinned to the last paper. One said:
We are informed of the marriage of M. Marcel de Marbois, and Mlle. Colette Fagant.
The other:
The Comtesse de Marbois has given birth to a son, Claude.
The same hand which had penned the address on the wrapper had added two dates: October 7th, 1880, on the first cutting, and April 12th, 1881, on the second.
A sound made Claude start, and he drew his attention from the amazement with which the papers filled him. He looked round the room and saw that a book which he had placed on the shelf the night before, had fallen on the carpet. He picked it up, looked at it, turned it over, and seeing that it was open at the story, Apparition, uttered a cry, and flung it far from him, in terror.
X
Dawn was near, and Claude still searched the drawers in the bedroom. The discovery of the book, which for so long he had been unable to find, at the very moment when certain suspicions that he had not dared to formulate, were materializing, had thrown him into a state of excitement which verged on madness…
Madness traversed by lucid flashes, in which his thoughts linked themselves together, only to fall back into a chaos of anger and doubt, to come up against the loss of memory, to visions of inconceivable violence, which he thrust aside with savage energy, and recalled with childish weakness.
When exhaustion came, and his arms hung limp, his fingers were covered with greasy dust, his lips dry, his eyelids twitching, he egged himself on by word and gesture:
“Seek! Seek! Perhaps the truth is there!”…
Around him, linen, ribbons, and papers lay scattered. At first his hands felt about, turning the contents of the drawer upside down, then he put everything in order, stopping now and then to glance pityingly at an account book, containing his mother’s entries, or a bit of lace, to which he insisted a faint perfume still clung, in spite of the years. Then his anger melted into infinite regret, for the love that he had never been able to give or receive.
“If I have to spend my days and nights in turning everything over, to pull this house to pieces, brick by brick, to dig up the garden, and drain the lake, I will end by knowing.”
When he had emptied every drawer in the writing-table, he slipped his hand between the two supports, and drew out a little note-book which had fallen down behind, and which he opened in rather a perfunctory fashion. What chance was there that he would find a slip of paper or a note inside? His surprise was all the greater, therefore, to find a telegram addressed to C.F. poste restante, Nantes. It was stamped August 12, 1880, and in Paris, and said:
“Shall arrive to-night. Marcel.”
He closed his eyes, and fell into a chair.
It was Sunday. On the stroke of nine, he heard Mère Chagne talking in the passage with somebody.
“If he is asleep, don’t disturb him,” said a voice.
“He must be surely up by now,” answered the woman, “that is, if he went to bed.”
The door opened gently; Claude turned his head, and looked pensively at Mère Chagne, and M. Coutelet, who was behind her.
“I told you so!” grumbled the farmer’s wife, “he spends whole nights like that! ...And during the day he stays as he is now, or with his nose glued to the window, taking no more notice of people than if they were talking double-dutch.”
M. Coutelet nodded his head.
“Not to mention the fact that he will be ill,” went on the good woman.
She went forward softly and called: “Are you wanting anything now, master?”
Claude turned his head away and looked towards the window. The old woman sighed and said confidentially: “Like his mother…as like as two peas. You speak to him, perhaps he will listen to you…”
M. Coutelet went up to Claude, put a hand on his shoulder, and remarked cheerfully: “Up already and at work?”
The lamp was going out with a smell of oil and smoke. The daylight crept waveringly through the shutters. Claude had not moved. The apothecary opened the window, pushed back the shutters, and pointing to the sky, which was flecked with white clouds, went on: “No one should stay in on such a day! As for me, I’ve shut up shop; people must not be ill on Sunday, and I’m going for a walk in the woods. Will you come?”
The only answer Claude made was to cover his eyes with his hand as though the light hurt them. M. Coutelet drew the curtains, and the room was again in darkness. Mère Chagne, who could not understand any one remaining silent when spoken to, repeated her question:
“Are you wanting anything now, master?”
Claude sighed, and stretched himself, pressing his shoulders against the back of the chair, and replied:
“No, thank you, you may leave us.”
He waited until she shut the door, and the noise of her footsteps had died away in the passage, and only then did he turn to M. Coutelet:
His face was drawn with fatigue, his cheeks were covered with black marks where his fingers had rested, his eyelids lifted and drooped again, slowly:
“Come,” said M. Coutelet, “what is the matter? It is surely not the incident with the child that has upset you to this extent? It has long been forgotten…The father made a fuss for the sake of appearances… All you have to do is make him a present of a quarter’s rent.”
“He hates me, and has reason to hate me,” said Claude with bent head.
