Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  She was reclining in the depths of a big arm-chair, in a languorous and graceful pose, with her eyes fixed on her three beautiful children playing in silence at her feet. The poor thing, innocent of all offence, had no suspicion of the awful doom that was being prepared for her.

  Her beautiful hands were caressing the little girl’s golden curls. When she saw me she half rose to her feet and said:

  “Who would have thought it! Well, here’s a nice thing!” And she smiled.

  At first I stood rooted to the ground, and then as with a calm and graceful gesture she motioned me to a seat, I exclaimed:

  “You can smile, Amalia.... You can smile!”

  Surprised to hear their mother called Amalia by a stranger — a name that at one time I used so freely — the three children raised their heads and looked at me inquiringly.

  Then Amalia said:

  “You seem very excited; but you received my letter. It ought to have set your mind at rest about the future. All things considered, nothing can happen to us worse than what is happening, and really, what is happening is rather welcome if it doesn’t last too long. For my part I selfishly thank Providence for sending a friend to share my captivity and to help me bear my misfortunes with patience.... I thought I had lost everything on that unlucky night at Funchal when I discovered that my children had been kidnapped. Thank God I have recovered them. And seeing that I have found you here, too, what have I to complain of?”

  She smiled as she uttered these last words, the angel! What incomparable gentleness of soul! Faithful to the lessons that had instructed and moulded her youth, she considered all rebellion sinful and submitted to every event as the will of God. Thus, I thought, she had borne her marriage with Von Treischke. And whilst it gave me occasion for infinite bitterness, it afforded me, at the same time, unspeakable consolation.

  But clasping my hands I sighed, for notwithstanding everything that she might say, I already saw her led like a lamb to the slaughter. Observing that I was about to condole with her once more, she at once broke in, pointing to the children: “Do you want to make them cry?”

  Then, as the abduction had prevented it at Funchal, she introduced them to me. And she had a word or two for each of them to make them laugh. I was presented in my turn, as a friend of the family, and of her childhood, and she told them to treat me with the consideration which is due to an old relative. I at once kissed Carolus who seemed to me the liveliest. He was not much like Admiral von Treischke, but Heinrich was his father’s living image, and Dorothée had his hard look. But she was very pretty all the same. They were three cherubs who adored their mother and certainly did not dream of the misfortune that threatened her.

  At the thought of it a sob rose in my throat which I was unable to suppress.... Amalia at once sprang to her feet and told the children to say ‘‘Good night” and go to bed.

  “They were in such a state when I got here.... Of course they were treated rather roughly, the poor darlings, and the maid told me that nothing would pacify them, not even sweets. They did not stop crying until they caught sight of Uncle Ulrich and me....”

  “What! Uncle Ulrich is here!”

  “Yes, certainly.... Didn’t you know?... While they were about it these people made a clean sweep of the whole family.... Oh, the thing was done remarkably well.... It can’t be helped. After all, it’s the fortune of war, and it might have been worse. We are well looked after. We have every comfort on board this submarine. I am longing to go over her from top to bottom, and am hoping the Captain will kindly give me permission soon....

  “You must understand, Carolus, that I know all about the latest inventions in submarines, and that my husband, who was in command of the torpedo and torpedo-boat defences at Wilhelmshafen, led me to understand that at the end of the year there would be vessels as big as this one with all the comfort and convenience of a cruiser.... We know now that our enemies have got ahead of us... that’s all I... You just calm yourself. I have never seen you in such a nervous state.”

  She took my hand in hers and tried to comfort me as she, a mother, had comforted her children.

  Adored Amalia! My tears were my only answer.

  She saw them, dropped my hand, and said with an arch smile:

  “You are incorrigible.... Come, you had better tell me your own story.... For, after all, I have only the vaguest idea of what happened to you.”

  I was about to begin my tale when a door was thrust open by an extremely sprightly little old man in a dinner-jacket who at once held out his hand with great cordiality. It was Uncle Ulrich von Hahn of Bonn University.

