He paused, and I looked at him inquiringly.
“Well?”
“Well! He left one son, a charmingly dissolute individual, whose sole delight in life was to drink and dance the hours away. A remarkable contrast to his father, as you may imagine! — and herein Dame Nature began her little psychological game of cross-purposes. This fellow, born in Paris and a worshipper of all things Parisian, took to Absinthe in very early manhood, — not that I blame him for that in the least, — because it is really a fascinating hobby! — and afterwards, through some extraordinary freak of the gods, became an actor. Night after night, he painted his face, padded his legs, and strutted the boards, feigning the various common phases of love and villainy in that lowest of all professions, the ape-like art of Mimicry. He, unlike his reverend parent, never troubled himself concerning the deeper questions of life at all; Chaos was his faith, and Nonentity his principle! His stage-appearance, particularly his leg-padding, captivated a dancer, who went by the sobriquet of ‘Fatima — she passed for an Odalisque, but was really the daughter of a Paris washerwoman, — and he was likewise smitten by her abundant char ms, — wild eyes, flowing hair and shapely limbs, — and after a bit the two made up their minds to live together. Marriage of course was not considered a necessity to people of their reputable standing, — it seldom is, in these cases! Love however, or the passion they called by that name, proved much too weak and inadequate a rival to cope with Absinthe, — the ‘green fairy’ had taken a firm hold of our friend the actor’s mind, — and whether his amour had turned his head, or whether the emerald elixir had played him an ill turn I cannot tell you, but for some months after he had taken up his residence with the charming ‘Fatima’ he was the victim of a singular and exceedingly troublesome frenzy. This was neither more nor less than the idea that his ‘chère amie’ was a scaly serpent whose basilisk eyes attracted him in spite of his will, and whose sinuous embraces suffocated him and drove him mad. His behaviour under these curious mental circumstances was excessively irritating, — and finally, after enduring his preposterous eccentricities till her patience (of which she had a very slight stock) was entirely exhausted, la belle Fatima bundled him off to a lunatic asylum, where, finding no sharp instrument convenient to his hand as his father had done before him, he throttled himself with his own desperate fingers. Imagine it! — such a determined method of strangulation must have been a most unpleasant exit!”
A tremor ran through me as he spoke, and I averted my gaze from his.
“It was a most unfortunate affair altogether,” continued Gessonex reflectively— “and I’m afraid it must be set down chiefly to the fault of Absinthe, which though a most delightful and admirable slave, is an exceedingly bad master! Yes! and he mused over this a little to himself— “an exceedingly bad master! If people would only imitate my example, and take all its pleasures without its tyranny, how much wiser and better that would be!”
I forced myself to speak, — to smile.
“The ‘passion verte’ never subdues you, then? You subdue it?”
Our eyes met. A yellowish-red flush crept through the sickly pallor of his skin, but he laughed and gave a careless gesture of indifference.
“Of course! Fancy a man being mastered and controlled by a mere liqueur! The idea is sublimely ridiculous! To complete my story; — this boy here, — this exponent of the Stone Age, — is the child of the absintheur and his serpent,’ — begotten of mania and born of apathy, — the result is sufficiently remarkable! I knew the parents, — also, the sa vaut grand-papa, — and I have always taken a scientific interest in this their only descendant. I think I know now how we can physiologically resolve ourselves back to the primary Brute-period, if we choose, — by living entirely on Absinthe!”
“But are you not a lover of Absinthe?” I queried half playfully. “A positive epicure in the flavour of the green nectar? — Why then, do you judge so ill of its effects?”
He looked at me in the most naïve wonderment.