“Good heavens, my dear fellow! As if the parents in this part of the country were compelled to hate every young man who hugged their daughters too closely! Do you forget that we are only a short distance from the Marais? You do not look as though that meant anything to you? Well, on the day of the fair, at the Marais, the girls and boys may do anything they like…anything except…Anyway that leaves a pretty good margin, don’t you think? …Ah! these old customs!”
And as he knew all the ways and manners of the countryside, partly for the pleasure of telling it, and partly to make his friend think of other things, he began to describe the appearance of the public room in the inns on fair day; where couples sat on benches lined against the walls, and, without caring who saw them, shamelessly amused themselves in a thousand different ways, which were anything but guileless. With the racy description, he mingled a knowledge of legend, medical terms, and the easy indulgence of an old fellow, who can talk on any and every subject with absolute unconcern.
Claude smoothed out the creases in the carpet with the point of his shoe, so deep in his thoughts, that the apothecary’s voice sounded like a humming in his ears.
“That is what is called the Maréchinage,” finished the old man. “Is it not a curious custom?”
Claude rose, went to the door, looked carefully to see that it was shut, and standing facing M. Coutelet, asked point blank:
“What sort of man was M. DeGuy?”
“M. DeGuy?” …repeated the apothecary, “M. DeGuy?”
“Yes, M. DeGuy who was found dead here the 13th August, 1880.” His first finger pointed to the floor in front of the bookcase.
“You know?” said the apothecary with effort.
Claude merely replied: “What do you think!” and shrugged his shoulders. Then, as M. Coutelet said no more, he added:
“You see, nothing is hidden from me, nothing can be hidden from me.”
He walked rapidly up and down the room.
By degrees, his voice grew calmer, his voice more gentle:
“It is a strange story, certainly, that of the poor man, who was so good, so generous, dying here, without being able to call for help. But, as a matter of fact, why did you not tell me his name the other day.”
M.Coutelet shook his head vaguely. Claude smiled.
“After all your secrets are your own, or perhaps I should say your reasons are your own.”
“What possible reason could I have for concealing a detail that happened so long ago, and is of so little interest?” asked M. Coutelet.
“Do you really think it is of so little interest?”
“Really, I…”
“Very well…we will not speak of it again…But how pale you are now.”
“I ?”
“I imagined you were, but I must be making another mistake,” replied Claude carelessly. “Is it loneliness, the depressing atmosphere of this house, the odor of ancient things that surrounds me, or only the desire for the supernatural, that has obsessed me these last days? …My senses, unless it be my imagination, are growing curiously alert, and show me things that I never dreamed of…”
“Hallucinations caused by nervous strain,” explained M. Coutelet.
“It must be something of the kind,” agreed Claude. “For instance, this portrait…”
He took from the mantelpiece the photograph he had found in the drawer, lifting it for the apothecary to see:
“…Yesterday morning, when I was looking at it, I had an extraordinary feeling. Would you believe that when I looked first at this face, then my own in the mirror, it struck me there was a remarkable resemblance between the two; the same slanting eyes, the same bushy eyebrows, the same high-bridged nose, the same shaped chin, hair growing the same way, ears straight and flat at the top, and with the lobes adhering…I was extremely struck by it…”
“Fancy!” murmured M. Coutelet.
“Do you think so? Then my brain must be very disturbed, or very stubborn,” he pronounced the last words with a sneer, “for at this very moment, I can see the same resemblance. Come, tell me, is it possible for one to delude oneself so greatly? …You who are a strong-minded man, and not a nervous wretch like me, you compare them… Dark is it? …That’s soon remedied.”
He went to the window, drew the curtains, came back holding the photograph in the tips of his fingers, and stood in three-quarter profile to the apothecary:
M. Coutelet turned away his head:
“Let that be, my dear fellow; throw that photograph in the fire…”
Claude clasped it to his breast:
“Throw it in the fire? …You can’t mean that! …You cannot imagine how I prize it. It is such a weird feeling to see myself as I shall be thirty years hence. But I realize that all this is only perceptible to myself, and, after all, what can it matter as I am the only one interested in this fact! And if I am the sport of fancy, as you say, I intend to stick to it.”
He replaced the photograph on the mantelpiece, beside the clock, looked at it, looked at himself in the glass, and repeated:
“In any case it is a strange fancy…”
He rubbed his hands together, and laughed like a man pleased with his joke.
A ray of sunshine lighted up the library; M. Coutelet took advantage of it to say:
“Do come out with me: the country is beautiful, and it will be pleasant to chat as we walk along.”
