CHAPTER VIII
BROTHER AND SISTER
TAKING ADVANTAGE OF the leisure which first the return of calmer weather, second the successful handling of the fire, and finally the “restoration of order” on board, had left him during the last twenty-four hours, Chéri-Bibi was trying on, before the wardrobe, his new clothes. It must be admitted that the uniform fitted him like a glove, and he turned round and round with an expression of ingenuousness on his face that would have disarmed his judges.
“For that matter,” he said to himself, “I don’t see why this uniform should not suit me, seeing that my own suits the Captain so well.”
At this juncture the Dodger came in. He had been appointed Sub-Lieutenant. His pierrot-like face, ornamented with strips of court plaster from temple to chin, bore witness to a scar of which he was so proud that he would not have exchanged it for a kingdom.
“Captain,” he said, “the Lieutenant has just been taking the ship’s bearings.”
“I see,” said Chéri-Bibi in a tone which indicated an indifference to anything but stripes and brass buttons, the fascinating effect of which he was examining and admiring in the glass.
“It seems that we turned a few degrees too far to the south.”
“Quite possible.... Tell me, Dodger, what do you think of my uniform?”
“First rate, Captain.... It looks as if it had been made for you.”
“All the same,” sighed Chéri-Bibi, twirling an imaginary moustache, “it was unfortunate that we had a Minister of Marine who abolished full dress. I once saw full dress when I rowed in the Admiral’s boat, on the first of January, in Cayenne. Think of the cocked hat!”
“The epaulets.”
“The trousers with gold braid.”
“The dress-coat,” sighed the Dodger. “Oh, at La Rochelle whenever there was a ball at the Prefecture the military came from Lorient in full fig. In my opinion the Minister was jealous... and you may depend upon it, he was a civilian.”
“A socialist minister,” said Chéri-Bibi with a contemptuous grimace. “There’s no hope with such people. They are the enemies of government and of all discipline. Now, bear this in mind, Dodger, without discipline, which emanates directly from government, and which can only be respected if it is adorned with distinctive badges, everything goes. There’s an end of civilized society.”
“How well you put it, Captain. You ought to repeat that to Little Buddha, who turns up his nose when I ask him to do anything, twiddles his thumbs, and passes his time in getting as drunk as a lord.... He is under my orders and he ought to do what I say. He tells me he doesn’t care a damn. But it’s not my fault if he hasn’t found a non-commissioned officer’s uniform that’ll fit him.”
“What about the Top? Has he found a uniform that suits him?”
“Yes, he’s managed to unearth one.”
“What is his rank?” asked the Captain.
“Well, he’s yeoman of signals.”
“That’s right, it’s just as well,” returned Chéri-Bibi as he crammed his fingers into a fine pair of white gloves. “That’s a bit of luck. We haven’t got a yeoman of signals, have we?”
At that point the Toper showed his face at the door. He was attired in a lieutenant’s full dress which was much too tight for him, but he did not complain lest they should find him a petty officer’s cast-off uniform which would not have satisfied his ambition. His right arm was in a sling.
“The Kanaka has just found the ship’s position,” he said.
“Yes, I know that,” returned Chéri-Bibi with an astonishingly easy bearing. “Will you have a cigarette?”
“A stinker. I don’t mind if I do, Captain.”
“Damn it all, I’ll put you under arrest if I hear you use such language again. Do you understand, Toper? A stinker! Get it into your nut once for all, my lad, that you are my second lieutenant. Well, speak like a gentleman or give up your gold stripes.”
“Very good, Captain,” replied the unfortunate Toper, lowering his head with an abashed air.
There was a knock at the door and Little Buddha came in, as round as a top and as red as a turkey-cock. Dressed as an ordinary seaman, but wearing the distinctive marks of an orderly — jacket, trousers with wide ends, large turned back collar, oilskin cap — he wore a white bandage over his forehead almost completely hiding the traces of the late fight. He gave the regulation salute.
