She scarcely resented it. She shrugged her shoulders, and casting a look of pity on him, walked away.... They went through the corridor which had previously been traversed by Rouletabille. At the iron gate she stopped to open it.
Then Jean said:
“I know Odette. She loves me. Even you cannot doubt that. You came upon us exchanging a kiss in the cell. When one kisses like that it means that love will last for life.”
“Odette is still alive and she is being married,” retorted Callista harshly.
“She was undoubtedly forced into it. They must have threatened her with something or other horrible, and perhaps you can tell me what it was. I am not blaming Odette. She is a child and too young to suffer.”
“That’s the very word: she is a child,” said Callista. “An honest child, in my opinion, but a child who doesn’t know her own mind. She began by falling in love with de Lauriac, then she transferred her affections to you, then she had a sort of fancy for Rouletabille, then she came back to you again, and finally she has made up her mind to marry de Lauriac her first love.”
“You will never make me doubt her,” returned Jean, though Callista’s last words made him greatly suffer. “If she marries de Lauriac it will break my heart, but I shall forgive her because they are forcing her to marry a man whom she detests.”
“Pah! It doesn’t look much like it,” said Callista in a bitterly sarcastic tone. “Of course I don’t suggest that she is marrying him with enthusiasm, but, after all, she is allowing herself to be led to the altar without reluctance by the handsome herdsman who captured her fancy as a young girl.”
“You wretch!”
“I don’t mind your insults. I accept all you say to me in good part. I am not like Odette. I have loved one man in my life; no other man has ever been anything to me, and if I were threatened with the worst tortures I should submit to them with joy rather than marry any other man.... And now calm yourself. I have nothing more to say. You have only to keep your eyes open. You will see things for yourself.” —
They had reached the narrow spiral staircase by which Rouletabille, a few days earlier, had descended to the underground part of the Palace, and Jean mounted them, after Callista, a prey to a thousand fresh torments.
He entered the temple just as the queyra, at last making her appearance, was being greeted by deafening applause.
The Council of Elders stood up, and the Patriarch, taking her hand, conducted her to the ivory throne over which a magnificent canopy had been erected. Odette walked like an automaton, allowing herself to be guided unresistingly. She stood there as though in the centre of a splendid cloud. The entire audience shouted joyfully: “The queyra! The queyra!” At the foot of the throne a bevy of young girls sat clad in white. A hymn was sung in which all took part. Then a great silence fell and a door in the apse opened, and de Lauriac came in dressed in a simple tunic but wearing the priceless royal chain.
He was uncovered, and the expression of his countenance was severe and almost fierce. He was passing through the most dramatic period of his life. In a few minutes Odette would be his and he would wear a crown. But at that supreme crisis he could not forget the strange fate which had flung him from one extreme to the other, and cast him down when, as he thought, he was in sight of the goal; and under an appearance of tremendous dignity, under the knitted brows of a fighter ever ready to confront the enemy, he concealed a feeling of unutterable anguish.
Such as he was, he appealed to the gipsies who greeted him also with applause as their ruler. As the Patriarch had led Odette to the throne, so the Chief led de Lauriac to his place. He was taken to a marble seat similar to those which were set aside for the great Council.
Odette did not look at him nor did he look at her.
At that moment he was thinking: “What has become of Rouletabille? What is he doing?”
During the last three days he had caused a search to be made for him. No one could tell him anything about him, and every trace of him had been lost. Had he been able to throw Rouletabille into prison, in Jean’s place, as he had promised Madame de Meyrens, how much easier in his mind he would have been as he savoured the joy of victory! —
The service began — the strange service whose ritual was derived from every religion and every age. It was frequently interrupted by dances as in biblical times.... And it was thus that whirling round and round under her light drapery, Callista suddenly came into view.
She had never danced so beautifully. The assembly imagined that she was dancing for the queyra, but it was to Jean to whom she was devoting her frenzied art. She sank at the feet of Odette in a religious transport, and after the prostration into which the intensity of her love had thrown her, she was brought back to life again by new movements in which her leaping and swaying form seemed in turn to pursue and renounce the delights of life.
She knew that she had captivated him by the pagan audacity of an art which was inborn, and in which her imagination had devised unexpected symbols expressive of her eager, sensual mind, a slave to love and vindictive to the verge of barbarity.
Was it possible for him to witness so rare a sight without recalling how others in the past had ended — the delight with which he had thrown his trembling arms round and imprisoned the half-swooning beauty?
Alas, Jean did not even see her. He had no eyes for anyone but Odette and de Lauriac, seated side by side, as if the marriage were already accomplished. As he had told Callista, he did not blame Odette for this frightful surrender of her love. He had but to look at her to see that the despair which petrified her on the throne, in the royal finery which weighed her down, was at least as great as that which wrung his soul in the shadow of the pillar where his sufferings passed unperceived.
He no longer had the strength to wish for de Lauriac’s death. Things were as they were. They could do no more. As the gipsies said: It was written! It was written that Jean should never marry Odette, and that she should be de Lauriac’s wife. They were all the blind victims of an inevitable fate. Their efforts had been of no avail. Jean was only sorry that he had not been left to die in his cell.
