“When at last she understood, all the sorrow which she had bared to me in friendship, seemed to freeze up within her. She rose with a shiver and went into the dark library, where, at first, I did not dare to follow.
“I cannot recall how many minutes went by.
“I felt sure that she was thinking of him in her isolation. And I soon had the proof of this from herself.
“She called me to her. Her voice showed no traces of anger. She appeared to be quite natural. Was she making an effort because she wanted to ask of me a favor? I did not try to solve this problem. My nerves were on edge. I only wanted her to leave me alone in my corner. She ought to have understood that there are certain hours heavily charged with voluptuousness, during which it is dangerous to call poets near to one’s side with a sweet voice.
“I sat down at the other end of the divan, with a last precaution, which touched the highest point of virtue, and because of which I claim the benefit of attenuating circumstances in that fatal scene which has lost Christine to me forever.
“‘My friend,’ said she with a sigh which seemed full of love — which, I knew was not for me, ‘my friend, would you be jealous of a statue?’
“‘Let us stop this lying,’ I demanded brusquely. ‘I hate you, while I adore you. I hate you after the manner of that sinner, who is farthest away from God and whose torture will not cease until that day when beauty and ugliness shall cease to be. And as far as we are concerned, that day has not yet come. Your soft voice, which calls to ensnare me, makes me ill with fury. But, weaker than Hercules was at the feet of Omphale, when she smiled at him in real tenderness, I have listened to it and dared to hope and, this evening, I had wished to believe in it.
“‘Now, either drive me from you with harsh words, or have pity on a doomed, damned man. Oh, I understand, rest assured! You have promised yourself in lawful marriage to a man you do not love, and you wish to take him a pure body. That is sublime. But since you say that you have a sentiment for me — a simple and charming use of words, which are as soft as the roses that were strewn on the rack where the Prince of the Aztecs writhed — you will stop lying. Christine, it is not a silver profile that I have seen you meet in secret. This fine image has a name. He is called Gabriel!’
“The effect was startling. Christine rose up from her place by the window and leaned toward me, so near that I could feel her quick gasps on my forehead, which was bathed in perspiration.
“‘How do you know? How do you know?’
“Then I told her all. I did not wish to hide any part of my shameful spying. I bluntly described some of the scenes which I had witnessed.
“She scarcely gave me time to breathe.
“‘And then, and then what next?’ she pressed me with the question.
“Then I told her how I had believed that the mysterious stranger was dead, how I had seen him convalescing, and finally how I had witnessed the horrible operation, and her anguish.
“‘I hope,’ I said finally, in a tone of sad irony, ‘that he is now out of danger.’
“She made no reply to my last words.
“She had sunk down again beside me, and it was she who, this time, placed her hands on mine. How burning they both were! My beloved appeared to be frightfully crushed. At last, with a great effort, she said:
“‘And what did you think when you saw my father?’
“‘Your father,’ I said, ‘was very violent, and I truly believed that he had murdered Gabriel. But at any rate, the savage act must have had some excuse. And there must be some reason why a young girl who has all the appearance of virtue, hides the handsome Gabriel in her wardrobe.’
“‘Enough, enough,’ she said haughtily, ‘and if you do not wish me to hate you, you will not only stop your infamous jesting, but you will swear to forget all that you have seen. Do not ask me what Gabriel is doing in our house, nor the meaning of the scenes you have witnessed. There are others besides you, who have seen our guest — our cleaning woman, for instance — and I know that you have been talking about the matter to Mlle. Barescat.
“‘The latest report is that he is a foreign exile, condemned to death by the party he has betrayed. These are all tales. We have no excuses or information to give to any one, except the police, if they should make inquiry.
“‘But I do not hide from you that we are most anxious that they will not enter our home until as remote a day as possible. If they do happen to come, we shall ask them to keep our information secret until the day — until the day — which is perhaps far off, when I can tell you all.
“‘Can I count on you, my friend?’
“‘What do you mean? What do you mean? Is this man not to be pitied, that your father treated him so roughly? Even at that I wouldn’t mind being in his place.’
“‘You persist in making me suffer, Benedict,’ she said quietly. T could silence you with one word, but this is not my secret, and I have sworn to Jacques’ — here she stopped and I never knew what she had sworn to Jacques— ‘Let us drop the subject of Gabriel. I can swear to you, my dear friend, that my affection for this handsome foreigner has never gone beyond pure friendship. Alas, I cannot love him either. He has only his splendid looks. He is empty-headed. Do you understand?’
“‘Idiots are usually happy,’ I replied with a diabolical laugh. ‘Anyway, Christine, it seems that your happiness requires the profile of a Pythian Apollo, the genius of a Jacques Cotentin—’
“‘And the glowing heart of Benedict Masson,’ she added in a low voice.
“‘Do you want one man to have all that?’ I demanded, my voice growing more and more brutal. ‘Faith, my dear, we are not living in an age of perfection.’
“‘Benedict, Benedict,’ she exclaimed, ‘calm yourself! You have never spoken to me like this before. You frighten me.’
