“I kept the appointment that same night, Bérangère.”
“You came that night?” she asked, surprised.
“Of course I did; and at the door of the inn I was met by a small boy, sent by you, who took me to the island and to Velmot’s house and to a room in which Velmot locked me up and from which, on the following day, I witnessed Théodore Massignac’s torture and removal. My dear Bérangère, it wasn’t very clever of you!”
She seemed stupefied and said: “I sent no boy. I never left the Blue Lion and I waited for you that night and all the morning. Somebody must have given us away: I can’t think who.”
“It’s a simple enough mystery,” I said, laughing. “Velmot no doubt had a crony of some sort in the inn, who told him of your telephone-call. Then he must have sent that boy, who was in his pay, to pick me up on my way to you.”
“But why lay a trap for you and not for me?”
“Very likely he was waiting till next day to capture you. Very likely he was more afraid of me and wanted to seize the opportunity to keep me under lock and key until Massignac had spoken. Also no doubt he was obeying motives and yielding to necessities of which we shall never know and which moreover do not really matter. The fact remains, Bérangère, that, next day . . .”
“Next day,” she resumed, “I managed to find a boat and in the evening, to row round the island to the place where my father was dying. I was able to save him.”
I in my turn was bewildered:
“What, it was you who saved him? You succeeded in landing, in finding Velmot in the dark, in hitting him just as he was turning on me? It was you who stopped him? It was you who set Massignac free?”
I took her little hand and kissed it with emotion. The dear girl! She also had done all she could to protect Noël Dorgeroux’s secret; and with what courage, with what undaunted pluck, risking death twenty times over and not recoiling, at the great hour of danger, from the terrible act of taking life!
“You must tell me all this in detail, Bérangère. Go on with your story. Where did you take your father to?”
“To the river bank; and from there, in a market-gardener’s cart, to the Château de Pré-Bony, where I nursed him.”
“And Velmot?”
She gave a shudder:
“I did not see him again for days and days, not until this morning. I was sitting on the bench by the ruins, reading. Suddenly he stood before me. I tried to run away. He prevented me and said, ‘Your father is dead. I have come to you from him. Listen!’ I distrusted him but he went on to say, ‘I swear I come from him; and, to prove it, he told me that you knew the formula. He confided it to you during his illness.’ This was true. While I was nursing my father, in this very lodge, he said to me one day, ‘I can’t tell what may happen, Bérangère. It is possible that I shall destroy the screen at Meudon, out of revenge. It will be a mistake. In any case, I want to undo that act of madness beforehand.’ He then made me learn the formula by heart. And this was a thing which no one except my father and myself could know, because I was alone with him and kept the secret. Velmot, consequently, was speaking the truth.”
“What did you say?”
“I just said, ‘Well?’ Velmot said, ‘His last wish was that you should give me the formula.’ ‘Never!’ I said. ‘You lie! My father made me swear never to reveal it to any one, whatever happened, except to one person.’ He shrugged his shoulders: ‘Victorien Beaugrand, I suppose?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Victorien Beaugrand heard Massignac’s last words. And he agrees with me, or at least is on the point of doing so.’ ‘I refuse to believe it!’ ‘Ask him for yourself. He’s up there, in the ruins . . .’”
“I, in the ruins?”
“That’s what he said: ‘In the ruins, fastened to the foot of a tree. His life depends on you. I offer it to you in exchange for the formula. If not, he’s a dead man.’ I did not suspect the trap which he was laying for me. I ran towards the ruins as fast as I could. This was what Velmot wanted. The ruins was a deserted spot, which gave him the chance to attack me. He took it at once, without even trying to conceal his falsehood. ‘Caught, baby!’ he cried, throwing me to the ground. ‘Oh, I knew you’d be sure to come! Only think, it’s your lover, it’s the man you love! For you do love him, don’t you?’ Evidently his only object was to obtain the secret from me by threats and blows. But what happened was that his rage against you and my hatred and loathing for him made him lose his head. First of all he wanted his revenge. He had me in his arms. Oh, the villain!”
She once more hid her face in her hands. She was very feverish; and I heard her stammering:
“The villain! . . . I don’t know how I got away from him. I was worn out. For all that, I managed to give him a savage bite and to release myself. He ran after me, brandishing his revolver; but just as he caught me up, he fell and let go of it. I picked it up at once. When he came after me again, I fired. . . .”
She was silent. The painful story had exhausted her. Her face retained an expression of bewilderment and fright.
“My poor Bérangère,” I said, “I have done you a great wrong. I have often, far too often, accused you in my heart, without guessing what a wonderful, plucky creature you were.”
“You could not be expected to understand me.”
“Why not?”
She murmured sadly:
“I am Massignac’s daughter.”
“No more of that!” I cried. “You are the one who always sacrificed herself and who always took the risk. And you are also the girl I love, Bérangère, the girl who gave me all her life and all her soul in a kiss. Remember Bérangère . . . the other day in the Yard, when I found you again and when the sight of all those visions of love threw you in my arms. . . .”
“I have forgotten nothing,” she said, “and I never shall forget.”
