Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  “Is there nothing more to eat?” he asked.

  “I’m out on the spree to-night,” said Balaoo. “I’m standing you a bowl of rice-and-champagne. It’s coming.” To the wine-waiter, “Bring a bottle of champagne. A very light wine, please,” he added, pointing to Gabriel, “because of my young friend here.”

  “Is champagne nice?” asked Gabriel, who was now eating the matches.

  “It pricks your nose and makes you walk crooked,” said Balaoo, gloomily.

  “How sad you are, Balaoo!” said Gabriel, finishing the matches and beginning to eat the box.

  “The man from Saint-Martin is back!” said Balaoo, ominously.

  “Phoh! Phoh!” said Gabriel, sympathetically.

  Balaoo discreetly wiped his eye with a corner of his napkin:

  “Wonoup! Wonoup!”(*)

  (*) “Alas! Alas!” — AUTHOR’S NOTE.

  Gabriel, with lightning rapidity, seized upon the swizzle-sticks which the waiter brought to free the champagne of its superfluous gas:

  “I could see that you were sad,” he said. “Phoh! Phoh!”

  “Sweet is the warmth of your hand,” said Balaoo, ready to burst into tears. “Tourôô! Tourôô! (*) I am very unhappy, Gabriel...What are you eating?”

  (*)In the secondary sense of “Thank you!” — AUTHOR’S NOTE.

  “Nothing,” said Gabriel, turning pale.

  “Show me!” said Balaoo, opening Gabriel’s mouth and closing it again. “Oh, those swizzle-sticks! You’re quite right. They’re no good with champagne, they take away all the prickly feeling in the nose. It’s better to eat them by themselves.”

  “Look at the things on that lady’s hat,” said Gabriel. “Are they good to eat?”

  “You must learn to exercise a little self-control,” said Balaoo. “I used to eat hats myself when I was a youngster: all Madeleine’s summer-hats; for winter hats are no good. And then I grew up and left her hats alone...I used to wait until she fed me out of her hand...Wonoup!...Where are the days when I ate out of Madeleine’s hand, the days when I saw her enter the orchard of my youth, looking like a rose-bud? She was also like the partridge running to her brood; but the partridge has not so shapely a figure, nor so light a gait. Her voice was as sweet as the Bengal warbler’s song.”

  “I don’t understand all you say,” said Gabriel, “but my heart is in your breast.”

  “Tourôô! Thank you!” said Balaoo, pressing his hand under the table. “What have you in your hand?...Where did you get those cigars?”

  “Out of the box, when the gentleman wasn’t looking.”

  The waiter had taken the box and was walking away, discreetly counting the cigars.

  “What do you mean to do with them?”

  “Eat them.”

  “Yes, for dessert. You must give me half. Ah, here comes our rice-and-champagne!”

  Henry had made a point of bringing the salad-bowl himself:

  “I’ve done as you wished, gentlemen,” he said. “It’s raw.”

  “That’s right, Henry,” said Balaoo. “Stir it as you would a salad, while I pour in the wine.”

  And he stretched out his hand for the bottle of champagne which the wine waiter was uncorking. Unfortunanately, the man was put out by Gabriel’s grimaces and allowed the cork to pop and strike the ceiling with a noise like a gun. Gabriel, in his terror; leapt at one bound across the space between the table where he was sitting and the bar opposite and hid himself behind the bar, yelling:

  “Brout! Brout! Wonoup! Brout!” (*)

  (*) “Mercy! Mercy! Alas! Mercy!” — AUTHOR’S NOTE.

  “What’s happened? What’s happened?” cried a chorus of customers.

  “Why, it’s the monkey from the Folies Bergère!” said a lady.

  “It’s very like him,” said different voices.

  The lady went up to take a better look at Gabriel, whereupon the excited ape suddenly snatched off her magnificent hat and, obeying his instincts, began to devour it upon the spot. Seeing that masterpiece of the Rue de la Paix disappearing between Gabriel’s teeth, the lady, the lady’s friend and the waiter uttered piercing yells. But Balaoo shouted the war-cry, the rallying-cry of the Forest of Bandong. One more bound; and Gabri joined him. The two were outside on the pavement when Maxim’s best customer arrived, just in time to calm the bewildered staff:

  “It’s the Maharajah of Kalpurthagra,” he said, “out for the night with his monkey!”