“‘I envy the empty-headed man,’ I cried, and burst into sobs like a child.
“Once more she made a mistake, the great mistake of approaching me with a gesture, which was only, which could only be, one of pity; but which had the effect of rousing all my unbridled feelings, a sort of frenzy of speech, which hides, under its tinsel, gala rags, and glitter of its false parade, the humble and very simple grief of a poor creature, who has never felt the kiss of a woman on his lips.
“She bent and kissed me with the same tender and chaste abandon, as she might the handsome chap with the empty head.
“At school we had been told the story of a woman, a queen by birth, beauty and intelligence, who had kissed a sleeping poet, who was very ugly. And now I, in my turn, was acting as an Alain Chartier for Christine. But even behind this flow of words, I am trying to hide as much as possible my terrible timidity. To some, I am a great poet; to others, I am a mountebank, but I know myself to be a beggar. Under all my sobs of rhetoric, any woman who loved me could easily read the two words — kiss me.
“But miserable being that I am, I am not able to speak these words.
“Nevertheless Christine understood them. Here she is, the divine creature bending over me. Will I die of joy, will I pass out at once consumed by this sacred fire? And why has she closed her eyes? Why did I not close mine? Alain Chartier was asleep. Yes, but Marguerite — Marguerite’s big eyes had been wide open while she gazed upon the ugly poet, whom she honored with her royal kiss.
“‘Why have you closed your eyes, Christine?’ I asked. ‘Is the light of the night still too bright? Is it modesty? I want to know, Christine.’
“‘Be satisfied, Benedict. Your Christine opened her eyes at your stupid order.’
“The poor girl had done the best she could. And you, you have acted like a cowardly wretch. If you did not strangle her, you did enough. She recoiled from your words, as from a blow, and now you have fled down here to the borders of this sinister little lake, with its dark waters. It is the first time that you have ever acted like a brute toward a woman. There is only one excuse for you — you have never loved another like this one.”
CHAPTER XXV
THE WOMEN WHO DISAPPEARED
WE HAVE NOW ended The Memoirs of Benedict Masson.
Thanks to them, we have been enabled to enter into this great moral misery, into this internal tragedy, created by ugliness. It was necessary to read them. They furnished the torch, illuminated by himself, by whose light we have examined this pariah — the ugly man. They will help us to clear up certain phases of the external drama, in which he became the frightful actor.
Let us first see what passes in his little country house. What we already know is not reassuring.
Corbillieres-on-the-water is an hour by express from Paris. We descend at a little station, which opens upon the principal square of the village of about eight hundred people. Twenty years ago only one train stopped there, but it was this single stop which caused the village to grow there, in the middle of this watery plain, the treacherous, foggy aspect of which reminds one in no way of the pleasant countryside of the rest of France.
Marshes, marshes and swamps; ponds covered with water plants; desolate stretches surrounded by willows, and a vast domain of water filled with game and fish, yet seldom frequented by Parisian sportsmen, who prefer the joys of beautiful scenery and the gayeties of wine gardens.
On getting off the train, in order to go to Benedict Masson’s house, we first follow the main road, then strike off into narrow by-paths which are damp and muddy, even in warm weather. After walking for about half an hour, between indistinct banks, which can be distinguished through the hedges, bordering near the floating hearts of the water lilies, we enter into a sort of arena, closed in by a little, somber, wooded hill, whose reflection is thrown back from the black waters of the pond. The house stands between the pond and the wood.
It would have been pretty enough with its bricks and its slate roof, if it had not been in such a dilapidated condition, or if his little kitchen garden had been cultivated. But since the place had come into the possession of Benedict Masson, Jr., he had taken no care of it, grudging all expense for repairs, wishing to have no workmen on his place, nor even keeping a servant.
He had inherited this little piece of property from his father, who had been an ardent fisherman and sportsman. The father had built the little house in this spot, where he spent his vacations, because it was, for him, a dream country, and he was in the habit of dropping down there whenever he had twenty-four hours of leisure.
Benedict Masson’s father had done quite a fine little business in popular binding, and he had left his son a nice little fortune. With this, the son had allowed himself the luxury of traveling all over the world as an artist, going wherever his romantic fancy led him, and this had given him the reputation of being a fantastical person, whereas he was only a poet. Benedict returned from his travels quite poor.
He had kept the house at Corbillieres because the solitude and desolation pleased him. On several occasions, the big landowners of the neighborhood, who rented hunting and fishing privileges on all the estates in the marshes, had tried to purchase the place, but he had refused all offers.
It was here that he came, whenever he left the Isle of St. Louis, to take refuge, living the life of a hermit with delight, working in a desultory way on some art binding — careful work, which required a great deal of time, and on the mosaics of which faces of women always appeared. Recently, the face had always resembled Christine, just as, on her part, Christine invariably reproduced the likeness of Gabriel.
