Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  “There lies mystery,” she cried after a pause. “Behind the crown of verdure which enfolds us, lies Brazil — the vast area of Brazil. Don Manoel, tell me about this vast and mysterious Brazil.”

  “I am as ignorant about it as you,” he returned.

  “My knowledge of Brazil is limited to Rio where I was born, and San Paolo where I met my wife. To penetrate ‘this vast and mysterious Brazil’ one must know how to ride a horse. I have never been in the saddle in my life. To live in those wild solitudes, one must know how to hunt — and firearms frighten me.”

  “You control moving highways, like the Amazon, which flows into two seas,” she went on with a look of contempt. “You have railways which are gradually causing the tide of barbarism to recede. Do you ever go by train, Don Manoel?”

  He rose to his feet frowning. There was a martial side of him of which she was ignorant.

  “I am a man of study. I am a man who has made the tour of the world when I have made the tour of my thoughts. I believe in the union of souls. Was it not you who insisted on it?”

  “But that is not the question,” she returned, somewhat cowed by his unexpected display of irritation.

  “Yes, that is the question, for if you ask me to be other than I am, I am ready to make the change. Oh, Irene, I feel younger than I have ever felt before. I feel that I have the capacity, if you give the word, of embracing the whole world....”

  Don Manoel took a step forward with arms outstretched as if, for a first trial of strength, he would embrace Irene before the people standing near. He seemed more formidable than when they were alone in her boudoir at the hotel.

  She returned in haste to the railway carriage. He came after her, his face aflame. Their fellow travellers, with increasing discretion, left them to themselves, which surprised and by no means pleased her.

  Don Manoel’s eyes blazed behind his spectacles. He swept his handkerchief over his forehead and said in a voice trembling with passion and yet not without a certain gravity:

  “You will do me the justice to admit that I have striven to keep my word. And whatever it costs me I will keep it to the bitter end — to the bitter end which alas! is not far distant. You are leaving to-morrow afternoon. You will leave an everlasting memory on this city and an indestructible picture in this heart” — he placed his hand on his heart. “I shall never forget the honour you did me in admitting me, the least attractive of men, to a union of souls with you. You saved my life. If you wish me to continue to live, you must crown your work by a last favour. Give me a soul’s kiss.”

  “What do you say?”

  “I say: give me a soul’s kiss. I want to drink in your soul through your lips — through your lovely lips — your beautiful soul and your lovely lips!”

  She had to belabour him with her umbrella to make him leave her soul in peace. He did not persist, for the train stopped. She expected him to depart in a rage. She was surprised to see him take a comb from his pocket, straighten his hair, and with a triumphant look offer her his arm.

  The handful of passengers formed up in a line to watch them pass, and a flattering murmur followed them to the carriage. He escorted her to her hotel without alluding to the unpleasant incident, bowed ceremoniously, and told her that he would see her next day at the prefect’s house where there was an At Home “to meet Mademoiselle Irene de Troie.”

  Irene’s impatience to leave a country where a union of souls had to defend itself with an umbrella will easily be understood. Sylvia was packing the trunks. For some time she had pretended to take no interest in the events which so closely concerned her mistress. Irene, on her part, took care not to make the least allusion to them. Sylvia performed her duties with cold correctness. Irene, who was candour itself — even in her flirtations — resolved to make an end of this state of affairs and asked her maid for an explanation.

  Sylvia went straight to the point.

  “You have no confidence in me, madame. After what happened between us...”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Sylvia, but I hardly see how anything could happen between you and me.”

  “What happened was this: I confessed everything to you, madame, in all confidence. I have nothing more to hide from you, whereas you hide things from me....”

  “It would be doing you too much honour, Sylvia. You have too high an opinion of your own importance.”

  “Nothing is important in my eyes but my devotion to you. You know that I would do anything for you. When it was a question of avoiding a scandal, did I not give you good advice? Now you don’t ask my opinion; you tell me nothing; I don’t exist for you. I am sorry for it because I could have continued being useful to you. I value your reputation.”

  Irene felt as if she could smite her. It was as much as she could do to control herself. And she said in a tone of great severity:

  “What do you mean by such language, Sylvia? Are you crazy? What has my reputation to do with all this?”

  “I can explain in a few words. When you refused to see him, I said, ‘See him,’ but now I say, ‘You see him too often.’ Strike me, but listen to me! The whole town believes that you are Don Manoel’s mistress.”

  Irene took a step towards Sylvia and put out her arms. The maid was just in time to catch her as she fell. She held a bottle of smelling salts to her nostrils with the pride of a good servant who discovers her opportunity to prove her devotion, too long allowed to remain in abeyance.

  “I know you too well, madame, to believe for a moment this awful gossip,” she said. “Had you been less virtuous you would have met his Excellency in secret like other lovers, and we shouldn’t have had all this fine talk. I’m not blaming you, madame, you did not consult me. We’ll say no more about it.”

  Irene, still feeling faint, was thinking things over. The whole business was disastrous. She now grasped the meaning of those too encouraging smiles which accompanied her every movement in the town. The vision of Don Manoel at her side responding to those smiles by profound bows brought the colour to her face again.