“My friend, I do not judge ill of its effects! — there you quite mistake me! I say it will help us to recover our brute-natures, — and that is precisely what I most desire! Civilization is a curse, — Morality an enormous hindrance to freedom. Man was born a savage, and he is still happiest in a state of savagery. He has been civilized over and over again, believe me, through immovable cycles of time, — but the savage cannot be gotten out of him, and if allowed to do so, he returns to his pristine condition of lawless liberty with the most astonishing ease! Civilized, we are shackled and bound in a thousand ways when we wish to give the rein to our natural impulses; we should be much more contented in our original state of brutishness and nudity. And contentment is what we want, — and what in our present modes of constrained culture we never get. For example, I am not half as civilized as the slain unit once known as Me, whom I buried, — I told you about that remarkable funeral, did I not? — and as a natural consequence I am much happier! The Me who died was a painfully conscious creature, always striving to do good, — to attain the impossible perfection, — to teach, and love, to help and comfort his fellow-men; — now, there was a frightful absurdity! Yes! that Me was an utter fool! — he painted angels, poetic ideals and visions of ethereal ecstasy — and all the artcritics dubbed him an ass for his pains! And, apropos of art, — as you are here, Beauvais, I want you to see my last work — it’s not a bit of use now, — but it may be worth something a hundred years hence.”
“Is that it?” I inquired, with a movement of my hand towards the headless undraped Venus.
“That! — oh no! That is a mere study of flesh-tints à la Rubens. This is what I call my ‘chef-d’œuvre!’” And springing up from his chair excitedly, he went towards the further end of the room, where the entire wall was covered, with a dark curtain which I had not perceived before, — while, in a sort of automatic imitation of his patron’s movements, the boy with the wild eyes followed him and crouched beside him on the floor, watching him. Slowly, and with a fastidious lingering tenderness, he drew the drapery aside, and at the same time pushed back the blind from an upper window, thus allowing the light to fall fully on the canvas displayed. I stared at it fascinated, yet appalled, — it was so sombrely grounded, that for a moment I could not grasp the meaning of the weird and awful thing. Then it grew upon me by degrees, and I understood the story it told. It was the interior of a vast church or cathedral, gloomy and unillumined save by one or two lamps which were burning low. In front of the altar knelt a priest, his countenance distorted with mingled rage and grief, wrenching open, by the sheer force of his hands, a coffin. Part of the lid, split asunder, showed a woman’s face, still beautiful with a strangely seductive, sensuous beauty, though the artist’s touch had marked the blue disfiguring shadow of death and decay beginning to set in about the eyes, nostrils, and corners of the mouth. Underneath the picture was written in distinct letters painted blood-red— “O Dieu que j’abjure! Rends-moi cette femme!”
A whole life’s torture was expressed in the dark and dreadful scene, — and on me it had a harrowing nervous effect. I thought of Silvion Guidèl, — and my limbs shook under me as I approached to look at it more nearly. The savage child curled up on the floor, fixed its eyes upon me as I came, and pointing to the picture, muttered —
“Joli! Joli! Il meurt! — n’est-ce-pas qu’il meurt?”
Gessonex heard him and laughed.
“Oui chère brute, il meurt! He dies of disappointed passion, as we all die of disappointed something or other, if it only be of a disappointment in one’s powers of breathing. What do you think of it, Beauvais?”
“It is a magnificent work!” I said, and spoke truly.
“It is! — I know it is!” he responded proudly. “But all the same I will starve like a rat in a hole rather than sell it!”
I looked at him in surprise.
“Why?”
“Why? Because I want my name properly advertised when I am dead, — and the only way to get that do
ne royally is to bequeath the picture to France! France, having nothing to pay for it, will be liberal of praise, — and the art-critics knowing my bones cannot profit by what they say, will storm the world with loud eulogium!”
He dropped the curtain over the painting and turned upon me abruptly.
“Tell me, Beauvais, have you tasted absinthe again since that night we met?”
“Of course! Frequently!”
His eyes flashed into mine with a singularly bright and piercing regard. Then he seized my hand and shook it with great fervour.
“That is right! I am glad! Only don’t let the charming fairy master you, Beauvais! — always remember to keep the upper hand, as I do!”
He laughed boisterously and pushed his long matted locks from his temples; of course I knew he was as infatuated a prey to the fatal passion as myself. No one loves Absinthe lukewarmly, but always entirely and absorbingly.
