The Vengeance of the Oval Portrait

by Gabriel de Lautrec

  Without pronouncing a single word, we went downstairs. The racket was terrible. We arrived at the study door, which I broke down with a blow of my fist. The room was illuminated by all the torches in the house, and in the middle, Dr. Crooker, howling and gesticulating, seemed to be fighting invisible demons.

  We remained nailed to the threshold. The howls and gesticulations increased in intensity. A monstrous dolor was legible in the poor fellow’s face. He didn’t see us. At one moment, tough, he reached out a threatening hand—and then….

  Then, we suddenly saw the arm disappear, as if cut off at the shoulder. Fear paralyzed me. Kate fell down in a faint.

  It was the turn of the other arm, then the head, as if cut off by some shadowy executioner—and the body disappeared one fragment after another, sliced up by an invisible blade following geometric sections. But the howls became more intense as the human body was annihilated, gradually penetrating into the world of the fourth dimension, which devoured it—until, amid the clamor in which all the hounds of hell seemed to be baying, there was no longer anything there but a few drops of blood on the floor of the room.

  A Macabre Wager

  As to stories about students, Doctor Selkof said, pensively, I could tell you more than one. I’ve frequented various European schools, and found myself in company with young people of all nationalities. But the crazy adventures that are most readily invoked are much the same everywhere. It’s the necessary seasoning of banal drinking sessions. There are traditions of facile gaiety, which the differences between countries modify very slightly. I prefer to recall a story of another sort, the tragic vision of which still haunts me today. It has no other merit than its authenticity, and its very complicity causes it to remain more vivid in my memory.

  I was in Prague at that time—and I’m talking about thirty years ago. All those who were then my temporary contemporaries have died or dispersed into the wide world. One thinks with melancholy of the various existences one has lived in different places. I kept myself to myself in those days, having always been something of a savage, only keeping company with a small number of my study companions, who came from all parts of Europe and naturally formed groups according to the affinities of their origin. Among those I saw most often, however, was a Pole whose doubtless bizarre and complicated family name I’ve forgotten, and whom we had acquired the habit of designating by his forename, Nathaniel. Research carried out in common brought us together, and when we came out of the lecture-theater I appreciated his easy-going and meaty conversation, which was not confined to technical matters.

  He was a simple and jovial fellow, in perfect mental health, totally inaccessible to ideas that were macabre or simply disquieting. In literature, he gladly affiliated himself to the school of Boileau,22 and shrugged his shoulders politely when I talked to him about some abstract theories of life and death that that I had extracted from what Edgar Poe calls, so expressively, “the foam of German metaphysics.”

  I think there might be a destiny that amuses itself with the contrast of suddenly causing the phantom of a great horror suddenly to appear to calm and ingenuous eyes. In the wake of what conversation—or, perhaps, what exceptional libations—did we get the idea of that stupid wager? I don’t know. But Nathaniel, with a fine insouciance and a mocking smile, immediately took the bet. He willingly admitted to never having experienced what we call fear—which, for him, was only a word.

  “Fear of what?” he asked. “A sane man may find himself in the presence of danger but has only, from then on, to confront it courageously. As for nurse’s tales and other nonsense, it’s better, since we’re reasonable men, not to talk about them.”

  To convince us, moreover, he gladly agreed to lock himself in the dissection room that night, where the cadaver of a young woman was on the wooden table, having been brought in that very morning, and to drive a dozen nails into the edge of the table with a hammer, as the amphitheater clock sounded the twelve strokes of midnight.

  To ensure a rigorous execution of the program, three of us, including me, decided to install ourselves in the vestibule behind the amphitheater door. Nathaniel had gone into the room at eleven o’clock. Naturally, we were counting on the enervation of the wait to modify our comrade’s placid disposition, and we had carefully refrained from telling him that we would be on watch behind the door.

  So far as I was concerned, I confess, I would not have been displeased to see him emerge from the hall after a few minutes, declaring that the affair was ridiculous and that he refused to lend himself to the grotesque game any longer. He did not seem in the least affected by the lugubrious appearance of the hall, which was feebly illuminated by a candle placed on the table with the hammer and the nails. When we left him installed in a comfortable armchair, in the process of stuffing his pipe, we were certainly more disturbed than he was.

  Having closed the door and made a show of leaving, we sat down silently on the top step of the staircase and waited, beginning to curse our ingenious idea internally. We dared not say a word, which would have revealed our presence. The time dragged by lamentably. The darkness did not permit us to check the time on our watches, and we were doubtless in the process of wondering whether the entire night had not run lugubriously by when, all of a sudden, in the blackness of our impressions, the clock in the amphitheatre, breaking the absolute silence, began to chime.

  It was a deliverance. We breathed out. The second stroke followed, then the third, hastening implacably—each one doubled, as by a echo, by a curt and urgent hammer-blow.

  All went well; the twelfth stroke sounded. Finally, silence….

  Then, to our mortal amazement, a sharp and bewildering sound—the thirteenth—cut through the darkness. It was not the clock, though. It was the cry of a human mouth: a solemn, unique cry, a desperate appeal before eternal silence.

  With one bound, we threw open the door and were in the hall. The candle was burning with a red flame, and the obscure play of the light picked out—was it an illusion?—a smile of sad irony on the face of the original cadaver. But Nathaniel was lying in the ground at the foot of the table, in a desperate effort to flee, now motionless.

  It was definitely death that, at the supreme moment, had reached out to him with its fearful hand. And we saw that he was pinned to the torture table, tragically and grotesquely, by the flap of his jacket, unto which, unconsciously, maddened by haste and the darkness, he had driven the last nail.

  The Evocation

  Madame Isabelle Moreau had been a happy woman since she had made the acquaintance of Henri Vautier a few weeks earlier. Married without love some ten years before, she had not even had for the man whose name she bore the sympathy to which esteem and habit can give rise. He had remained so indifferent to her that she had not thought that he could have experienced any other sentiment for her than those he inspired in her, and she had never wondered whether the reserved attitude that he had adopted in her regard was natural or dictated by a fierce jealousy.

  She carried out the duties that the conjugal association imposed upon her. All day long she devoted herself to the concerns of the important dressmaking business of which her husband was the director, but she looked forward to the moment when dinner time would come and then, when the meal was over, he would go out two or three times a week to his club, from which he only returned at midnight or, more often, one o’clock in the morning.

  These excursions did not take place according to a regular timetable, but almost every time, with the complicity of a blindly devoted maidservant, who stayed up waiting for her mistress, Madame Moreau escaped after her husband’s departure to meet her lover, Henri Vautier, who lived in a neighboring street. The maidservant, Marguerite, and Isabelle agreed on the pretext that would be given to her husband if he returned unexpectedly—a pretext that could evidently only be used once, although they were tranquil, since the occasion had not yet arisen.

  Meanwhile, the lover, uncertain as to which day would be free, waited in every evening.
And every evening he went to bed at eleven o’clock, the hour when his lover left him to dream about her, whether she had come or not. He too was happy. He did not even have that bitterness which comes from the thought of the husband, when one can picture him, for he had never seen him—and Isabelle, for her part, was perfectly sure that Monsieur Moreau did not even know Henri Vautier’s name.

  She could not, however, avoid certain obligations, and that very day, in the afternoon, her husband had reminded her about a dinner invitation for that evening, which she had completely forgotten. It was in the home of old friends, the Hussons, whom they saw on a regular basis. It was impossible to get out of it, especially so late, for Monsieur Husson had also invited the son of one of his associates, Jacques Carmellin, in order to introduce him to the Moreaus, whose business he was due to join. Isabelle was terribly annoyed. She had not seen Henri for a week. She thought briefly about sending a warning via Marguerite, but that would have been an imprudent step. Besides, her lover was not specifically expecting her that evening rather than any other. She consoled herself somewhat in thinking about the joy that they would both have the following day.

  They had just left the dining-room. The coffee was served in the drawing-room. Madame Husson brought a small occasional table, on which there was a box of cigars and an ash-tray.

  During the meal, the conversation had touched on spiritualism.

  “Here’s an occasional table,” remarked young Carmellin, “that would be marvelously appropriate for the evocation of spirits. Do you believe in table-turning, Madame?” The question was addressed to Isabelle.

  “My God, Monsieur, I don’t know. I’ve heard people talk about extraordinary things. Others, on the contrary, shrug their shoulders when anyone mentions communicating with the spirits by that means. If I had an opinion, I’d incline toward the negative, but I repeat, I really don’t know.”

  “We could try to find out,” said Monsieur Husson. “Shall we join forces to evoke the soul of a dead person?” He turned to his wife to add: “What do you think, my dear?”

  “I think I’d be very frightened, if something actually happened.”

  “Bah! The drawing-room is well-lit, and women are only afraid of the dark.”

  “For my part,” Isabelle affirmed, “even if I were a little frightened, I’d be very curious to take part in such an experiment.”

  “And what’s your opinion, my dear Moreau?”

  “It might be very interesting. Especially if…but no…it’s absurd. Ah! In any case, I’ll gladly take part in the experiment.”

  The table was cleared. The five individuals arranged themselves around it, and put their hands on the table.

  “So,” said young Carmellin, “we’re going to evoke the soul of a dead person. It’s a god thing we can’t summon that of a living individual. That would be a very disagreeable surprise for him…”

  “Come on, come on,” said Moreau, a trifle feverishly, “no more talking. A moment of silent meditation seems indispensable to create the right atmosphere.”

  The ten hands were placed flat on the table, the extreme fingers touching. There was a silence.

  Moreau, seemingly absorbed, fixed his eyes on the center of the table. His host leaned toward him. “It seems necessary to me to know which soul we’re evoking. I don’t know—someone that we’ve known well. A friend whose loss we regret…”

  Moreau seemed to reflect, then said: “Certainly, but perhaps it’s better to seek information first, to find out whether there might also be a spirit present in the table. Spirit, if you’re here, would you like to manifest your presence? We’re waiting.”

  A few minutes went by, in sight anguish. Then the table slowly rose up on two of its feet.

  “Spirit, you’re here,” said Moreau, in a firm voice. “Would you permit us to speak to you, and are you disposed to answer our questions? We’ll agree on one knock for yes, two knocks for no. For the rest, I’ll recite the alphabet, and the table will tap its raised foot when I pronounce the necessary letter. Is that agreed?”

  The foot that was in mid-air set itself deftly on the floor and lifted up again.

  “Perfect. We thank you for accepting. Would you do us the favor of telling us your name?”

  Two raps of the table.

  “No? Would it be permissible for me to insist?”

  Two more raps, more forceful.

  “That’s a definite no. I’m disappointed. Can you, at least, give us a few indications about the place where you are at present, on the…”

  Moreau’s speech was abruptly interrupted by two more raps, even more energetic.

  “We’re sorry. Would you consent, in that case, to put us in communication with another spirit? Can you do that And make it come here?”

  One rap.

  “Wait. I’d like to evoke the spirit of a man I knew well, and who would undoubtedly have interesting things to reveal to me.”

  At that moment, the drawing-room clock chimed midnight. There was a pause, during which the chimes measured out the time. Isabelle thought sadly that her friend, weary of waiting, had gone to bed and must be asleep.

  Her husband continued: “Would you, then, fetch the soul for me…?”

  Isabelle looked up fearfully, as if agitated by an obscure and terrible presentiment.

  “The soul of our friend Vautier—Henri Vautier. Do you hear?”

  The table rapped once.

  “You can make it come here? Whatever the conditions in which it finds itself might be? Can you do that?”

  The summoner’s voice was bland and unemphatic. The witnesses followed the conversation, slightly anxious. Isabelle fought to avoid fainting. She had almost cried out: “But that’s impossible. He’s not dead.” She had stopped herself in time, but what a fright! Did her husband know, then? Strangely enough, he had not glanced in her direction.

  And how—by what terrible mystery—could a living being be evoked? The idea did not even occur to her that she was the victim of a misconception and that there was another Henri Vautier, that one dead. She knew only too well, on looking at her husband’s face, that it was hers that was meant.

  The table rapped once. The summoner’s voice seemed to take on a sinister inflection.

  “So, dear spirit, since you can, do it. We’re waiting for Henri’s soul…”

  Henri—he had said Henri, as she did when she thought of him. What redoubtable familiarity! She summoned up all her strength, but she would rather have been in the void. Her hands were trembling convulsively on the table. Her husband appeared to have noticed it.

  “Please, my dear. I understand that all this might seem a trifle disturbing, but we’re not running any risk, and it’s so interesting. Those around this table are in no danger. Besides, nothing prevents you from treating it as a game. Come on—a little calm!”

  “Evidently,” young Carmellin agreed. “Besides, we’re not doing any harm. The spirits are free, it seems to me, to answer us or not…”

  The Hussons’ curiosity was keenly overexcited.

  “We’ll soon see,” said the lady, “whether your poor friend will answer the summons.”

  “Shh! We’ll undoubtedly need patience. That’s the hazard. One never knows where souls are. Perhaps there’s some special difficulty in the present instance. Let’s wait…”

  Silence fell around the table.

  A quarter of an hour went by. Madame Moreau had had time to recover her composure.

  Suddenly, the table rose up on one side. Or, rather, one might have thought that it was trying to rise up. There were brief little jumps, uneven, as if spasmodic. Then it fell back.

  The voice of the summoner was heard, stern and imperious this time. “Spirit! Are you there? Answer!”

  A series of rapid taps. Then immobility…

  Suddenly, the witnesses shivered. On the drawing-room piano, three meters away, a note had just resonated: a deep, lugubrious note.

  They all looked at one another, alarmed, ready to fl
ee.

  “It’s nothing, it’s nothing,” said Moreau. “Sit down and let’s resume.”

  Other notes sounded, slow and monotonous. One might have thought that it was a death-knell. Then there was silence. A few moments were required to calm the general emotion.

  Moreau spoke. Perhaps it was only a collective auditory hallucination. Such cases occurred frequently. It was necessary not to be frightened, at the precise moment when interesting manifestations were surely about to be produced.

  But Madame Moreau’s face was as white as a shroud.

  Then the table rose up on one foot several times, with precipitate raps. One might have taken it for a mute making impotent gestures.

  “Wait. I’ll begin the alphabet. Calm down, my friends, calm down. Would you care to tell me your name? Knock on the letter. A, B, C…”

  The table remained immobile until the he had almost reached the end of the alphabet. As the letters were pronounced, Madame Moreau’s eyes widened with fright.

  “S, T, U,” her husband continued, “V…”

  The table rapped once.

  “Ah! Perfect. Is it you, Vautier—Henri Vautier?”

  Another tap, then disordered movements.

  “Wait! Why are you getting agitated like this? Let’s see, you’re dead now. Now, are you suffering?”

  One rap.

  “Are you really suffering?”

  Three energetic raps.

  The summoner explained, in a cold and learned manner: “One rap means yes, two raps no, but three, ordinarily, signifies an emphatic yes. The soul we’re evoking must be suffering a great deal.” Then he addressed the table again. “That’s understood. You’re still in pain, by virtue of having quit your body, no matter how long it is since you found yourself in that state. Perhaps something happened to you that you weren’t expecting?”