  Meanwhile, the taxi which had brought them was carrying them away. The driver, who had hardly seen the faces of his fares, considered them a bit “on.”

  On reaching the gate of the Jardin des Plantes, Balaoo made it clear to the driver that the Maharajah of Kalpurthagra had painted the town so very red that night that he had hardly a sou left in his pocket. The driver was quite satisfied. He declared himself the maharajah’s humble servant, said he would call for his orders at eleven o’clock in the morning and disappeared, after taking off his cap to his highness.

  Had Balaoo been really merry that evening, he would, not have failed to shout after the driver:

  “Ask for M. Gabriel! Third cage on the left!”

  But Balaoo was not really merry...

  After climbing the railings with Gabriel, he walked with downcast head, sadder than ever, in spite of their great evening. They came to the sea-lions’ pond at the moment when the dawn was beginning to dispel the darkness of the night. Gabriel, who was afraid of being scolded, said nothing. But Balaoo was not thinking of rating Gabriel. He made him sit on the ground beside him, took his hand and shivered and sighed. And he spoke men’s words which Gabriel did not understand. But he spoke them so sadly that the tears came to Gabriel’s eyes:

  “Listen, Gabriel,” he said. “In the spring, I brought her the first flowering branches. Then she looked at me and said, ‘My poor Balaoo!’ And that was all. Yes, indeed, poor Balaoo!” And Balaoo began to weep. “Balaoo is the most to be pitied of all Patti Palang Kaing’s creatures.”

  “Woop!”(*) said Gabriel.

  (*) In the sense of “Please, please, calm yourself!” — AUTHOR’S NOTE.

  “There is none on earth that understands me but you,” said Balaoo, pressing Gabriel’s hand. “I will tell you a thing, Gabriel, that I have never told to any one, not even to her. But we weep together, you and I. Thus do the feeblest plants entwine to resist the storm.”

  “Wonoup! Wonoup!” sighed Gabriel.

  “It’s a song which I have written. Listen. Put your ear closer. It is a song in man-language. But you will understand it, merely by the beauty of the words.”

  “Wonoup! Wonoup!” said Gabriel. And Balaoo whispered into Gabriel’s ear:

  “Patti Palang Kaing! Patti Palang Kaing!

  Hear how my sorrows flow!

  I roamed through the garden of man

  Like one of the race in woe.

  Not one of them saw my tears:

  Not she whom I love the best,

  Though she heard how I beat my breast

  In a grief that none can know.

  To the other, who strolled with his nose on high,

  She said, ‘It is thunder passing by.’

  “Patti Palang Kaing! Patti Palang Kaing!

  Hear how my sorrows flow!

  If only there were bands

  To the toes of my shoe-hands,

  I should say, in accents low,

  To Patti Palang Kaing:

  Keep Thou, across the seas,

  Thy plantains, mangroves, mango-trees,

  Since Thou hast put me bands

  To the toes of my shoe-hands!

  Patti Palang Kaing!

  Balaoo knows no pang!

  “And I should say to Madeleine,

  In the softest voice of men:

  ‘Madeleine, my fair,

  I fain would kiss thy hair!

  If only there were bands

  To the toes of my shoe-hands!’

  “Alas, did not the other say:

&n
bsp; ‘I would kiss her hair to-day!’

  Silent I watch and stand,

  Waiting to kiss her hand!’”

  “Poor Balaoo! Poor Balaoo!” said Gabriel, wiping away Balaoo’s tears.

  Chapter XIX

  PATRICE, ON HIS wedding-day, was garbed in evening dress, with a white tie, by eight o’clock in the morning. As there was nothing more for him to do in his bedroom, he left it; but, on the landing, he found Gertrude, who very civilly begged him to go back to his room, as the master was coming to see him.