  “Hullo, I say,” he exclaimed, noticing my tear-dimmed eyes. “ You are crying like a child. Because they’ve dared to lay hands on one of the most sacred families in Germany, you are as miserable as if everything were lost. What can you be thinking about? What are you afraid of? I’ll swear that at this moment the villains who did the deed are much more uncomfortable than we are. Don’t you observe the care and attention with which they overwhelm us? Are these not so many apologies which they have created in advance so as to palliate their offence? Do you think that they would treat us like this if they were not afraid? Pull yourself together, then, Monsieur Carolus Herbert of peaceful Gutland in Luxemburg, Of course, you are not German. That’s why you are so sorry for yourself. But we will protect you.”

  The vain-glorious tirade of the insufferable old fellow did not surprise me in the least, nor did it convince me. I obstinately shook my head.

  “I am not afraid for myself,” I said.

  “Carolus Herbert has always thought more about other people than himself,” declared Amalia, “his presence here is a proof of it.”

  In a phrase she had repaid me beyond measure for all my anxieties. With a look I expressed my gratitude.

  Two Hindu servants brought in a table gaily laden with hors-d’œuvre and “delicatessen” as the Germans say, and decanters of wine. I at once noticed that there were covers for five.

  “You are expecting some one then?” I said.

  “Yes; Lieutenant von Busch and Sub-lieutenant von Freemann,” replied Amalia, “two friends of my husband’s whom we had the pleasure of meeting here; both of them charming men.”

  “Charming, charming and splendid company; scholars and gentlemen, and, take it from me, full of high spirits. They would have helped us to ‘keep up our moral’ if our moral were in need of it,” exclaimed Uncle Ulrich. “But here they come; I can hear them. Dry your eyes, Carolus Herbert. Be equal to the occasion.”

  The two officers whom I had seen that morning and whom I will call Red face and Green face entered the room. It was true that both of them were in quite good spirits and stroked, with satisfaction, the dark ends of their moustaches kept erect with cosmetics.

  I reddened as it struck me that they had taken me for a spy that very morning, and I was not sorry to be introduced, and thus to put an end to an unpleasant mistake.

  Before we sat down at table, Uncle Ulrich filled our glasses with a light, sparkling, white wine which we held in our hands while the Professor of Bonn University proposed a toast:

  “I drink and we drink to the Fatherland which in hopeful confidence turns its eyes to the Imperial Master, that Master who has never yet addressed a word to his people or to the world which does not breathe of strength, courage, piety and justice; whose every act has contributed to the peace and happiness of the world under the sceptre of the mind and the might of Germany. Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!”

  I at once placed my glass on the table without drinking from it.

  “What does this mean?” demanded Uncle Ulrich, whose nose turned quite red, while “ Green face “went yellow, and “Red face” went pale.

  “It means that I belong to peaceful Gutland in Luxemburg,” I replied in a fit of revolt at what I had just heard, “and I shall not drink such a toast. I am neutral.”

  “As a neutral he is perfectly right,” interposed Amalia. “ If I were not married to Von Treisch
ke I should do the same thing. Gentlemen, be seated.”

  The gentle authority with which she commanded silence curbed these fanatics. They did not forget whose wife she was. On the contrary, they remembered it with submission and an obvious restraint; with bowings and scrapings about trifles; about the salt cellar, for example, or the contents of a decanter. It would have made me smile at any other time.

  In reality these great world conquerors have the temperaments of slaves. They were not so much polite to Amalia as obsequious to Frau von Treischke. A glance from her and they would have made short work of me.

  Unfortunately the truce did not last long, for after the soup was served, Uncle Ulrich let his tongue run away with him. This time I could not contain myself, and as the two naval officers applauded his inflated language, I rose to my feet, walked to the door to make sure that no spy was hiding behind it, and returning to my place said: So you don’t know what’s going on here?”

  My determination to keep silence disappeared in a ash. Impelled by an intense longing to make these blusterers tremble, as well as by an honest desire to warn

  Amalia in plain words, and thus to obtain, if possible, their co-operation in securing the safety of all of us, I proceeded, without further ado, to acquaint them with my discoveries.

  At first they listened with interest, while we passed one another the various dishes on the table. Whenever a servant came in I stopped my narrative. Afterwards I cautiously resumed it, but with an excitement that caused a tremor in my voice which was, I fear, slightly ridiculous.

  The fact remains that at the most pathetic moment, when I came to speak of the railed recess, the three men stared at me and tapped their foreheads. And almost immediately, before I was able to make Amalia understand, without too many details, that it was in this place that these people executed the prisoners condemned to death, she rose from the table declaring that she had lost her appetite and was suffering from a bad headache. She apologised for leaving us before the end of the dinner, but she had presumed too greatly on her strength.

  I got up after her and tried to kiss her hand as an expression of my devotion and to beg her forgiveness, for I felt that she was terribly offended with me for what she considered a piece of folly.

  She swept past me with a shrug of her shoulders.

  As soon as her back was turned, Uncle Ulrich flung himself at me and reproached me for my thoughtless talk. Then I told the three men everything... everything... and implored them to realise that Frau von Treischke and her children, and they themselves were in the power of butchers who had sworn to avenge on them, by the worst tortures, the crimes which had stained Belgium and Northern France and the high seas of the world.

  But the two naval officers quietly lighted big cigars and each taking Uncle Ulrich by the arm led him away, without paying any further attention to me, airily puffing their smoke towards the ceiling.

  Meanwhile, as Buldeo had appeared, I requested him to accompany me back to my room. He helped me to undress and I went to bed. Of course I could not sleep.

  I was filled with rage against the stupidity of the “ Bosches” — for so I called them in my anger — who refused to believe that any one would dare to lay violent hands on their formidable persons, though their attitude was in keeping with German mentality. And I was filled with grief when I thought of Amalia who had treated me so severely because I had ventured to disturb her sweet serenity.

  I did not fall asleep until the morning and I awoke late in the afternoon with a wolfish appetite.

  CHAPTER XIV

  MY BRAIN IN A WHIRL

  HOW CAN I express in words the feelings, or rather the sensations which took possession of me in the course of the next evening? I shall never be able to shake off their peculiar and hateful obsession.

  In the presence of a real horror, by which I mean something that we can understand, however much we may condemn it, we can protest, cry out against it, suffer, but after all the brain has its defence; it can keep its balance, it can reason, in a word it can think. But if it be placed in the midst of the incomprehensible, whether in the domain of horror or of any other, it can no longer think because it capsizes.

  It is in the position of those people who are seated quietly in a comfortable chair on a solid floor in a sideshow at an exhibition or fair. Suddenly the walls of the room swing right round them, so that they lose their mental balance, and shout and turn in their seats in astonishment as if they needs must cling to some solid support.

  Oh, to cling to some solid support!... But what was there for me to cling to after this memorable evening which I must describe?

  The thing began in a very simple manner. I dressed for dinner as on the previous evening. Buldeo conducted me to a big saloon decorated entirely in white. The walls were lined with portraits of the most famous Hohenzollerns; and the place of honour was held by a painting of William II.

  A large table set out for dinner stood at the end of the room. There were six smaller tables. A dozen persons were already seated in a line at the principal table, near the wall on the left, like collegians in a refectory.

  A group of German officers, standing in the middle of the saloon, were chatting with Von Busch (Red face) and Von Freemann (Green face). These two gentlemen greeted me quite correctly and continued their conversation without taking any further notice of me. Buldeo who had changed his steward’s white linen for a butler’s ordinary livery, showed me the place where I was to sit during dinner. It was at a small table on which there were covers for twelve.

  Flowers were on all the tables. The glare of the electric lamps was pleasingly softened by a mantle of transparent tissue-paper.

  Imagine in this attractive setting the bright uniforms, and the play of colours of their ornamental lace and braid and the white dress shirts — for several persons in evening dress made their appearance.

  I was the only one in a dinner-jacket. I gathered from the first words which reached me casually that these persons were preparing to celebrate that evening some solemn anniversary, glorious in the annals of the Imperial family and of the whole of “Deutschland.”

  The saloon soon filled up. The conversation, in general, was carried on with an air of liveliness. Nevertheless I thought, or I fancied, that certain fits of gaiety did not ring quite true, and that there was something artificial in certain smiles that were too prolonged, and showed too ostentatiously the teeth.

  For example, the mayors of the cities in North Germany whom I had seen the day before, ordering their delicatessen with such bluster, well, the faces of these burgomasters when scrutinised a little more closely — they were to dine at my table — seemed by no means in harmony with their smiles.

  At this stage Uncle Ulrich von Hahn entered the room. He was beaming, oiled, curled, scented and his cheeks were flushed. My first impulse was to go up to him and ask after Amalia, but I realised that it would be indiscreet at that moment, for his arrival had been greeted with tumultuous applause.

  Every hand was outstretched to him and he was led to the place of honour facing the portrait of the Emperor. Then the company took their places and the dinner began. The big table was reserved for officers; the small tables for civilians. No more notice was taken of me than if I had not been present.

  With great ceremony two Hindus brought in a swordfish. It was a splendid creature, and was deposited, amid general enthusiasm, in the centre of the table of honour, and opposite the illustrious Professor Ulrich von Hahn.

  It is the invariable custom in Germany, in big things as well as in small, whenever one is around a table where there is meat and drink, to indulge in a patriotic demonstration and this gathering was no exception to the rule. Every one stood up.... The Professor stretched out his arm, above the enormous fish, as though he were about to give it his blessing.

  Indicating the species of broad, sharp, pointed sword, as hard as steel and about nine feet in length, with which the fish before him was furnished, the Professor gravely declared:
>
  “This weapon, joined to the huge size and marvellous strength and activity of this splendid fish, renders it a formidable adversary even of the greatest monsters of the deep. Its shape served as a model for the ancient galley, and Ælianus compared its sword to the ram of the trireme. It is the foremost among living sub-marines. We call it Schwert-Fisch, the French call it Espadon but also the Emperor.”

  The worthy Professor coughed, smiled with a touch of malice, passed his hands through his hair, lifted his gold spectacles to his forehead and continued:

  “Let us be thankful to our old German God who on this glorious anniversary has graciously caused to be sent here for us, poor prisoners, this fish so formidable... to others... so good to us... and to which the French have given such a fine name.”

  The speech was considered to be very witty as may be imagined. Everybody stamped with pleasure and shouted Hoch! Hoch! Nevertheless many of the guests, on reflection, flatly declined to partake of a fish which the eminent Professor had called the Emperor.... Other “camarades” smiling at these scruples endeavoured to persuade them not to miss the dainty dish before them. But they replied loudly that they would rather be taken for fools than for disrespectful subjects of His Majesty.

  And at once an example was given of Teutonic stupidity, or rather German childishness — to speak politely as my duty as a neutral demands — childishness which may still be recognised, after all, in their ferocious martial instincts, for this remark sufficed to make every one abstain.

  The servants took away the glorious fish.

  At heart my burgomasters were furious, but they dared not say anything, and it was not for me to protest.

  As Uncle Ulrich, excited by the unexpected result, continued to give free vein to his eloquence, I wished with all the strength of my returning appetite, that he would choose other subjects of conversation than gastronomy, because it is by no means uncommon for the hall-marks, trademarks and labels of condiments and articles of food to be derived from thrones and courts and princes in general; and we were running the risk, out of respect, of leaving the table and starving.