Then, suddenly, he had taken a dislike to his work, throwing it about in a rage, or even destroying it. He had a little workshop, which he had made to his own satisfaction, without any commercial thought, when he would go out, dressed as a buccaneer, in a sort of a dream for days and nights, living the kind of prairie life he had read about when a child, in the stories of Gustave Aimard, cooking bits of food on coals between two stones, sleeping suspended at night in a hammock made from an old sweep net he had found among the things that his father had left, which he fastened to a tree.
Strange to say, this buccaneer never went shooting or fishing; nor had he a gun or trap of any sort; but he carried a notebook and pencil in his pocket, and he wrote verses. He wrote verses on love. He thought of nothing else but love.
Being hideous to look at, he detested women, but he desired them all.
The affair which he had just had with Christine, and which was really only the start of an affair, had somewhat disciplined his brainstorm. But previous to this, every time he had found himself face to face with a woman, he had felt a desire to bite her quite as much as to kiss her. Yet, so he said, he had never really known a woman, and, so he also declared, they had never been in any danger with him, because of a certain timidity, which paralyzed him almost to prostration at their first gesture.
What we have given of his memoirs seems to give us quite enough bearing on Benedict Masson — except where, in these same memoirs, he slurs over smoothly enough his brutality in the last scene with Christine. Unfortunately for him, there were six women who had entered his lonely house and never had been seen or heard of again.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE SEVENTH WOMAN
THESE SUCCESSIVE DISAPPEARANCES had been observed by more than one of the inhabitants of the countryside. At first they were amused, then they had begun to gossip among themselves and, finally, when after long months they no longer saw Benedict Masson, they talked of other things. But there was one among them who was always thinking of these strange disappearances. And that was Father Violette.
Father Violette was a gamekeeper; that is, he had been one, as long as any one had done him the honor to give him charge of this important function. Unfortunately, the shooting clubs had not shown any interest in the swamps of Corbillieres for many years, so Father Violette had turned poacher. In either capacity he was a man worth knowing. One was always sure of getting game from him.
There was nothing about Father Violette to remind one of the spring flower whose name he bore. He had neither freshness, perfume, nor modesty. He was the greatest talker about shooting and fishing that any one could want to listen to. In addition to this, he had a feeling that the whole country belonged to him, and no one could walk about in this part of the country without having Father Violette following on his tracks.
He was always dressed in the same manner, with old corduroy breeches, which had no color left in them; high boots; a vest, which was nothing but pockets, and from which he was wont to extract yards and yards of cord and queer fishing tackle; a game bag that never left his shoulder, even when he hadn’t a gun — only one could be sure that the gun was not far off; an old pipe, which seemed like a piece of hot coal between his dried lips, over which his yellow mustache appeared to have been singed.
His face was shaped like a bill hook, with big ears that moved and nostrils that were always sniffing to windward, like a pointer. And his little green eyes, between their long lashes, could be seen a long distance away.
No one else in these parts could start a hawk as he could, or demolish a band of ducks, attracting them to his hiding place by a train of floating wooden ducks at the moment of the big flights on clear nights.
He lived in a hut among the mournful, sleeping willows, with their half-open trunks, which grew in two rows on the borders of the marsh — in a domain partly aquatic, partly terrestrial, in the midst of the iris, arrowheads and rushes. He had a boat, and had fenced off a fish pond, in which black perch roved and foolish squadrons of silver beak swam.
He disliked Benedict Masson for many reasons. The strongest was that, on one occasion, Benedict had made him lose the extraordinary opportunity of becoming almost “gentry,” a real gamekeeper living in a fine house — the kind of cottage that a proper gamekeeper should have, by refusing to sell his place to a “big swell,” who wanted to take a lease on the whole countryside for shooting and fishing, and who would have made Father Violette his gamekeeper, thereby installing him for the rest of his life. The Marquis of Coulteray, for he was the man, had at that time seri
ous intention of entering these parts.
Like a great lord of olden times, the marquis had wanted to dominate the whole countryside. He had not wished to be annoyed by having any other person near the big estate that he had bought on the other side of the dale beyond the wood. In this estate his mistress, a celebrated Hindu dancer named Dorga, gave entertainments each year, to which came people from far and near, even from England. But that brute of a Benedict Masson knew nothing of all these details and did not want to learn them.
Father Violette had called on the bookbinder one day, just to sound him out, and had been put out of the door as though he had been a thief. He did not even have a chance to utter the marquis’s name. He had not been able to say ten words. So the marquis had dropped the matter at once and ceased to show any further interest whatever in the affair. The exgamekeeper had not even seen him since.
So then this was one reason why Father Violette hated Benedict Masson, but this was not the only one. Another reason, one which dated further back, was that this terrible fellow, who was as ugly to Father Violette as the seven capital sins, had spoiled his swamp for him. Not merely because he was ugly to look at, but because Father Violette could not understand what Benedict came down there to do.
Long before the story of the disappearance of the women — which, after all, might easily be explained by fear which this miserable being, disgraced by nature, inspired in them — Benedict Masson had been the greatest mystery in the world to Father Violette. For a long time the ex-gamekeeper, now poacher, had watched him with growing anxiety, until now he had the same feeling of terror when he passed him as one might have for a dangerous lunatic, who should be feared.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 395