  Coriolis arrived soon after; and the first thing he did was to rail bitterly at Patrice’ attire. He told him that he looked “like a village bridegroom” and asked him to put on a frock-coat or a jacket, unless he wanted to have the Paris street-boys “chi-iking” after him. He added that it was bad enough to have the stupid fashion that compelled girls in the twentieth century to dress up for the altar like virgins of antiquity going to the sacrifice. In short, he found a pretext for venting his temper, which had been execrable during the last forty-eight hours. The young man took off his dress-coat, but, like a good little solicitor’s clerk from the Rue de l’Écu, kept on his white tie. He had resolved never again to be astonished at anything. He ascribed the odious snubbings which he was constantly receiving at the hands of his future father-in-law to Coriolis’ excessive grief at the prospect of losing his daughter; and he explained in the same way all the curious mystery, all the incredible reticence which had hitherto surrounded the preparations for the ceremony.

  During the two days which Patrice had spent at his uncle’s house previous to his wedding, he had not caught a glimpse of a ribbon, a parcel, a bandbox, a dress, a flower. A nosegay which he had brought home from one of his walks was seized, the moment he entered the hall, by the furious hands of Gertrude, who flung it into the dustbin without a word of explanation.

  He excused the old servant just as he excused the father:

  “I am robbing them of a pearl,” he said to himself. “It is easy to understand that they can’t forgive me.”

  In reality, knowing that he was improving his advantage hour by hour, he took a secret and malicious pleasure in his humiliation and deliberately made himself smaller and more insignificant at the thought of his coming revenge.

  All the formalities were settled. Patrice had seen the family-solicitor, the mayor and the parish-priest. But he had seen very little of Madeleine, on the day before, and nothing of Mlle. Zoé or of the formidable law-student.

  But the absence of Zoé and Noël from meals did not trouble him unduly. He had gathered from a few sentences exchanged in a corner between Gertrude and Madeleine that M. Noël had taken the liberty of spending a whole night out and had not come home until ten o’clock in the morning, in such a state that he had to be carried to his room, where he had since been looked after like the prodigal son of the house.

  This little escapade did, not seem to vex Madeleine particularly; but Coriolis was like a bear with a sore head.

  The civil marriage was fixed for ten o’clock and it was now a quarter to ten. Patrice timidly mentioned the fact to his uncle, who was still in his indoor jacket. Lastly, on looking out of the window, the young man was astonished to see outside the door none of those extraordinary hired landaus in which the felicity of newly-married couples is usually paraded through the streets of the metropolis.

  “A carriage?” asked Conolis. “What do you want a carriage for?”

  Patrice turned pale:

  “Why, isn’t it time to go to the town-hall?”

  “The town-hall’s not so far as all that!” retorted his uncle. “We shall walk.”

  The young man gave a start: was that how the old eccentric hoped to escape observation? By walking along the pavement, with his daughter, in white and orange-blossoms, on his arm?

  Feeling half-stifled, Patrice opened his mouth, if not to utter a sound, at least to breathe. Coriolis gave him a friendly push that sent him breathing out on the landing:

  “Come along,” he said. “We’re only waiting for you.”

  Nevertheless, he stopped at the top of the stairs and Patrice saw him lean over the baluster to ask, in a hushed voice:

  “Can we come down?”

  Gertrude’s voice replied, in the same key: “Yes, it’s all right.”

  Then they went down one flight and entered the drawing-room. Madeleine was there with Gertrude. Patrice stepped back in dismay: Madeleine was in black!

  He could not believe his eyes. There she stood before him, his young bride, wrapped in a dark cloak, with a hood to it, which she wore when she went shopping with Gertrude on rainy days.

  Having stepped back, Patrice stepped forward. This time, he was trembling with rage. He felt like tearing everything and everybody to pieces: the uncle, the niece and Gertrude. But, even as a ray of sunshine will suddenly appear in the darkest and stormiest of skies, so Madeleine’s smile beamed from under the hood, while the cloak parted to reveal the prettiest little bride that Patrice could have imagined in his fondest dreams. At the same time, a delicious smell of natural orange-blossoms — a present from Gertrude, who had crowned her young mistress brow with it — pervaded the whole room.

  Patrice fell on his knees before Madeleine and kissed her dear little feet, which, shod in white-satin slippers, were hidden in ugly rubber galoshes. The poor young man sobbed aloud:

  “Why,” he asked, amid his tears, “why do you hurt me so? Will you ever tell me why?”