“Captain, I’ve come to tell you that the Lieutenant, who was able to determine the hour-angle this morning and was on the point of finding the meridian altitude, has just taken an accurate observation.
“You, my dear fellow,” interrupted Chéri-Bibi, “are trying to show off on the plea that you’ve been longer at school than we have. And perhaps you’d like to make us believe that you know something of navigation. You’ve got a swollen head, Little Buddha. What good is it going to do me that he’s taken the ship’s position? I don’t care one way or the other as long as the fine weather lasts.”
“All the same, Captain, we must know where we’re going and what we’re going-to do,” they objected.
“I’ll tell you when it suits my fancy, you understand, you fellows. I am the only person to give orders here. If you are not satisfied with your positions you’d better say so. Isn’t the program for the day good enough for you? Stroll in the Zoological Gardens, ball, banquet, junketing.... Serious business to-morrow. Hold your jaw until the yeoman of signals enters your cabin and says: ‘Gentlemen of the Staff are expected to report themselves to the Captain.’ Then I will tell you what I intend to do. Do you follow me? Well, right about turn, march!”
“Captain, I want a word with you on behalf of the Countess,” ventured Little Buddha diffidently, turning back when he reached the door.
“Oh, rats! What does she want with me?”
“A few moments’ conversation.”
“What does she take me for?” exclaimed Chéri-Bibi in an indignant voice. “Every moment of my time belongs to the community. I have no right to waste a single second, particularly in listening to a woman’s chatter.”
“I say, Captain, she’s been very useful to us....”
“She’s in love with you, Captain,” cried the Toper. “You can see that from the fiery glances which she casts at you...”
But the Toper stopped short when he saw the look which Chéri-Bibi shot at him. The Captain went up to the Lieutenant as if he intended to annihilate him.
“Be quiet!” he snarled.... “You may as well understand one thing: Chéri-Bibi has always been a moral man, and it is not at this moment when you see him wearing a Captain’s uniform that he’ll begin to go to the bad. The Kanaka is a friend of mine. A friend’s wife is sacred. Besides, I want the women on board to be respected. The reason why you, Toper, are not dead at this moment is because Sister St. Mary of the Angels saved your life. Don’t forget that. And if you say another word which is not strictly proper you’ll have her to deal with, I can tell you.”
“Very good, Captain,” said the Lieutenant, standing to attention.
“How is the saintly girl getting on?” he inquired.
“Much better,” replied Chéri-Bibi. “The Kanaka and I passed the night at her bedside. She is now out of danger. She was suffering from a little fever. As to the bullet, that’s a mere trifle. It can stay where it is in the shoulder blade, and be extracted later on. Nothing is the matter with her lungs, which is the important point. And now go, all of you, where duty calls you.”
They went out after the Captain. A number of men on the lower decks were washing, cleaning, rubbing and polishing, and endeavoring, as far as possible to remove the traces of the frightful agony which had convulsed the Bayard. The men wore convicts’ garb and they bore a number on their arms. They were closely watched by convict guards, revolver in hand.
The Sergeant on duty saluted the Captain as he passed. “Anything fresh, Carrots?”
“Nothing fresh, Captain.”
“How about the ward...?”
“Captain!” the Toper had the courage to interject. “Oh, yes, I was forgetting,” said Chéri-Bibi, smiling at his slip. “And Messieurs the late military overseers,” he went on, bending over and examining the convicts’ work, “are they getting used to their new positions?”
“Daren’t grumble, Captain. Besides, the first who kicked would have his brains blown out.”
“That’s the standing order, Sergeant,” said Chéri-Bibi approvingly. “By the way, stock-jobber, what’s been done with my standing orders?”
“We’ve read them to the men and to the prisoners in the cages, and in addition I’ve posted them on deck.”
“Good,” complimented Chéri-Bibi. “Authority and system, those are the twin masters on board represented by myself. Before those two precious forces — listen to this, you fellows — every man on board must bow, officers and ship’s company alike. If we want to do any good, we must have an iron discipline. There must be no exceptions. Every man must perfectly understand that he is the master of nothing on my ship but the air he breathes, and then only when he is actually breathing it....”
He strode on, drawing himself up to his full height and followed by his staff, who were turned to stone while the military overseers — the convicts of yesterday — presented arms.
He stopped for a moment, gazed at the deck, and addressed a few short sharp words to a petty officer who was lazily directing the cleaning of a ladder.
“There are bloodstains here.... Have them scraped off.”
He entered the sick-bay, which was crowded with the wounded and re-echoing with their sufferings. For twenty-four hours the Kanaka and the hospital orderlies had been amputating legs and arms amidst shrieking men. Chéri-Bibi’s appearance was greeted with shouts of mingled enthusiasm and hostility. And suddenly the man who had come with the intention of making a little speech of encouragement to them, felt suffocated in the oppressive odor of iodoform, and he turned his back and went away unashamed, declaring that “war was a horrible thing,” and that he wondered at those generals who, after a victory, could ride over the battle-field amid the dead and dying with a smile on their lips, such as he had seen when he was a schoolboy in pictures in his “History of France.” For himself, it made him feel rather inclined to weep.
He was under the influence of this impression when, having sent a message that he was coming, he opened the door of Sister St. Mary’s cabin. She lay in bed under the assiduous care of two nurses. A look of unspeakable sadness was on her pale face, and she did not return her brother’s greeting. Her eyes were lifted to heaven as if in prayer. Indeed her glance avoided the terrible man. After he had dismissed her nurses she murmured, still without looking at him:
“Is that you, Monsieur? What do you want with me? I cannot help you now that God has forsaken you. I prayed that He would bring you to repentance. But your fresh crimes surpass in horror those which you committed before.... Heavens, what a number of slain!” and she covered her face with her hands as though to shut out the awful spectacle of mutiny and massacre of which, sick unto death, she had been a witness towards the end.
Chéri-Bibi regarded her for some time without speaking, filled with a new emotion which he vainly strove to conceal. At length he took a chair and sat down by her bedside. Then he grasped her hand, which shook and trembled in his. For a moment she tried to withdraw it, but finally it remained passive under his dominating pressure.
“My little Jacqueline,” he gasped in a hoarse voice. “My little Jacqueline.”
The unhappy girl shook her head gently, mournfully, for there was now no little Jacqueline... had not been for a long time, a very long time. There was no little Jacqueline since men had made her suffer so greatly. Not since there happened to be one man — the father of her best friend, of her young mistress, of her good Cecily — who had dared to run foul of that innocence which, until then, had been untouched save “by the wing of prayer,” to use the language of Chéri-Bibi, which at times was singularly poetic. There was no longer a little Jacqueline since her Chéri-Bibi had... Oh, Chéri-Bibi, Chéri-Bibi! She had loved him so!
She saw him once more quite a little boy, joining in innocent games with her in the fragrant garden in the break of the cliff in those happy spring days in Normandy. He was a very ugly little boy, slightly capricious, slightly odd, but entirely gentle and good, and obedient in whatever she told him to do.
In turn they sought each other at school in Dieppe, and went back home like sensible children, saying “How do you do,” to the good wives of Le Pollet mending their nets, on the doorsteps, with long wooden needles. And then she saw again the hill at Puys with the flowers and butterflies all along the way.
Sometimes, though it was forbidden, they returned home by way of the cliff so as to have sight of the white sails on the sea, and to throw pebbles from the top onto the beach. They played and rolled about in the grass, or else, while eating their bread and butter, watched with curiosity the waving arms of the semaphore. He was even then strong and brave and stood in front of her when the cows drew near and stared too closely at them. How very fond they were of each other!... Chéri-Bibi! Chéri-Bibi! Her lips could not hold back the four dear syllables; they slipped out, softly, musically, as of yore. Chéri-Bibi!
Chéri-Bibi burst into tears. He sank with his head on the bed and wept in his fine Captain’s uniform as he had never wept in his cast-off convict’s clothes.