“Then you consent?”
Once again she repeated:
“I am Massignac’s daughter.”
“Is that the only reason why you refuse me?”
“Can you doubt it?”
I allowed a moment to pass and said:
“So that, if your fate had willed it that you were not Massignac’s daughter, you would have consented to be my wife?”
“Yes,” she said, gravely.
The hour had come to speak; and how happy was I to be able to do so. I repeated my sentence:
“If fate had willed that you were not Massignac’s daughter. . . . Bérangère, did it never occur to you to wonder why there was so little affection between Massignac and you, why, on the contrary, there was so much indifference? When you were a child, the thought of going back to him and living with him used to upset you terribly. All your life was wrapped up in the Yard. All your love went out to Noël Dorgeroux. Don’t you think, when all is said, that we are entitled to interpret your girlish feelings and instincts in a special sense?”
She looked at me in surprise:
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“You don’t understand, because you have never thought about these things. For instance, is it natural that the death of the man whom you called your father should give you such an impression of deliverance and relief?”
She seemed dazed:
“Why do you say, the man whom I called my father?”
“Well,” I replied, smiling, “I have never seen your birth-certificate. And, as I have no proof of a fact which seems to me improbable . . .”
“But,” she said, in a changed voice, “you have not the least proof either that it is not so. . . .”
“Perhaps I have,” I answered.
“Oh,” said Bérangère, “it would be too terrible to say that and not to let me learn the truth at once!”
“Do you know Massignac’s writing?”
I took a letter from my pocket and handed it to her:
“Read this, my darling. It is a letter which Massignac wrote to me and which he handed to me as he lay dying. I read only the first few words to begin with and at once went off in s
earch of you. Read it, Bérangère, and have no doubts: it is the evidence of a dead man.”
She took the letter and read aloud:
“Bérangère knows the formula and must not communicate it to any one except you alone, Victorien. You will marry her, will you not? She is not my daughter, but Noël Dorgeroux’s. She was born five months after my marriage, as you can confirm by consulting the public records. Forgive me, both of you, and pray for me.”
A long pause followed. Bérangère was weeping tears of joy. A radiant light was being thrown on her whole life. The awful weight that had bowed her down in shame and despair no longer bore upon her shoulders. She was at last able to breathe and hold her head high and look straight before her and accept her share of happiness and love. She whispered:
“Is it possible? Noël Dorgeroux’s daughter? Is it possible?”
“It is possible,” I said, “and it is certain. After his rightful struggle with Velmot and after the care which you bestowed upon him once you had saved him, Massignac repented. Thinking of the day of his death, he tried to atone for a part of his crimes and wrote you that letter . . . which evidently possesses no legal value, but which you and I will accept as the truth. You are the daughter of Noël Dorgeroux, Bérangère, of the man whom you always loved as a father . . . and who wanted us to be married. Will you dream of disobeying his wishes, Bérangère? Do you not think that it is our duty to join forces and together to complete his enterprise? You know the indispensable formula. By publishing it, we shall make Noël Dorgeroux’s wonderful life-work endure for ever. Do you consent, Bérangère?”
She did not reply at once; and, when I again tried to convince her, I saw that she was listening with an absent expression, in which I was surprised to find a certain anxiety:
“What is it, darling? You accept, do you not?”
“Yes, yes,” she said, “but, before everything I must try to jog my memory. Only think! How careless of me not to have written the formula down! Certainly, I know it by heart. But, all the same . . .”
She thought for a long time, screwing up her forehead and moving her lips. Suddenly she said:
“A paper and pencil . . . quickly. . . .”
I handed her a writing-block. Swiftly, with a trembling hand, she jotted down a few figures. Then she stopped and looked at me with eyes full of anguish.
I understood the effort which she had made and, to calm her, said:
“Don’t rack your brains now . . . it’ll come later. . . . What you need to-day is rest. Go to sleep, my darling.”
“I must find it . . . at all costs. . . . I must. . . .”
“You’ll find it some other time. You are tired now and excited. Rest yourself.”
She did as I said and ended by falling asleep. But an hour after, she woke up, took the sheet of paper again and, in a moment or two, stammered:
“This is dreadful! My brain refuses to work! Oh, but it hurts, it hurts! . . .”
The night was spent in these vain attempts. Her fever increased. Next day she was delirious and kept on muttering letters and figures which were never the same.
For a week, her life was despaired of. She suffered horribly with her head and wore herself out scribbling lines on her bed clothes.
When she became convalescent and had recovered her consciousness, we avoided the subject and did not refer to it for some time. But I felt that she never ceased to think of it and that she continued to seek the formula. At last, one day, she said with tears in her eyes:
“I have given up all hopes, dear. I repeated that formula a hundred times after I had learnt it; and I felt sure of my memory. But not a single recollection of it remains. It must have been when Velmot was clutching my throat. Everything grew dark, suddenly. I know now that I shall never remember.”
She never did remember. The exhibitions at the Yard were not resumed. The miraculous visions did not reappear.