  Coriolis raised him and pressed him to his heart:

  “Madeleine will tell you, my boy,” said the old man, whose agitation seemed to have reached its height. “Yes, Madeleine will tell you and you will forgive us. Come, kiss your wife, Patrice, and let us hurry to the mayor’s. You are quite right, we are late. Let’s get it over.”

  “Yes, yes, I want it over,” whispered Madeleine, herself moistening Patrice’ kind cheeks with her tears. “I want it all over...”

  “I quite agree with you,” said Patrice, in all sincerity, blowing his nose. And he added, lyrically, “It would have been over quicker with a carriage!”

  But already Madeleine was dragging him to the staircase. She had taken his arm and, with a swift movement, wrapped herself once more in the folds of her ill-fitting cloak.

  His uncle slipped on an old, worn frock-coat which Gertrude handed him. The old servant was the only one who appeared dressed for the occasion. She had squeezed herself, with some difficulty, into a puce coloured silk which she had had specially made and which not even a furious display of anger on Coriolis’ part had induced her to take off. The four of them were going down the stairs, when a door above their heads opened and Patrice heard hurried footsteps. He turned round and saw Mlle. Zoé standing behind them, looking paler than a wax statue. She hardly had the strength, in the excitement that fluttered her shapely breast, to utter words of which Patrice vainly strove to discover the full dramatic sense:

  “He is at the window!”

  Coriolis, on the other hand, the moment he heard them, cried:

  “Oh, dash it all, dash it all! Let’s go by the back stairs.”

  For the house had a servants’ staircase leading to a little door that opened on an adjacent lane. Only, the doors of that staircase and the staircase itself had remained unused for years without number and the descent by this narrow and gloomy passage, as steep as a well, was a tragic enterprise. They had to battle not only with rusty bolts and hinges, but also with time honoured accumulations of dirt and dust. Fortunately, the antiquated lock that fastened the door on the lane was almost falling to pieces, but for which fact the wedding-party would never have emerged from that awful pit of darkness.

  When they were at last outside, they all looked at one another. The two men were horribly dirty, but the two women had passed through all that dust as by a miracle, without getting a speck of it on themselves. The uncle shook his nephew, not to brush the dust off him, but to make him hurry up. He took the lead and only turned to mutte
r:

  “Come along! Come along!”

  He walked with his back bent and hugged the wall as though he were trying to hide from observation. But the extraordinary thing was that Madeleine and Gertrude copied this curious attitude. The two women had gathered up their skirts and were hurrying along with hunched shoulders. Patrice in vain tried to obtain an explanation. It seemed that they had no time to answer him; and if he stopped for a single instant, the uncle, or Madeleine or Gertrude would pull him by the hand like a lazy child whom they were afraid of leaving behind.

  “What a funny wedding!” thought the young man. “To look at us, people would say that we were a pack of suspects under the Terror, trying to avoid the agents of the Committee of Public Safety.”

  At last, they reached the town-hall, by strangely circuitous roads. If Patrice had not taken care, on the previous day, to remember the mayor’s poor, that functionary would certainly never have waited for him so long. The ceremony was rushed through, as they say, “in five secs.”

  Coriolis had told Patrice not to trouble about witnesses: that was all arranged. And the cobbler, the porter and the commissionaire from the corner duly put in an appearance. As soon as they arrived, Madeleine threw off the dark outer garment that concealed her fresh and youthful charms; and Patrice might have thought that she had dressed only for those rapscallions, had he been capable of thinking of anything at so impressive a moment.

  To go from the town-hall to the church, they took a closed cab. Their ragamuffin friends followed in an open fly. Coriolis was beginning to do things handsomely.

  A low mass was quickly said; and, as soon as the register was signed in the sacristy, the witnesses paid and the young couple lawfully married in the sight of God and man, their thoughts turned to breakfast.

  Coriolis took his party to a celebrated little riverside restaurant which he used to visit in the days of his youth. The old servant had previously taken a bag there, containing an ordinary walking-dress for Madeleine. The trunks, it appeared, had been sent on to the station.

  The uncle asked for a private room, took Patrice by the arm and tried to lead him into the passage: