I remained petrified. And as I kept silent, Roger’s timid, almost ashamed voice murmured nearby: “Now she’s free.”
“Oh, Roger!”
I could not repress that exclamation, vibrant with indignation. What! My friend had arrived at that barbaric unconsciousness! Was not the poor officer, in sum, the indirect victim of the chemist’s enterprises? He had died of the cold that the other had created.
At that moment, Roger horrified me.
To efface that painful impression, it was necessary for me to remount the current of our long friendship. It was necessary, above all, for me to tell myself that my judgment was iniquitous and absurd. One does not incriminate a madman. One disarms him.
Instead of playing the professor of morality with regard to Roger, it is necessary for me to take advantage of the lamentable event in order to render myself master of that powerful—and yet so feeble—mind. Rather than exasperate it further with vain remonstrations, I ought to encourage the fantasy that might deliver it to me.
Madame Berjac is free, so the world might be saved! Roger says so himself; he has shown me the terrain on which I must maneuver.
It was necessary to encourage his hopes but it was necessary above all to rein them in. My first efforts, therefore, were aimed at preventing him from making any inconsiderate move.
Straight away, I set aside the lugubrious shadow of Capitaine Berjac; I kept it for myself. And, in order to explain the critical tone of me exclamation, I did not recoil from a lamentable recantation.
“You’re frightening me, Roger. You seem to me to be about to compromise, by an unreflective impatience, the happiness to which you might aspire one day.”
“The happiness!” he murmured. The magic of that single word had cast a gleam over his sorrowful physiognomy. “Oh, tell me what I ought to do!”
“Wait! Let time, the great surgeon of the soul’s wounds, do its work. That way, you’ll show the tact of a man of heart, and that will be the supreme skill.”
He listened to me with an extreme attention. Then, in a calm and resolute tone, he said: “I trust you; I’ll follow your fraternal advice. But tell me again that I can hope!”
“You have the right to do so.”
Oh, how dearly it cost me to formulate that affirmation, which hid a lie.
And in order to take immediate advantage of the scientist’s good dispositions, I pointed at the frost that was covering the panes of the bedroom window.
“You can divine where it’s necessary to begin?”
He passed his hand over his eyes, and, as if struck by a sudden revelation: “That’s true! At Mourmelon, the Omega acid is continuing to operate. We’ll go out there today; it will only take me a quarter of an hour to suspend the effect.”
“Suspend? Why not destroy it permanently?”
After a hesitation marked by a contraction of his features, he said, in a dull voice: “I want to reserve the future.”
At that moment it would have been maladroit to press harder. I attempted nevertheless to obtain an indication that might be of extreme importance later.
“You have a means, then, of stopping the effects of your cold?”
“Yes, a very simple means that renders the acid inert, just as gunpowder loses its properties of deflagration when it’s moistened, and recovers them again when it’s dried out.”
“Will you explain it to me?”
Roger considered me with an expression in which I clearly discerned suspicion. Then, grimly, he said: “No.”
But a first, enormous result had been acquired.
At ten o’clock in the morning we—Roger, Étienne and I—set off on the road to the Camp de Châlons.
Within two hours, the limousine drew up outside the abandoned house.
Since our abrupt recall to Paris, Étienne had returned there alone once a week, to remove the graphic recordings from the various meteorological instruments left at fixed points.
Nothing in the dismal dwelling had changed.
The sparse grass of the courtyard had disappeared under a layer of frost. The cold was biting; the sky had the dark blue tint of the great winter cold.
How could anyone suspect the colossal work of destruction that was being contrived there, in that square courtyard? How could one suspect those glaucous tanks, mimicking the appearance of bowls innocently set to collect rainwater?
One last time, Roger consulted the thermometers; the he came back to me. A melancholy smile wandered over his lips, and there was a hint of regret in his tone.
“As a scientist, I regret the action I’m about to take. I’m stopping an experiment at the moment when it’s yielding prodigious results, more conclusive than those indicated to me by the calculations.”
He shook his head, considering the receptacles.
“Now, let me cure this poor earth, which seemed so well lost. Give me ten minutes. Go and wait for me in the car.”
I made no objection to the maniac’s desire. I went away.
Faithful to his promise, the chemist reappeared a quarter of an hour later. As I interrogated him with my gaze he said: “It’s done. In a matter of days, you’ll be able to see.”
After having relocked the door, my friend took his place in the automobile. He settled into the back seat. His eyes vague, his features relaxed, he smiled at his dream.
Poor fellow, I divined the vision that had just succeeded furious nightmares. That languor did not abandon him even when the auto came to a rather abrupt halt a few minutes after our departure. Roger continued to dream, while I leaned out of the window curiously.
We were near Mourmelon railway station and our vehicle had run into the tail end of a funeral cortege: officers and armed artillerymen surrounded the hearse, while other wore crowns with tricolor ribbons. I guessed the rest.
It was poor Capitaine Berjac that they were accompanying on his final voyage.
My heart constricted, I drew my head back in very rapidly, as if were guiltily ashamed to show myself.
Shivering, I looked at Roger.
He was still smiling at the angels.