She too cried; and at length she said, gently withdrawing her hand from his despairing clasp:
“I ask God to forgive me for it, but, you see, in spite of your crimes I have not forgotten those days... that blessed time of our childhood... and if I still think of you without execrating you like other people, it is because I cannot forget that you committed your first crime for my sake. Oh, why did you set your mind on avenging me, Chéri-Bibi?”
As he heard those words the monster raised his head, instantly dry-eyed. He was consumed with a fury that burnt up his tears.
He rose with a wild gesture, stood erect above the poor nun’s bed, and lacerated the skin on his face with his nails to still the need in him to tear something to pieces.
“Oh, you too... you too! You believed the Judge, and you always thought that I was lying. And yet you knew what I was. You saw me every day. You kissed me every day. You read my heart as you read a hook. I’ve never lied to you... to you. Yet you were like every one else, you believed that I was guilty of that crime. I wrote you fifty times explaining how it all happened. I swore to you that I was innocent. And now this is what you tell me. If it is for this that you came so far you might have stayed at home, Sister St. Mary of the Angels.”
“I came about another crime,” she said, laying her hand on her breast, for she felt as if she were stifling, and Chéri-Bibi’s anger had appalled her.
“For another what?”
“For another crime of which I know that you are innocent.”
“Oh, really, there are many of that sort,” he said in a thick voice. “But the first one means more to me than all the others. It is a load on my mind. It was the cause of everything... the starting point of everything.... The others have passed from my memory.... But that one... that one made me what I am.... Oh, I swear to you that I did not commit that crime as people believe. Why did you not have faith in what I wrote to you; what I once said to you in the Assize Court? Is it worth while to worship the Almighty if He makes you as blind as other people are? You were the first to condemn me....
“There you have the justice of your God, which does not see more clearly than any other justice. Oh, Jacqueline... I’ll tell you something. I expected you to come to the Assize Court, and to cry aloud: ‘What he says is true.... On my soul my brother is innocent!’ But you didn’t come, and you still believe that it was I who faked up the whole story.”
“Yes, I believed that you did it, Chéri-Bibi,” said Sister St. Mary, sinking her voice. “But I say again that I have nothing against you for that. I have taken
upon myself, before God, the burden of that particular crime, because you cared for me sufficiently to commit it for me.”
“Perhaps you’re right.... And it might well have happened. But if it had happened, believe me, Jacqueline... if it had happened, well, I wouldn’t have made a mystery of it. I would have told you. I would have told all the world. I would have boasted about it in the country. That is the point which you haven’t realized, Jacqueline. That is the point which you must realize.... If you had understood it in that way, why, I shouldn’t be looking to-day for the man in the gray hat, the man who was the cause of all my troubles. You would have played your part. You would have remained in the country.... You would have kept your eyes and ears open.... You would, perhaps, have discovered him. You would have won back your brother’s honor before he had become what he is. Now it’s too late; there’s nothing, to be done. I am looked upon as a terror in the world from what I can gather. Every murder that is perpetrated is put down to Chéri-Bibi. Well, it was bound to come true in the end, for here I am at the head of a notorious gang. And since they would have it so, I must employ them....
“I am accursed, Jacqueline. It’s no use praying for me.... Well, while I’m on this point, I may tell you that no trouble of any sort would have occurred but for the Captain, whose obstinacy is the cause of it all. He is a pig-headed fellow is the Captain, I can tell you.... I offered him a way out of the difficulty which was highly original. Do you know what I suggested? That he should land me quietly on some deserted and uninhabited shore... far from the society which sickens me. And it may he that there I should have become a saint. Upon my word, when I think of it I feel myself capable of being one! He refused to hear of it. He wanted war. I said to him: ‘Since it is war between us, I’ll fight you.’ Then the fighting broke out, and there you are!”
“No, no, it wasn’t fighting, wretched men that you are, cursed of God,” faltered Sister St. Mary, whose eyes were filled anew with the awful vision of the slaughter. “You murdered them.”
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 150