Claude shook his head:
“I cannot bring myself to leave this house; it contains more than the whole world for me. If I could tell you all it has taught me, you would be amazed. The silence is full of voices, the darkness of pictures, and to him who knows how to obey them, they reveal prodigious secrets. But what am I telling you, you a materialist? You do not believe in the survival of the soul, nor in the invisible worlds that surround you. It surprises you to see I know so much, for you looked upon me as a mere schoolboy until now. Science, faith, and truth, reveal themselves to whom they choose, and sometimes the forces Behind the Veil try their powers on the most humble. I should amaze you were I tell you one quarter of what I have learned these past five days. Perhaps I will tell you when the moment comes…Then…”
He spoke in the voice of a prophet, with radiant face and sweeping gestures: Suddenly he struck his forehead:
“But I have not told you the queerest thing of all! You remember de Maupassant’s book, that we looked for in vain one afternoon? Well, my dear M. Coutelet, there it is at your feet, in front of you! I do not flatter myself that I found it; it came to find me…and I may say that it came at the given moment. …Its disappearance was strange enough, but what name shall we give to its return?”
“Chance!” replied the old man.
“No!” said Claude sharply, “there is no such thing as chance; that is a word invented by man to hide his incapacity and failure to understand anything that lies beyond his scope. Chance does not exist, but hidden forces do; for everything is linked up. Nothing happens, however slight, futile, or fortuitous, which is not at the same time a consequence and a cause. Only nobody pays any attention to it! And so those, who like myself have been granted the gift of meditation, of reflection and deep thought during several days, so far removed from the world, that, as far as they are concerned, the present no longer exists, are looked upon as madmen, so lucid and reasonable have their minds become! …M. de Marbois had not waited my discovery of this intellectual retreat to give me the reputation of a lunatic. Would you believe it, one day, a few months ago, he wanted to send me to a madhouse? Oh, perhaps he was not altogether wrong, I am dangerous, very dangerous…Only it is not my fault…It is certain that sometimes my inmost thoughts are strangely cruel. …That child Marie…well, I swear to you, my good sir, that I very nearly strangled her. …At this moment, such an act seems monstrous to me; but I am quite unable to guarantee the next.”
He opened his hands wide, and expression of intense cruelty came on his face. Then at once the strained look left his face, a flush crept to his cheeks, and he went on in an ordinary voice:
“You are a delightful friend, M. Coutelet, and, what is more, a really learned man. What a pity you came and buried yourself in such a hole! If I had time and strength, I should ask you to teach me hundreds of things…you have read and studied and remembered so much! …The nervous fits that take possession of me are perhaps caused by irritation at knowing nothing, or so little. …Have you noticed that children are subject to fits of passionate temper that do not affect older people? Sometimes I think I have discovered a cure for my malady, a cure unsuspected by the greatest doctor, and at which, no doubt, he would laugh: study. Not the dry study of books, but the study of life…I think experimental science is marvelous. To me the most elementary explanations of the simplest phenomena are soothing. I tell you what, I will go out with you. As we go along, I will ask you about Nature and animals, and plants….I still think of the wonderful account you gave me in explanation of wireless telegraphy and electrical waves; and the other about the production of double, and triple and quadruple flowers. …”
He rammed his hat on his head, and kicking away the things scattered about him, said, as he opened the door.
“Go first, M. Coutelet, I am with you.”
“Like that?” cried the apothecary astonished. …“Make yourself a little bit tidier, at least…”
“I do not attach any importance to my rag of a body,” said Claude jokingly, “but if you really mind…”
He seized the water-jug that stood on the table, emptied it into the basin, which he finished filling with the contents of a dirty jar. The water was rusty, he dipped the end of a towel in it, and said as he held it to his face:
“How long has that water been here? Fifteen years? twenty perhaps? …When I think of that, I have no wish to use it; absurd, isn’t it? Water is never anything but water. …Still, I want fresh water, water drawn on purpose for me. …This, here…”
“Madame Chagne, bring me up a pail of water!”
As soon as it came, he turned up his sleeves, opened his shirt collar, and, without troubling to empty it into the basin, plunged his face into it, rubbing his neck and his cheeks, dipping his head right in with exclamations of cold and delight. Then he turned down his sleeves, parted his hair with a comb, put on a tie, and asked gaily:
“How will that do?”
“Splendid,” answered M. Coutelet.
Claude returned to the mirror, looked at himself complacently and remarked:
“It’ll do, it’ll do!”
His somber mood had left him, his movements were natural, and his voice cheerful. M. Coutelet rejoiced at the change:
“You see,” he remarked, wishing to point a moral, “man is not made for solitude, the best-balanced people get nervy and inclined to make much of their grievances, when they are lonely; the smallest worry takes on the proportions of a calamity, and, the shadow which blots out the design…”
“Do not speak of that again,” cried Claude; “from to-day, I want to become a different man, I want to learn things. …If it does not bore you too much, you shall be my teacher. …”
“With pleasure.”
“Perhaps I shall be a tiresome pupil, I may ask you all sorts of questions, about all sorts of things, like a child. A child’s questions are sometimes tiresome, embarrassing, unexpected. …”
“I will do my best to answer them.”
“To begin with, I will ask you one that has worried me for a long time…”
He pointed to the red stain that marked his two hands:
“What do you call that?”
“A nævus (from the mother), probably.”
“And that means?”
“A mark which the child has on its body when it is born.”
“And the reason?”
“A congenital deficiency in the production of a pigmentary matter…”
“That’s no explanation; at the best it is a definition.”
“If we attempt to solve the mystery of the formation of the human being, where will it lead us? …Science holds back, some worthy people, more simple-minded than savants, attribute these little defects to longings. For instance if a child has a strawberry mark on some part of his body, they say his mother had an unsatisfied longing for strawberries during her pregnancy; when another has a mark that looks like a mouse, they say that a mouse frightened his mother before he was born. In your case, married women would say that your mother had a longing for wine…”
“It looks more like blood than wine,” remarked Claude.
“Pooh! blood or wine it is only an old wife’s story…”
“Do you think it wise to make fun of that kind of thing? I have heard it said that popular beliefs often have a grain of truth in them. …Did not you yourself tell me, the day we met an idiot child, that his mother had had a terrible fright before he was born?”
“That is true, I remember.”
“Well, then?”
“The scientist, who makes no assertion without proof, does not, on principle, permit himself to deny anything, and, as we have no positive solution of this phenomenon, I grant you that any explanation is permissible.”
“Ah!” Claude ejaculated, throwing his hat on the table.
His face had grown serious again; he sat down and began to think.
“Let us go out,” said M. Coutelet.
Claude shook his head.
“….And I who thought you so reasonable, and was going to give you such interesting lessons! You really must have a little more sequence in your ideas.”
“You cannot imagine how tremendously they are in sequence,” answered Claude.
“It does not look much like it.”
“That is because you cannot read…nor can anybody for the matter of that…what is going on here,” said he, touching his forehead.
Then, he lay back, his hands shading his eyes.
Now and again his lips moved.
M. Coutelet looked at him, sadly.
“Of what are you thinking?”
“I am thinking,” replied Claude, “that this room, these books, the water that lay at the bottom of the jugs…everything that surrounds us, that we think dead, and which is only pretending…have seen strange happenings perhaps. I must question them again, I am sure they will speak to me. …Besides they have already begun to. …Only nobody must come between us. …When they have given me up their secrets, I will let you know. Oh! it will not take long; now that I am on the right track, two or three days will surely suffice. Look, come here. …Don’t you see? …those papers quivering! …those pages moving?”
“It is the wind,” murmured M. Coutelet, hoarsely.
“The wind? Do you really think so? I know it is their way of showing me they are here. …Listen, did you hear that?”
“The wood of an old piece of furniture cracking.”
Claude shrugged his shoulders.
“No! No! They want to speak to me. Generally these phenomena take place at night only. It must be something very urgent for them to speak like this, in broad daylight.”
M. Coutelet stared at him, utterly amazed: Claude took no notice of his surprise, and, leading him to the door, he murmured with affectionate politeness:
“You will excuse me, won’t you? …But it would rude of me to keep the Spirits waiting, and I think I should be mad not to take advantage of their services…”
“I will leave you,” said M. Coutelet with a sigh.
Claude listened to his retreating footsteps, and holding the curtain aside, watched him depart. When he reached the yard, M. Coutelet beckoned to Mère Chagne. In order to hear what they were saying, Claude went into a little dressing-room, the dormer window of which was wide open, and stood with his ear glued to it, listening:
“How did you find him?” asked the farmer’s wife. “Come, tell me, is he or is he not in his right senses?”
“He is peculiar, undoubtedly,” answered M. Coutelet.
“If there were any likelihood of it going on, Chagne and I would rather leave. The other night he was calling and crying like a child; it made me feel frightened and sorry at the same time. Who knows what he might do at such moments?”
M. Coutelet scratched his head:
“For the time being, I do not think there is any danger. Content yourself with watching him, without letting him see it, and in case of need, let me know. In the meanwhile I am going to send a telegram to M. de Marbois. He will come and decide what shall be done. It is a matter of thirty-six or forty-eight hours’ patience!”
“If that’s the case…very well, otherwise…”
Claude went back into his room, and rubbed his hands:
“Excellent, M. Coutelet.”
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