The Devil’s Laughter

by Frank Yerby

  Jean clenched his fist. I could rebuild it, he thought grimly, I could make it like new.

  But he could not, and he knew it. Physically, it could be done; the house had been so well built as to resist fire and the weathering of two long years; but it could never be the same again. All things it had held could be duplicated, perhaps, in outward form, but how again to give them that look of having been treasured, tenderly touched, beloved of his sainted mother, of his sister, of his father? And some could never be restored—the curios brought by sailors from far lands as gifts to Henri Marin, the pieces his mother had embroidered with her own delicate fingers—gone, all gone, become ghosts of the love and skill that had gone into their making.

  ‘Tis well that they cannot, Jean mused; for were I to see these mementos of my youth again, I doubt me that I could bear them.

  He turned away from the blackened walls, the piles of rubble, forcing his way through paths, dim-traced now, overgrown with bush and weed, and remounted; but he did not return to his inn at Marseilles. He rode on, through the great port, until he came at dawn to another ruin—the little château that had been the home of Nicole and Julien Lamont.

  It had fared worse than Villa Marin. Only the part of one wall stood, and the overgrowth was thicker. In the dawn stillness birds twittered, flying through the gaping windows, and the hand of death lay heavy upon Jean Paul’s heart.

  He got down stiffly and approached it, but he knew as he came on that he would find nothing, because there was nothing left. He circled the one remaining half wall, and as he did so a goat bleated, shattering the silence.

  Someone had built a lean-to against the wall, and at the sound of the goat’s bleat a woman pushed aside the curtain and gazed at him with ancient, rheumy eyes. She seemed older than death itself, than even life. Wisps of white hair straggled down to her thin shoulders, her face was a map of age and sorrow.

  “Who be ye?” she croaked; then, in the same breath: “Off with ye, now, afore I loose the dogs!”

  “Wait,” Jean said pleasantly; “I want only some tidings of the people who lived in this house.”

  He could see her expression soften.

  “Were they friends of yours?” she demanded.

  “The lady, yes—I did not know his lordship,” Jean answered truthfully.

  “Then I’ll tell ye,” the ancient hag whispered, “because my lady were an angel.”

  “You have right,” Jean murmured; “tell me of her.”

  “She lies over there,” the old woman said, and pointed. “Would ye see her grave?”

  Jean’s lips moved, but nothing came out of them. Grimly he nodded his head.

  “Come with me, young man,” the old woman said.

  He stood with her beside the three little mounds, levelled almost by the rains, one a little longer than the other two, without headstones, markers, anything—three mounds of grassy earth, hiding his dreams, his hopes, all, in fact, that was left of his life.

  But he could not accept it. Something deep, insistent, mounted within his heart and cried out against it.

  “Did you see them buried?” he demanded harshly.

  “Nay, not I. I was hiding—or else I would know aught of my poor Marie.”

  Jean probed into his memory and came up with a picture. Plump Marie, Nicole’s maidservant, with her rosy, cheerful face, and hair of the same shade as the la Moytes’; there had been rumours that a closer relationship existed between them than mistress and maid.

  “Your daughter?” he said; “she was never found?”

  “Why else do ye think I tarry in that haunted ruin,” the old woman quavered, “save in hope that one day she may come back to me? Ah, but she is fled . . . far fled, from fear of those devils!”

  “You did not see them buried,” Jean said softly. “My thanks, good woman.” He pressed a gold coin into her hand and went back to his horse.

  An hour later he was back again with three stout fellows armed with picks and spades. He stood there and watched, his whole soul crying out against this desecration; but he had to know. He had lived too long with uncertainty; he had to know.

  Then, finally, he looked down upon horror. The skeleton was that of a small woman, dressed in a dress of silk whose pattern he recognised instantly, remembering it with sickening clarity, as he remembered everything about Nicole. The skull had been crushed with a blunt instrument—a spade, perhaps, but a few wisps of pale gold clung to it and gleamed with persistent life in the sunlight. . . .