And yet what investigations were pursued! How many companies have been promoted which attempted to exploit the lost secret! But all in vain: the screen remained lifeless and empty, like a blind man’s eyes.
To Bérangère and me it would have meant a sorrow incessantly renewed, if love had not brought us peace and consolation in all things. The authorities, who showed themselves fairly easy-going, I think, in this case, never found any traces of the woman who bore the name of Massignac. I was dispatched on a mission to the Far East. I sent out for her; and we were married without attracting attention.
We often speak of Noël Dorgeroux’s great secret; and if Bérangère’s lovely eyes become clouded with sadness:
“Certainly,” I say, “the lost secret was a wonderful thing. There was never anything more thrilling than the Meudon pictures; and those which we had a right to expect might have opened up horizons which we are not able to conceive. But are you quite sure that we ought to regret them? Does a knowledge of the past and the future spell happiness for mankind? Is it not rather an essential law of our equilibrium that we should be obliged to live within the narrow confines of the present and to see before or behind us no more than lights which are still just glimmering and lights which are being faintly kindled? Our knowledge is adjusted to our strength; and it is not good to learn and to decipher too quickly truths to which we have not had time to adapt our existence and riddles which we do not yet deserve to know.”
Benjamin Prévotelle made no attempt to conceal his disappointment. I keep up a regular correspondence with him. In every letter that I receive from this great scientist I anticipate his anxious question:
“Does she remember? May we hope?”
Alas, my answers leave him no illusions:
“Bérangère remembers nothing. You must not hope.”
He consoles himself by waging a fierce contest with those who still deny any value to his theory; and it must be confessed that, now that the screen has been destroyed and it has become impossible to support that theory by proofs which are in any way material, the number of his adversaries has increased and that they propound objections which Benjamin Prévotelle must find it extremely difficult to refute. But he has every sincere and unprejudiced person on his side.
He likewise has the great public. We all know, of our reasoned conviction, and we all believe, out of our impulse of ardent faith, that, though we now receive no communications from our brothers in Venus, they, those beings with the Three Eyes, are still interesting themselves in us with the same fervour, the same watchfulness, the same impassioned curiosity. Looking down upon us, they follow our every action, they observe us, study us and pity us, they count our misfortunes and our wounds and perhaps also they envy us, when they witness our joys and when, in some secret place, they surprise a man and a maid, with love-laden eyes, whose lips unite in a kiss.
THE END
The Tremendous Event
Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
First published in France in 1920, this novel appeared in English in New York in 1922, published by the Macaulay Company. It revolves around a topical theme – the links between Britain and the continent either via sea or a tunnel. In 1919, the idea of a channel tunnel to take rail passengers was being seriously debated by British ministers and government departments. At the Versailles Conference of January 1919, Prime Minister Lloyd George raised the possibility of a tunnel to reassure the French that Britain was still willing to defend her neighbour across the Channel. By November of that year, the British cabinet had decided in principle in favour of a tunnel, so long as no threat to national security could be determined. Others raised a variety of objections, based on cost, foreign policy, the dangers of increased immigration and national security. Former Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, cited mysterious and as yet unidentified threats, stating a tunnel would ‘put an end to our position as an island power.’ Bearing in mind the prevalence of this issue in the press on both sides of the Channel, it is no surprise that the Channel Tunnel features in this story, which has a somewhat ‘disaster movie’ feel to i
t.
The Tremendous Event is the story of Simon Dubosc, an athletic, charming and pleasant young man, who as the narrative opens is situated in Brighton discussing the disturbing events occurring in the English Channel. Fishing vessels are being ‘swallowed’ up by the sea after a violent disturbance in the water. Worse still, the transatlantic liner Brabant with 2,000 people on board, has met the same fate, with no survivors found. His English friend, Rolleston, is about to cross the channel to Dieppe to interview a crew for his yacht. Meanwhile, Dubosc will stay in England as he intends to ask Lord Bakefield for the hand of his daughter in marriage — the stunning Isabel, with whom he is deeply in love. This he does and is not rebuffed, but is told he must prove himself worthy of Isabel’s hand within a few weeks if he is to marry her.
Meanwhile, another vessel disappears in the Channel and passengers are now refusing to board cross channel ferries. Worse still, the Channel Tunnel, on which millions of pounds have been spent, has collapsed, although thankfully with no loss of life.
Simon and Isabella decide to brave the crossing, despite strange happenings in the sea directly on their route. It was a mistake – they are caught in one of the phenomena that have caused so much destruction already, but are thankfully rescued by another vessel. However, as the rescue vessel comes within sight of the sea front of Dieppe, an astonishing and alarming sight reveals itself, one of destruction caused by an earthquake. Living through these events has taken its toll on Isabella and she is racked by the guilt of the survivor when whole families were lost at sea; leaving behind a letter for Simon, she departs, boarding Edward Rolleston’s yacht to return to her father’s home. Soon after, nature takes a turn for the worst… Huge storms and earthquakes threaten the redoubtable Simon, who is embarking upon a surprising adventure to uncover the truth behind the dramatic events…
Delphi Collected Works of Maurice Leblanc (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Nine Book 17) Page 364