The ceremony proceeded, for him, as in a dream, as in a nightmare which became more and more terrifying, and at last when he saw the Patriarch join de Lauriac and Odette’s hands to bless them, a groan escaped from his lips.
Turning to de Lauriac the Patriarch spoke a few words which Jean did not understand, but he guessed their meaning, which may be thus expressed:
“Always remember that you are king only by the pleasure of our queen. You must take oath that you will serve her as the most faithful and humblest of her subjects, and have no other will but hers. Swear that you will follow in all things the advice of the Elders and devote yourself body and soul to the service of the Patriarchate.”
Then turning to the queyra, the Patriarch said while the young girls drew near with the royal diadem:
“And you, my daughter, you who are of our race and already consecrated in the sacred writings, receive this crown from the hands of your people.”
It was at this juncture that the event which de Lauriac so greatly feared occurred. Rouletabille appeared among the choir, coming from no one knew where, throwing the entire ceremony into disorder.
“You have been deceived,” he shouted. “This girl is not a Romany. She is not the promised queyra.”
He uttered these sentences in the Romany language in a ringing voice. It was afterwards discovered that he had learnt them from Zina so that the assembly might understand them.
The confusion which ensued was even greater than that at the time of his first intervention. It was now an act of sacrilege, for it had been officially established that Odette bore “the sign.” Thus the storm that broke out against the madman who had the incredible recklessness to repeat his first story at a moment like that, knew no bounds. The guards seized him. Andréa in a transport of fury was already aiming his revolver at him, but Rouletabille managed to slip through the hands that were r
ending him while the people shouted: “Death to him! She does bear the sign! She does bear the sign!”
Rouletabille sprang towards Odette, who, bewildered, had risen to her feet, while de Lauriac stood before her. But de Lauriac was thrown to the ground, and Rouletabille, snatching aside the royal cloak, lay bare her shoulder.
“See!... See for yourself!” he cried. “She does not bear the sign now.”
And indeed the sign of the crown had disappeared. No mark could be seen upon her snow-white shoulder. Those who had gazed at it a few days before could scarcely believe their own eyes. The Elders passed their trembling hands over the spotless skin to make certain that they were not the sport of some subterfuge by which the sacred sign had been concealed under powder and paint.
In an ever-increasing uproar the people shouted for Zina, the witness whose word had already been challenged by Rouletabille, and they recalled to mind the reasoning adopted by him.
“If the young princess bore the sign of the crown as a birth-mark, why had her foster-mother kept silent, and why had she who had accompanied her in all her alien travels delayed so long to inform the gipsies of the birth of the queyra foretold in the sacred writings?” And they called with one voice: “Zina! Zina!”
Then Zina appeared. She could scarcely stand. It was Rouletabille who conducted her to Odette, at whose feet she fell, and then wringing her hands she made her confession:
“It is true she is not the long-expected queyra. I was lying. She had no birth-mark. I produced it by trickery. I took it away by trickery. I lied... I lied.”
“Desecration!” cried the Patriarch.
The faithful turned the full weight of their fury upon Zina. The sacred precincts were rushed by the people, and while the chief actors in this political and religious drama, including Jean, who at the outset hastened to Rouletabille’s side, were hurried by the Patriarch into the Great Council’s room, the hapless old woman was swept away in the angry swirl of the rabble tide. But she was by then a mere wreck. After her crowning admission her lips had the strength to murmur: “Now let me die,” and in truth she expired casting a last look at her whom she had loved as a daughter and made a queen only to save her life.
CHAPTER LV
A STORM
“SEEKING WHOM HE may devour.” — i Peter v. 8. Extract from Rouletabille’s diary:
“Whew!... I’ve pulled it off...I think we are now out of the wood. It was no easy task and it was not without risk. I may as well confess as much now. When I loomed up in sight during the coronation, I was running a big risk, for I was not quite certain that the mark had entirely disappeared.
“Zina assured me that during the last three days it was gradually vanishing, and by coronation day no vestige of it would remain. I was not quite at my ease. In any case, I could save myself by relying on Zina’s confession, but would there have been time to explain matters if any trace of the mark had remained? I doubt it. One must not juggle with fanaticism. One must be absolutely in the right in the eyes of the most prejudiced. One must be jolly clever to hold one’s own.
“In very truth the whole affair savoured of black magic. It would have been so considered in the middle ages. This birth-mark which appeared and disappeared at the will of a gipsy woman — how could it be explained other than by the intervention of the beka (devil), as they say still in Sever Turn; and I am convinced that in the minds of the gipsies, who brought about Zina’s wretched fate, the poor creature was in league with the powers of darkness — an everyday superstition with the Romanys. The gipsy race, more than any other, is susceptible to suggestion. For hundreds of years these people have practised autosuggestion. No one doubts the existence of the evil eye, and hypnotism is of daily occurrence in their lives. Modern science has taught us that there is nothing supernatural in these things, but to the credulous mind such phenomena are associated with occult power....