  He knew now. There was no mistake and no hope.

  He commanded the grave-diggers to take away the three pitiful heaps of bones back to his warehouse, wrapped tenderly in soft cloths. And he did not leave the Côte until a magnificent tomb of marble had been built, and the three, the woman and the two children, had been laid to rest once more in lead-lined coffins against the cold and the wet.

  When, at long last, he rode away northward towards Paris, it seemed to Jean Paul Marin that he had left the major portion of his heart entombed with them, lying there.

  13

  As he looked in the mirror that morning of March 24, 1792, Jean Paul Marin looked into the face of a stranger. The hair above the temples was white now, and a snowy lock waved backward across the crown of his head, startling against the inky blackness of the rest of his hair. His face was thinner, and imperceptibly the great scar had softened so that in repose his face had grown strangely gentle.

  But the greatest change of all was in his eyes. They were as great and dark and sombre as always, but some of the bitterness, some of the mockery, had gone out of them, and what was left was—peace. . . .

  Life does this to a man, he thought, as he picked up his razor and tested the water that the innkeeper’s lackey had brought him. Life never brings a man what he wants, and seldom what he expects, but in the flux of time all things run together finally, and one learns acceptance.

  I tormented myself for months with the knowledge that Nicole is really dead; but ‘tis a good thing—the certainty of that knowledge. . . . She is dead and at peace, fled from a world too gross for angels . . . and I am left alone to put together the pieces of my life again. But no longer a rebel. They called me a philosopher when I was young, but I was not. I was one of God’s angry men, big with a sense of justice, mad to right all wrongs—how strange that seems now. For if there is any one apparent fact in the universe, it is that we are but playthings of the cosmos, and God, if there is a God, concerned with us little—if at all. . . .

  He picked up the razor and began to scrape the pepper and salt stubble from his lean jaw.

  Vanity of vanities, he mocked laughingly, to think there should be such a thing as justice. When another two-legged insect dies, what boots it if he deserved or merited not his fate? And the strangest thing of all is I can think these things now without bitterness, with a kind of tenderness that embraces all the other pitiful victims of chance and circumstance who crawl like me over the surface of this world. Truly, my brothers, whom I can only love and pity—and never hate, nor appoint myself judge or executioner, since certainly I am not God. . . .

  I have betrayed, and been betrayed, and of the two it was better to be the victim, for to suffer a thing takes less from man’s dignity than to do it. And Lucienne’s flight robbed me of what I was better without, of what would have destroyed me, finally. What remains then? Peace, I think—acceptance. Those, and Jean Paul Marin, a person at last, a man living, breathing, enduring, surviving, undefeated in the end, because what one accepts can never truly degrade one. Believe that men are thieves, liars, cheats, monsters of hatred, deceit and vanity, and you are half right; believe that the same men at the same time are good, or would be if they could, and love them if one can, pity them if one cannot love, and hate them never, and one has won, I think, his battle.

  He looked out of the window at the fine lemon-yellow coach that awaited him. Is it, he mused, because I have never truly lacked this world’s goods that I set so little store by them?
Six ships now, plying between here and the Antilles, facteurs in New Orleans and Fort de France, more money made in one month than even my father gained in a year. He would be proud of me, I think; but ‘twas your doing, my father. Such an empire could not have been built in half a year without the foundation of thirty years’ labour that you laid for me. Your name is the magic that opens all doors to me.

  He finished his dressing and the manservant came with the coffee and brioche. He drank the scalding black liquid slowly, leaving the brioche untouched as usual. Then a few deft touches again to his hair and clothing, and down the stairs, following the sweating servant who bore his bags to the coach.

  Paris again after so many long months. What would it be like now? The same really. My friends, the Feuillants, gone from power. A new group rising, the Girondist—a splinter faction of the Jacobin club, led by a pastry-cook’s son named Brissot, opposed to Robespierre et al—a fine falling-out of thieves.

  Clavière, at whose home Mirabeau and I used to meet, Clavière who invented assignats and wrecked the economy of France thereby, in the ministry, along with this new man Roland, of whom Pierre writes nothing but that he has a stunning wife. Everyone seems taken with this young Madame Roland—Pierre frequents her salon, as does practically everyone else, no matter what his politics.

  Danton, Procureur Substitut of Paris! A dangerous thing, I think, what with Petion as Mayor, and Manuel as Procureur Général—neither of them strong enough to stand against Danton. . . . The more it changes— Yet life goes on, civil strife and domiciliary visits, murder and pillage, but it goes just the same. . . .

  And Fleurette there, waiting. That’s the crux of the matter, the point I’ve been avoiding so long. Do I love her? I don’t know; that is not perhaps the question. Am I capable of love any more? Is any man of my age, having had my experiences, capable of it? Her blindness—nothing, and less than nothing, an advantage really, since my ugliness cannot disturb her. But herein lies the doubt that I can bring her the goodness and the patience that she needs, the gentleness and the understanding. . . .

  He looked out of the window of his coach, at poplars spinning backward along the road. Soon, now, soon. What is love, anyway? That madness, that delirium, I had with Lucienne? That searing of the flesh, body-fusion, life-destroying annihilation of ecstasy? That thing of the flesh, too much of the flesh, good, perfect, a fine art, a death struggle, but lacking always something. . . . What? Tenderness, faith, mutual respect.

  Because betrayal had got into it; because the tears I shed over her were less tears of loss than of sorrow at the destruction of love’s own integrity. I wept, I think, less over Lucienne than over the loss of the last, the most dearly cherished illusion—that love is true and will not betray the beloved, no matter what the provocation. But love is but one attribute of man, and man is never true—he merely longs to be. . . .

  Strange. I loved Lucienue more than I love Fleurette, and less. I want to keep and cherish Fleurette, I think; I wanted merely to possess Lucienne. . . .

  And with Nicole, it was perfect, largely, I know now, because it had no time to become less than perfect. But it would have. Life dulls all things, destroys all things eventually, batters down our youth into age, our strength into fatigue, our hope into hopelessness, until we finally come to accept death—nay to welcome it. . . .

  So wait, my love, my little lost love in your eternal darkness, for I shall come to you now. I shall smile and be tender, and pray God you never find out how little there is of me left alive to feel love on joy. But what I have left is yours, all yours; and by this kindness—for it is that, too, and more than that—I shall atone a little for evils I have brought upon my country and my fellows. . . .

  He rode into Paris early in the afternoon, and stopped at once at a jeweller’s. There he bought the two rings, one with a great diamond, to plight the troth, and the other a circle of heavy gold for the wedding. Then he drove at once to her lodgings.

  She was not there, but across the hall, visiting, as usual, Marianne. The two of them went less frequently now to the business; it had grown so much that they had been forced to delegate their duties, and, having trained competent help, all of them, including Pierre, had more leisure.

  Marianne had no need to announce him. Fleurette stood up at his step, and flew towards him, her face radiant with joy.

  “Come walk with me, Fleurette,” Jean said; “there’s a thing I would say to you.”

  “Can’t you say it here?” Fleurette breathed; “I have no secrets from Marianne.”

  “It doesn’t need words, really,” Jean smiled. “Give me your hand. . . .”

  Wonderingly, Fleurette stretched it out to him.

  “Not that one,” Jean said; “the other. . . .”

  She gave him her left hand, and he slipped the ring on her finger, closing his hand over it, so that it took her a moment or two to free it and touch the stone with her finger-tips.

  She turned slowly towards Marianne, stretching her hand out. The light caught the great stone, so that it blazed. Marianne stared at it, choked, and two big tears squeezed out of the corners of her eyes.

  “What on earth—?” Jean began in pure astonishment.

  “Oh, kiss her, you great fool!” Marianne snapped at him; “what the devil are you waiting for?”

  Fleurette went up on tiptoe and brushed his mouth, so lightly and so quickly that he was scarcely aware of it before it was gone; but the next instant she had fallen into Marianne’s arms, and the two of them clung together, sobbing as though their hearts were entirely broken.

  “What did I do?” Jean asked wonderingly; “I’m sure I had no intention of—”

  “Oh, shut up, Jean Marin!” Marianne sobbed; “don’t you know that all women cry when they’re happy?”

  “Well, I’ll be blessed!” Jean said, and took a step towards the door; but at that moment Pierre came out of the inner room. He took his pipe out of his mouth and stared at his wife and Fleurette.

  “Now what have you done to them?” he growled at Jean.

  “Oh, I’ve insulted them terribly,” Jean grinned; “I merely asked Fleurette to marry me.”

  “Sacré bleu!” Pierre roared, and gathered Jean to him in a bear hug; “this calls for wine—lots of wine, all the blessed wine in the whole blessed world!”

  He disappeared, but came back instantly on the run, decanters and glasses filling his arms.

  “Drink up, my doves!” he bellowed. “Morbleu, how long have I waited for this day!”

  “When is it to be, Jean?” Marianne asked.

  “As soon as possible—tomorrow if I can arrange it.”

  “Oh no, you don’t!” Marianne cried; “how on earth do you think I could make a wedding dress by tomorrow? It’s got to be of the finest, heaviest white silk you ever saw—I’ve got just the material at the shop—and with little seed pearls all over it. As for the veil—tomorrow, hah! You can get married in two weeks, Jean Mann—no, three. Now, as I was saying about the veil . . .”

  Jean stood there, staring at the two women with an expression of near-stupefaction on his face. Pierre came up to him and took his arm.

  “Let’s go for a walk;” he laughed. “You and I are entirely superfluous here now, and we shall be for quite some time. Come. . . .”

  Jean went over to Fleurette and kissed her, quickly.

  “Fleurette—” he began.

  “Oh, go with Pierre, my dearest,” she laughed. “Marianne and I have a thousand things to do now.”

  “Regard,” Pierre chuckled, as they were going down the stairs, “you are a man of experience, but you know nothing of women, really—of good women, anyhow, the kind men marry.”

  “I am beginning to believe you’re right,” Jean said ruefully.

  “I am right. Let’s go over to Charpentier’s for a glass, and we can talk in the meantime. Your experience has been one-sided—all of it with mistresses and none of it with wives.”

  “There is a difference?”
Jean said. “Apart from the legality of the thing, I don’t see . . .”

  “There is a difference. A wife and a mistress are two different breeds entirely. Being a wife is a state of mind. And I’ll anticipate your next point by admitting that a woman can be one man’s wife and another’s mistress, and still the same thing holds true.”

  “I don’t see . . .”

  “You never see! Shut up and listen. I should charge you money for this lesson. To begin with, a husband is always a mere accessory after the fact, no matter how dearly his wife loves him; he makes possible the tremendous dramas of which his bride is the heroine: the beautiful, beautiful ceremony of marriage in which she can wear a gown like moonlight and mist, become for an hour, a day, a queen; and afterwards he also makes possible the even more stupendous drama of birth, and maternity.

  “Believe me, mon vieux, if the women could manage either of those things without the troublesome presence of the man, they would! We are, my friend, but means to an end, never the end itself.”

  “And afterwards?” Jean smiled.

  “We are the ones who bring the necessary money to support the home, making it possible for our child-brides to go on playing house with living dolls made in their own images, wonderful sops to their vanity, allowing them to say: Behold what I have made! Behold, for this I knew agony, descended almost unto death itself; and you, you great lout? An hour’s pleasure—and no suffering! Verily, my Jean, I believe God made wives to teach a man a proper sense of humility!”

  Jean laughed aloud.

  “This table?” he said; “good! Then how do mistresses differ?”

  “Greatly,” Pierre said, signalling to the garçon to bring wine; “in the first place, a mistress is stupid. . . .”

  “Hardly,” Jean objected, thinking of Lucienne.