  “The villain!” she gasped. “He has compromised me.”

  “He has done his utmost, madame.”

  “Was he aware of all this gossip?”

  “Was he aware! I know that people have congratulated him.”

  “On what?”

  “On what you have in your mind.”

  Irene gave a start.

  “What then?”

  “Then he has behaved most properly. Everyone has complimented him on his discretion. He has declined the congratulations but accepted the compliments. He is not a villain but a schoolboy proud to be seen in the company of a beautiful woman. He has proclaimed aloud your virtue as though he alone had the right to defend it. He would have done better to hold his tongue.”

  Irene was terrible in her wrath. “He shall pay for this!” she said, grinding her teeth. In the end she had a fit of hysterical sobbing which was a genuine one this time.

  CHAPTER VII

  IN WHICH MENTION IS MADE FOR THE FIRST TIME OF THE KING OF THE PATAGONIANS

  THE LAST EVENING had come. Mademoiselle Irene de Troie was to close her many triumphs at San Paolo and Rio de Janeiro by delivering a lecture in the Municipal Theatre on “The Benefits of Civilization.”

  She was dressed in a tight-fitting, low-necked robe of black and white satin set off with a waistband of precious stones. She wore a toque of embroidered jet spangles turned up at the top like a crown. The toque had been greatly admired in the king of the Patagonians’ shop in the Rua do Ouvidor. This shop stocked the latest Parisian confections, and Irene thought that her purchase would be good propaganda alike for local trade and French genius, a combination that could not be too warmly encouraged. Magnificent in its simplicity, Irene’s attire greatly enhanced her loveliness.

  For this last night the Municipal Theatre had set ablaze all its illuminations and candelabra, and brought forth all its silks and satins and draperies. Irene’s dressing-room was a mass of exotic fl
owers. Don Manoel’s contribution was conspicuous. She presented his bouquets to her dresser. She did not see him during the evening. “At last,” she thought, “I am rid of him,” and she began to collect her thoughts for her discourse on “The Benefits of Civilization.”

  Her appearance on the stage was the signal for a tremendous outburst of cheering. She began her speech by reciting — as she alone knew how to recite — Sully Prudhomme’s poem on America:

  “... Her head resting on the pole And her feet dangling over the Magellan.”

  Then she proceeded to criticize the poem itself. Though she admitted its beauty she did not agree with the author’s conclusions. He pitied the Red Skins for knowing other joys than those of wearing feathers in their hair and rings in their noses, and for abandoning the state of nature in which lay true happiness for the torments and complexities which the invention of gunpowder and the building of cities brought in their train. She showed that poets were often indifferent philosophers, and entered upon an Enthusiastic glorification of human progress which inevitably released the mind from, its animal fetters and rendered the descendants of Adam “the kings of the universe, the conquerors of the infinite.” She knew Red Skins who had become professors of universities, and these were the men who should be asked whether they regretted their tomahawks and scalp dances. The benefits of civilization! Where were they more apparent than in Brazil whose hardy pioneers had transformed a deadly morass into that pearl of price: Rio de Janeiro!

  A thunderous outburst of applause and a rain of flowers greeted these words which rendered just homage to the labour of a clever and persevering people. She had prepared a peroration in which she declared that beauty could not be appreciated in all its splendour without the aid of a civilized society, but this last sentence, seeming like an award of merit to the dressmaker, the milliner, and the jeweller, was lost in the shouts of the claque the signal for which had been officially given.

  The prefect himself received her as, almost swooning with pleasure and triumph, she left the stage. He escorted her to her car and drove her to the Palace Hotel. He complimented her on the evening’s success, her dress, her toque in a somewhat official tone. Irene was too quick not to be conscious of the reserve in his manner towards her which was not in keeping with his character as a gentleman and was entirely uncalled for. She was grieved at the absence of the genial cordiality to which their intercourse had accustomed her. She hardly knew what to reply.

  “So you like my toque,” she said, “I am all the more pleased as I bought it at the king of the Patagonians’ shop.”

  “It is a first rate house, and receives the latest models from Paris,” he returned.

  “But why is it called ‘the king of the Patagonians’?”

  “Because the king of the Patagonians is the owner.”

  “The king of the Patagonians?”

  “The king of the Patagonians.”

  “Very curious,” said Irene. “To begin with I didn’t know there was such a person.”

  “Oh, there are several of them; it seems there’s no lack of them in Patagonia.”

  “You mean caciques and chiefs of tribes.”

  “Possibly, but if we may believe this man, his is the only kingdom that matters. He is a Tehuelche. These people have retired to the fastnesses of the Andes, and jealously maintain their own gods and manners and customs.”

  “But after all Patagonia is a long way off.”

  “A very long way.”

  “So the king sells hats in Rio de Janeiro?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he gets his stock from Paris?”

  “He attaches a great deal of importance to that and his lady assistants.”

  “I saw in this shop, of course, some very charming French girls, but I didn’t see the king.”

  “That is because he is very rarely there. He has other interests. He is a busy man. He is engaged in crop cultivation — tobacco particularly.”