“Come!” he cried presently. “Let us do something amusing! Let us go to the Morgue!”
“To the Morgue!” I echoed, recoiling a little, — I had seen the place once long ago and the sight had sickened me— “Why to the Morgue just now?”
“Because it is dusk, mon ami, — and because the charm of the electric light will give grace to the dead! If you have never been there at this hour, it will be a new experience for you, — really it is a most interesting study to any one of an artistic temperament! I prefer it to the theatre! — pray do not refuse me your company!”
I thought a moment, and then decided I would go with him. He, putting on his hat, turned to the “brute” child.
“Wait till I come back, mon singe!” he said, patting its towzled mane, “Kill rats and eat them if thou wilt, — I have at present nothing else for thee.”
Hearing these words I took out a couple of francs from my pocket and offered them to the boy. For a second he stared as if he could not believe his eyes, — then uttered such an eldritch screech of rapture as made the rafters ring. He kissed the money — then crawled along the floor and kissed my feet, — and finally sprang up and dashed away down the rickety stairs with the speed of a hunted antelope, while Gessonex looking after him, laughed.
“He is a droll little creature!” he said. “Now he will buy no end of things with those two silver coins, — he knows how to bargain so well that he will get double what I should get with the same amount, — moreover the people about here are afraid of his looks and his savage jabbering, and will give him anything to be rid of him. Yet the nature of the animal is such that he will put all his purchases on this table, and sit and glare at the whole menu without touching a morsel till I come back! He is like a dog, fond of me because I feed him, — and in this, though a barbarian, he resembles the rich man’s civilized poor relations!”
XXIV.
WE left the house together and walked through the wretched slum in which it was situated, I looking sharply from right to left to see whether, among the miserable women who were gathered gossiping drearily at different doorways, there was any one like Pauline. But no, — they were all ugly, old, disfigured by illness or wasted by starvation, — and they scarcely glanced at us, though the fantastic Gessonex took the trouble to raise his battered hat to them as he passed, caring nothing for the fact that not one of them, even by way of a jest, returned his salutation. We soon traversed the streets that lay between the quarter we had left and the Morgue, and arrived at the long, low gruesome-looking building just as a covered stretcher was being carried into it. Gessonex touched the stretcher in a pleasantly familiar style.
“Qui va là?” he inquired playfully.
One of the bearers glanced up and grinned.
“Only a boy, m’sieu! — Crushed on the railway.”
“Is that all!” and Gessonex shrugged his shoulders— “Dieu! How uninteresting!”
We entered the dismal dead-house arm-in arm, — the light was not turned full on, and only a pale flicker showed us the awful slab, on which it is the custom for unknown corpses to be laid side by side, with ice cold water dripping and trickling over them from the roof above. There were only two there at the immediate moment, — the crushed boy had to be carried away “pour faire sa toilette” before he could be exposed to public view. And not more than five or six morbid persons besides ourselves were looking with a fascinated inquisitiveness at that couple of rigid forms on the slab, — the emptied receptacles of that mysterious life-principle which comes we know not whence, and goes we know not where. As I have said, the light was very dim, and it was difficult to discern even the outlines of these two corpses, — and Gessonex loudly complained of this inconvenience.
“Sacre bleu! We are not in the catacombs!” he exclaimed. “And when a great artist like myself visits the dead, he expects to see them, — not to be put to the trouble of guessing at their lineaments!”
Those who were present stared, then smiled and seemed to silently agree with this sentiment, — and just then a sedate official-looking personage made his sudden appearance from a side-door, and recognizing Gessonex, bowed politely.
“Pardon, m’sieu!” said this individual— “The light shall be turned on instantly. The spectators are not many!” This apologetically.
Gessonex laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Ha! Thou art the man of little economies, mon ami!” he said. “Thou dost grudge even the dead their last lantern on the road to Styx! Didst never hear of the Styx? — no matter! Come, come, — light up! It may be we shall recognize acquaintances in yonder agreeably speechless personages, — one of them looks, in this dim twilight, amazingly massive, — a positively herculean monster!”