“I had to discover some explanation of the birthmark on Odette’s shoulder. When I became certain that she never had any such mark, when I got to know the relations between Odette and Zina, when I at last learnt that Odette was a gipsy by birth, and, from that very fact, more susceptible than anyone else to Zina’s hypnotic powers, I was bound — leaning on the right end of my judgment — to come to the conclusion that it was Zina who had made manifest this royal mark on her shoulder, in order to save her from Callista and Andrea’s deadly attempts on her life.
“But in that case, since she had caused the mark to appear, she would be able to get rid of it. When everything seemed to have come to grief in Sever Turn, nothing remained but to rely on Zina to save us. I had the good fortune to extract a confession from her at the moment when, escaping from Callista’s murderous hands, she was but a poor sufferer, thinking only of revenge. So I had no great difficulty in making the old woman understand that if Odette were to be queen and the wife of the man she loathed, she would as surely die as if Zina had allowed her to be struck down by Callista’s knife.
“And the inverted suggestion began.... And there was no longer any queyra!
“Though we were filled with a feeling of deep delight at the upshot of affairs, there were those who were by no means pleased — the people of Sever Turn. Thus we shall not remain long in the city. In fact we are leaving it this very night, in accordance with the advice of the Patriarch, who has shown a fair and conciliatory spirit throughout, and is not sorry, perhaps, to retain for himself alone supreme power.
“While waiting to make our departure, we ordered an excellent dinner at the Hôtel des Balkans. I walked over for a moment to the window, just for a breath of fresh air, and because I am always interested in what may be passing round me. Who was that I saw over there stealing through the caravanserai, with that look of a savage old bear seeking something, or rather someone whom he may devour? Why, it was our old friend Hubert de Lauriac!...”
We may turn aside from Rouletabille’s diary, which contains but few observations on the repast which united Jean and Odette, after their many painful experiences, for he treats all too briefly a radiant scene of happiness, in which the two lovers forgot the disastrous past. Lovers are invariably self-centred. Did Rouletabille imagine that they were too absorbed in themselves and devoted too little attention to him? It is quite possible. The best men have their weaknesses. And yet Jean had spoken from his heart in the few sentences in which he sought to express the unbounded gratitude with which he was brimming over towards his magnanimous friend.
“Thank me?” interrupted Rouletabille bluntly. “But why, old man? It’s nothing, I assure you. Forget it.”
And Jean, tears in his eyes, relapsed into silence. Odette, on the other hand, embraced her “little Zo” with such ingenuous and yet ardent affection that he turned pale.
And then it was obvious that the lovers were wrapped up in themselves. They sat with clasped hands, their eyes fixed upon each other.... Rouletabille walked over to the window to breathe the air, muttering: “What a queer dinner! No one is eating anything, and a fellow is here who has been living on dry bread and water for a week.”
The “fellow” was Jean, who had just learnt the full extent of Odette’s sacrifice and was choking with joy at the thought that she had consented to the horrible marriage only to save him from the pincers of the torturer.
“You did that for me... forme!”
“He hadn’t the sense to guess it,” said Rouletabille to himself, shrugging his shoulders. “What an ass! There’s no doubt about it, men in love are fools. Don’t let me ever fall in love!”
It was then that the sight of de Lauriac diverted his thoughts, which naturally enough find little or no echo in his diary.
De Lauriac’s appearance on the scene meant a renewal of the fight, and possibly danger to them. Rouletabille was in a state of mind to wish that it might be so. To have someone to fight against; to have something to do while the two lovers were making love behind his back! He could hear Odette saying:
“My dearest, my dearest, what you must
have gone through!”
“Well, and what about me? Does she think that I was enjoying myself when they were preparing that infernal marriage?”
Rouletabille suddenly decided to slip away. He left them. “Hell and fury,” he rapped out, “how hot it is here. I’m going to have a look round.”
Once out of doors he began to hunt for de Lauriac, whose presence near the Hôtel des Balkans boded no good. It was the erstwhile herdsman who had come out of the adventure most hurt, and Rouletabille was sufficiently acquainted with him to know the sort of balm with which he would try to staunch his wounds.
He must be already manoeuvring some scheme of revenge which would compensate him for his discomfiture. In his present state of fury, some nice disaster which would engulf them all, himself as well as the rest, would not be unwelcome to him.
A few hours earlier this man was all-powerful, and now he was a nobody. It was in the nature of things that he should dream of involving the aiders and abettors of his ruin in his downfall. Moreover, the grim face that Rouletabille had set eyes on carried its own warning.... And meantime Jean and Odette continued to be engrossed in themselves.
Rouletabille did not mention what he had seen, for he had no wish to interrupt so charming a duet, but since he had become, after such efforts, the author of their happiness, it was incumbent upon him to watch over his work. He was too disposed to reproach himself for certain inward sentiments, and his nature was too honest to hesitate to fly to their assistance when danger menaced them.
Where was de Lauriac? He walked round the caravanserai without seeing him. He went back to the hotel and met Monsieur Tournesol, who stopped him.
“I’m glad to see you and congratulate you, said Monsieur Tournesol. “Allow me to offer you one of my own special cocktails. You are now well out of your difficulties. I saw the whole thing and it was a fine piece of work. But I rather fancy that you won’t hang about here very long. Shall I give you back your little packet?”
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 133