  “He needs it for his calumet,” said Irene, and, observing the prefect’s signs of mirth, “Oh, monsieur, you are making game of me. That’s too bad of you.”

  The prefect protested, relapsing into seriousness again.

  “You may ask anyone you like about the king, and they will tell you what you have just heard, and you will hear many other things as well.”

  “What other things?”

  “Well, the circumstances which led to this business of selling hats from Paris in the Rua do Ouvidor.”

  “What were they?”

  “To begin with, he is not really the king.”

  “You see I was right to disbelieve the story...”

  “He is only the heir to the throne. When he was about twenty he left his father’s country after a very ugly incident. He murdered his brother.”

  “What a dreadful man!... Is the story true?”

  “He will tell you so himself if you ask him. His brother was at fault. He was the younger brother but his father’s favourite, and his father had nominated him among his warriors as hi ultimate successor.... After all it was only a political crime.”

  “He had to flee the country.”

  “Yes — a long way from it. His father would have had him hunted out beyond Rio Negro and La Plata even to the forests of Haut Chaco. The sense of revenge is highly developed among the Tehuelches. Our young prince had to exercise all the more care as a great number of Patagonians had emigrated to the Argentine, and settled down as horse breeders, and would have thought it a patriotic duty to hand over to the justice of the powerful king of the Tehuelches, so black a criminal.”

  “So he came to Rio de Janeiro and settled down as a milliner?”

  “Not at once. I have already mentioned that he cultivated tobacco.”

  “For his calumet?”

  “Yes.”

  “By the way, what’s the name of this wicked prince?” asked Irene, greatly amused by the story. “His name is Languequetrou.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said Languequetrou.”

  “What a queer name!” exclaimed Irene. “I should prefer you to call him the king of the Patagonians.”

  “You are quite right, madame, and besides it’s more dignified,” acquiesced the prefect who never contradicted a beautiful woman. “But let’s get back to the story. From time to time Langue — I beg your pardon, the king of Patagonians — when he was tired of cultivating tobacco...”

  “And smoking his calumet.”

  “And smoking his calumet, was having a look round Rio...

  “To get in a supply of ‘fire water.’”

  “I see that you are well up in the manners and customs of the virgin forest. You have read Gustave Aymard...”

  “No, I leave that to my maid, but I have read Chateaubriand’s ‘Last of the Abencérages’...” To hide his humiliation the prefect raised her hand to his lips.

  “We are a long way off hats,” murmured Irene. “We’re coming to them! While walking down the Rua do Ouvidor, Langue — I beg your pardon, the king of the Patagonians — stopped outside a shop whose windows contained the latest Parisian fashions.”

  “He wanted to buy a hat?”

  “No, but he bought one all the same to please the shopkeeper who was very pretty. We all knew her. Her name was Mademoiselle Amanda. She was the smartest trimmer of artificial flowers and ribbons ever sent us from Paris. Mademoiselle Amanda made a violent impression on the king. On the very morrow he sent her a formal proposal of marriage. You can imagine the laughter in the shop. Nevertheless the king returned to buy more hats. He bought the entire stock. That was excellent business for Mademoiselle Amanda, who made merry over the king’s misguided passion with a friend of hers, a young actor of a French company. Do you suppose that the king was ruined? Not at all. And possibly his cultivation of tobacco had assumed sufficient dimensions to enable him to light other pipes besides his calumet, for one fine day he said to Mademoiselle Amanda, ‘If you will marry me I will settle one hundred and f
ifty thousand francs on you.’

  “I give the figure in French currency. Defying the sneers of her friends, the young lady decided to gratify the wishes of her admirer. She promised to marry him. She flattered herself on being able to subject this barbarian, smitten with her charms, to her every caprice; she reckoned on her prettiness and nice little tricks to establish absolute ascendancy over this heart which seemed to beat only for her. It was a beautiful dream pursued in the discreet company of her young and by no means fastidious actor.

  “Nonchalantly lolling about in a luxurious carriage and bedecked in lace and diamonds, she aimed by this outrageous display to silence those envious tongues which declared that her newly-found fortune smelt of the nigger; the insult shocked her the more inasmuch as her barbarian was neither a nigger nor a Red Skin, but a man of amber-white colour as befits a king of the Patagonians.

  “Some time before the date of the marriage the king was obliged to go on a journey. He returned unexpectedly and found Mademoiselle Amanda making herself very much at home with the young French actor. It was enough for him. He calmly stated that the engagement was broken off, and returned to his tobacco plantation.”

  “To smoke his calumet,” interjected Irene. “For a barbarian, you know, your king of the Patagorians did not show much resentment.”

  “Impossible to say,” returned the prefect. “Mademoiselle Amanda and the actor didn’t trust him. Next day they showed a clean pair of heels, and they’ve never been seen in Rio de Janeiro since.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “No one knows.... They simply vanished.”

  “Vanished!... Really vanished? Did you not institute any inquiry?”

  “Good gracious yes. But Brazil is a big place.”

  “Tell me, senhor, was this the work of your barbarian?”

  “Everything is possible. People asked themselves the question.”