The official smiled.
“A monster truly! That body was found in the river two days ago, and m’sieu is perhaps aware that the water distends a corpse somewhat unpleasantly.”
With these words and an affable nod he disappeared, — and something — I know not what, caused me to carelessly hum a tune, as I pressed my face against the glass screen, and peered in at the death-slab before me. Suddenly the light flashed up with a white glare, — hot, brilliant, and dazzling, and for a moment I saw nothing. But I heard Gessonex saying —
“The old lady is prettier than the young man in this case, Beauvais! Death by poison is evidently more soothing to the muscles than death by drowning!”
I looked, — and gradually my aching sense of vision took in the scene. — The first corpse, the one nearest to me, was that of the woman of whom Gessonex spoke; — some one standing close by began detailing her wretched history, — how she had, in a fit of madness, killed herself by eating rat-poison. Her features were quite placid — the poor old withered body was decently composed and rigid, and the little drops of trickling water rolled off her parched skin like pearls. But that other thing that lay there a little apart, — that other dark, livid, twisted mass, — was it, could it be all that was mortal of a man?
“What is that?” I asked, pointing at it, a little vaguely no doubt, for my head throbbed, and I was conscious of a peculiar straining, choking sensation in my throat that rendered speech difficult.
“‘That’ was a man, but is so no longer!” returned Gessonex lightly. “He is now an It, — and as an It is remarkably hideous! — so hideous that I am quite fascinated! I really must have a closer look at death’s handiwork this time, — come, Beauvais! — M. Jéteaux knows me very well, and will let us pass inside.”
M. Jéteaux turned out to be the official personage who had previously spoken to us, — and on Gessonex stating that he wanted to make a sketch of that drowned man, but that from outside the glass screen he could not see the features properly, we were very readily allowed to enter.
“Only that the face is hardly a face at all,” said M. Jéteaux with affable indifference. “One can scarcely make out its right lineaments. The oddest thing about this particular corpse is that the eyes have not been destroyed. It must have been floating to and fro in the water three days if not more, and it has been here
two, — but the eyes are like stone and remain almost uninjured.”
Thus speaking, he accompanied us close up to the marble slab, and the full view of the dead creature loomed darkly upon us. The sight was so ghastly that for a moment the careless Gessonex himself was startled, — while I, — I staggered backward slightly, overcome by a reeling sense of nausea. Ugh! — those blue, swollen, contorted limbs! — It had been impossible to straighten them, so said the imperturbable M. Jéteaux, — in fact a “toilette” for this twisted personage had been completely beyond the skill of the valêts of the Morgue. I mastered the sick fear and abhorrence that threatened to unsteady my nerves, — and came up, out of sheer bravado, as closely as I could to the detestable thing, — I saw its face, all horribly distended, — its blue lips which were parted widely in a sort of ferocious smile, — its great protruding eyes, — God! — I could hardly save myself from uttering a shriek as the man Jéteaux, desirous of being civil to Gessonex, lifted the unnaturally swollen head into an upright position, and those stony yet wet-glistening eyes stared vacantly at me out of their purple sockets! I knew them! — truth to tell I had known this repulsive corpse all the time if I had only dared to admit as much to myself! And if I had had any doubts as to its identity, those doubts would have been dispelled by that straight scar on the left temple, which, as the drenched hair was completely thrown back from the forehead, was distinctly visible. Yes! — all that was mortal of Silvion Guidèl lay there before me, within touch of my hand, — I the murderer stood by the side of the murdered! — and as far as I could control myself, I showed no sign of guilt or horror. But there was a loud singing and roaring about me like the noise of an angry river rising into flood, — my brain was giddy, — and I kept my gaze pertinaciously fixed on the body out of sheer inability to move a muscle or to utter a word. The cool business-like voice of M. Jéteaux close at my ear, startled me horribly though, and nearly threw me off my guard.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 227