X. The False Quietude
In the days that followed our journey to Mourmelon, Roger behaved with an admirable sagacity.
A radical transformation seemed to have taken place in him. No more of those monologues full of muffled and terrifying threats, no more of those fits of fury followed by phases of depression. He worked reasonably, applying himself to being and living, like everyone else.
Was it the force of his renascent passion that gave him such an empire over himself? Was it the abrupt change in the atmospheric conditions that was having a good influence on his temperament?
For, extraordinarily—and for me, conclusively, the dry cold had given way to a misty humidity. Everywhere, the thaw was announced: mild, rainy weather—“rotten weather,” to employ the expressive term of the common people—set in. Then the sun began to shine, bringing with its radiance an Indian summer that contrasted in an exquisite fashion with the frosts of the previous days.
That remarkable relaxation, in accordance with the anticipations of the chemist, appeared to be the direct consequence of the visit to the house at the camp.
For me, it was a supplementary proof, and how suggestive!
So, in an undeniable fashion, Roger seemed to be on the road to recovery.
I congratulated myself and I trembled at the same time, because the divine amorous deception to which my friend was lending himself, and of which I had become the fearful accomplice, might well be doomed to end lamentably.
And when the moment of disillusionment came...
In the near future, I glimpsed the brutal end of the idyll on which Roger was building the future city of his happiness. Of what would he not be capable on observing for a second time the bankruptcy of his adorable and naïve confidence?
Fortunately, Roger opened up to me at the same time the hope of stopping future threats—and is such a prosaic fashion!
“Paul,” he
said to me, abruptly, “I want you to do something for me.”
“Isn’t that what I’m here for?”
“Oh, don’t engage yourself so lightly. I know in advance that you have no liking for the task I want to confide to you. You’re not a businessman.”
Before knowing what he was getting at, I smiled, nodding my head.
“Bah!” Roger went on. “Out of friendship for me, you’ll do it. You’re to substitute for me in all matters concerned with the administration of my fortune. You’re to deal with my suppliers, to do what’s necessary to make the payments…because I have obligations to them. In any case, you’ll only have to follow the indications of Sencier, my notary; I have every confidence in him. As for you, I don’t need to tell you that I give you carte blanche. You’ll act as I would.”
And, putting his poor fiery head in his hands, he confessed: “I need to pull myself together, you see—a time of repose. For some time, I’ve been caressing a mad desire to lock the door of my laboratory; I no longer want to think about anything but my amour. So I’m asking you to be my steward, Can I count on you?”
“Can you doubt it for a moment, my friend?”
As I spoke those words I had a slight shudder, for already, the depths of my mind were pierced by the vague sensation that Roger had delivered himself to me.
He pushed me into the automobile himself, and gave the order to Julien to take me to his notary.
My head seething, I arrived at the offices of Maître Sencier, in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré. I received the most amiable welcome, which immediately put me at my ease.
My designation as substitute brought an unanticipated solution.
“I’ll draw up a power of attorney for you,” said the notary. “Then, furnished with the most extensive powers in all things, you can substitute yourself for the unfortunate scientist. In all conscience, we have the right to save his fortune. The purchases of radium…well, they’ll fall of their own accord; we’re due to pay on delivery of the merchandise; we won’t pay, and the radium won’t be delivered.”
Thus spoke Maître Sencier.
That same evening, Roger signed a duly drawn-up power of attorney. Henceforth, I had free disposal of his wealth; I had him, bound hand and foot. He would no longer have a particle of radium, except for the few grams he already possessed.
This time, an immense relief invaded me entirely. Whatever might happen subsequently, Roger was no longer in a position to pursue his dream of ending the world.
And, sure of the future—oh, what an imbecile presumption as mine!—I let myself lapse into the pitiful, paltry and surely ignoble, but very human, observation that the world would not be saved, as I had believed momentarily, by the adorable tenderness of Amour, but thanks to the implacable and vile force of Money!
Roger kept his promise. He deserted his laboratory.
And that epoch marked, for him, more than a repose; it brought about a radical modification of all his anterior habits.
It was thus that Roger spent his days running around the tailors, shirt-makers and boot-makers most renowned in elegant society. One morning, he arrived with his beard trimmed and pointed, his hair parted from forehead to nape by a savant stripe. Another time, I surprised him abandoning himself to the care of a manicurist.
A manicurist in Roger’s house! That small fact alone said a great deal to anyone who knew that antisocial seeker.
Then he turned his application toward various methods of physical culture. His dressing-room was garnished with the most complicated items of apparatus: exercisers, adjustable dumb-bells, electric masseurs. Within two weeks, my friend was unrecognizable. Instead of the tall, gangling, more-or-less hirsute fellow, almost neglectful in his attire, I had before me a veritable gentleman in a well-cut, dark-colored suit in perfect taste.
It had certainly required an extraordinary effort of will on Roger’s part suddenly to become a man of the world in the accepted sense of the term.
That transformation accompanied a new and entirely unexpected way of life.
Roger dragged me to fashionable cabarets, passed in review the season’s new plays, even strayed into dance-halls.
Poor Roger! That new twist to his ideas ought to have delighted me, but it caused me an unbearable malaise. Without any great effort, I guessed why he was so determined to strip away his old self. Oh, he didn’t confide in me—what tact, what scrupulousness he put into never mentioning his amour!
However, a few days before the end of the year, his almost grim reserve gave way to an impulsive desire, prompted by an unexpected occurrence.
Since dinner, Roger had seemed to me to be nervous, very distant from the conversation. Once or twice, he began to say something, and then stopped. Then, as we were going to our rooms, he abruptly retained me by the arm.
“Listen to me, Paul. I’m haunted by a project. In advance, I beg you not to turn me away from it. You’ve been able to observe with what discretion I’ve conducted myself with regard to Hélène Thiérard-Leroy.” He had returned her maiden name to his beloved! “During her mourning, I’ve never sought to see her, to place myself in her path. And yet, I haven’t been able to constrain myself to remaining without news of the person to whom I’ve dedicated me life. I’m made use of Étienne to keep me informed, in order to maintain a link with her, however tenuous.”
I made a gesture.
“Oh, don’t worry, it’s not a matter of any indiscreet investigation, any untimely step. The child has limited himself observing from a distance. By means of servants’ gossip, he’s kept up to date with her health and a thousand petty details of her life: trivia for others, very precious things for me.
“Thus, I’ve learned about a voyage planed by Monsieur Thiérard-Leroy. With the aim of making her forget more surely the great emotions that have assailed her, the worthy man is taking his daughter to Biskra until the end of winter. He’s using the pretext of a slight illness to take her to that marvelous oasis. It’s a good opportunity!”
That blind optimism disturbed me. The name of Biskra, associated with illness, evoked before my vision the extreme winter station to which those consumptives who can no longer even support the Mediterranean climate are sent as a last resort. And the slender, transparent silhouette of poor little Madame Berjac traversed my memory...
I carefully refrained from communicating such somber apprehensions to my friend.
“So, I thought that we could also go to Biskra…oh, remaining in the shadows, I swear to you. I’m sure of myself. I won’t risk my happiness by making an untimely move. But to be close to her, to breathe the same air, to love her without her suspecting it—what harm do you see in that?”
“None,” I murmured. Oh, I didn’t reveal my sentiment. What would have been the point? I could see that Roger was only consulting me for form’s sake. Nothing in the world could have modified his resolution.
He seemed delighted by my acquiescence.
“We have no more to do than pack our trunks,” he concluded. “Thiérard-Leroy is leaving on Saturday. I’ll give him a start of one steamer; we’ll take the next one. You can see that I’m being reasonable. Is that all right?”
The question was settled.
The next day, Roger was occupied with the preparations for the departure. I had to accompany him to the suppliers and complete a wardrobe for myself as becoming as his own.
“You understand,” he had said to me. “You need two white flannel suits, and a dinner-jacket—that’s indispensable for dinner at the hotel.”
“Thumbs up for the dinner jacket.”
Fundamentally, I was beginning to lend myself to his childishness.
After having seen everything in black, Roger now perceived everything rose-tinted—but through what a prism of illusions! How was it all going to end?
A new whim of Roger’s reawakened my alarm momentarily. Among the numerous items of luggage, I distinguished the two famous cases that had served to transmit the Omega acid and the radium salts to the
Camp de Châlons.
“What!” I exclaimed. “You’re taking that dangerous paraphernalia to Biskra!”
He looked at me, smiling. “La la! You’re not going to get excited about a few decigrams of radium and the bottle of acid that I have to hand? Out there, on the burning threshold of the desert, I can doubtless determine certain details that will be useful later.”
“You intend to work, then?”
“No. Is it necessary to repeat to you that I’ve too many things in my head and I my heart to abandon myself to any serious work. I don’t call work the two or three meteorological observations that I’ll have the leisure to make in excellent conditions.”
Truly, without ill grace, I no longer had the right to suspect my friend’s intentions. Wasn’t the presence of the young window the best guarantee henceforth against a possible reawakening of the chemist’s frightful designs?
A few remarks exchanged with Étienne enabled me to glimpse how precarious that guarantee was.
It was the day of the departure of Monsieur Thiérard-Leroy and his daughter. Roger had insisted on dispatching his young factotum as a scout. Under the pretext of preparing for our installation in Biskra, Tourte was going to accompany the voyagers, in the shadows.
Needless to say, the most important part of his mission consisted of sending dispatches bearing news at the principal stages of the journey.
Faithful to his discretion, Roger did not want to appear. He charged me with embarking the boy at the Gare de Lyon.
While the car was going through Paris, I was struck by the child’s sad expression.
“You’re not looking forward to making a magnificent voyage?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, Monsieur Paul. And now I can tell you why...”
He recounted the story of his petty intrigue, which I knew already by virtue of Roger’s confidence.
“I’m afraid,” he added, “because I think that Madame Berjac is very ill. A bad influenza.”
Ah! My presentiments!
Four days later, Livry and I departed in our turn. Roger had the appearance and the manner of a happy man. The telegrams sent by Tourte said that the Thiérard-Leroys had arrived safely after an excellent crossing.
On the Brink of the World's End Page 27