EN ROUTE
Now I knew all. As we continued on our journey, Rouletabille related
to me the remarkable and adventurous story of his childhood, and I
knew, also, why he dreaded nothing so much as that Mme. Darzac should
penetrate the mystery which separated them. I dared say nothing
more--give my friend no advice. Ah, the poor unfortunate lad! When he
read the words “Rescue us,” he carried the dispatch to his lips, and
then, pressing my hand, he said: “If I arrive too late, I can avenge
her, at least.” I have never heard anything more filled with resolution
than the cold determination of his tone. From time to time a quick
movement betrayed the passion of his soul, but for the most part he was
calm--terribly calm. What resolution had he taken in the silence of the
parlor, when he sat motionless and with closed eyes in the shadow of
the corner where he had used to see the Lady in Black?
While we journeyed toward Lyons, and Rouletabille lay dreaming,
stretched out fully dressed in his berth, I will tell you how and why
the child that he had been ran away from school at Eu, and what had
happened to him.
Rouletabille had fled from the school like a thief. There was no
need to seek for another expression, because he had been accused of
stealing. This was how it happened.
At the age of nine, he had already an extraordinarily precocious
intelligence, and could arrive easily at the solution of the most
perplexing problems. By logical deductions of an almost amazing kind,
he astonished his professor of mathematics by his philosophical method
of work. He had never been able to learn his multiplication tables, and
always counted upon his fingers. He would usually get the answers to
the problems himself, leaving the working out to be done by his fellow
pupils, as one will leave an irksome task to a servant. But first, he
would show them exactly how the example ought to be done. Although as
yet ignorant of the rudiments of algebra, he had invented for his own
personal use a system of algebra carried on with queer signs, looking
like hieroglyphics, by the aid of which he marked all the steps of
his mathematical reasoning, and thus he was able to write down the
general formulæ so that he alone could interpret them. His professor
used proudly to compare him to Pascal, discovering for himself without
knowledge of geometry, the first propositions of Euclid. He applied
his admirable faculties of reasoning to his daily life, as well as to
his studies, using the rules both materially and morally. For example,
an act had been committed in the school--I have forgotten whether it
was of cheating or talebearing--by one of ten persons whom he knew,
and he picked out the right one with a divination which seemed almost
supernatural, simply by using the powers of reasoning and deduction,
which he had practiced to such an extent. So much for the moral aspect
of his strange gift, and as for the material, nothing seemed more
simple to him than to find any lost or hidden object--or even a stolen
one. It was in the detection of thefts especially that he displayed
a wonderful resourcefulness, as if nature, in her wondrous fitting
together of the parts that make an equal whole, after having created
the father a thief of the worst kind, had caused the son to be born the
evil genius of thieves.
This strange aptitude, after having won for the boy a sort of fame
in the school, on account of his detection of several attempts at
pilfering, was destined one day to be fatal to him. He found in this
abnormal fashion a small sum of money which had been stolen from the
superintendent, who refused to believe that the discovery was due only
to the lad’s intelligence and clearness of insight. This hypothesis,
indeed, appeared impossible to almost everyone who knew of the matter,
and, thanks to an unfortunate coincidence of time and place, the affair
finished up by having Rouletabille himself accused of being the thief.
They tried to make him acknowledge his fault; he defended himself with
such indignation and anger that it drew upon him a severe punishment.
The principal held an investigation and a trial, at which Joseph
Josephin was accused by some of his youthful comrades in that spirit
of falsehood which children sometimes possess. Some of them complained
of having had books, pencils, and tablets stolen at different times,
and declared that they believed that Joseph had taken them. The fact
that the boy seemed to have no relatives, and that no one knew where
he came from, made him particularly likely, in that little world, to
be suspected of crime. When the boys spoke of him, it was as “that
thief.” The contempt in which he was held preyed upon him, for he was
not a strong child at best, and he was plunged in despair. He almost
prayed to die. The principal, who was really the most kind hearted of
men, was persuaded that he had a vicious little creature to deal with,
because he was unable to produce an impression on the child, and make
him comprehend the horror of what he had done. Finally, he told the lad
that if he did not confess his guilt, it had been decided not to keep
him in the school any longer, and that a letter would be written to the
lady who interested herself in him--Mme. Darbel was the name which she
had given--to tell her to come after him.
The child made no reply and allowed himself to be taken to his little
room, where he had been kept a prisoner. Upon the morrow he had
disappeared. He had run away. He had felt that the principal, to whose
care he had been entrusted during the earliest years of his childhood
(for in all his little life he could remember no other home than the
school), and who had always been so kind to him, was no longer his
friend, since he believed him guilty of theft. And he could see no
reason why the Lady in Black would not believe it, too--that he was a
thief. To appear as a thief in the sight of the Lady in Black! He would
far rather have died.
And he made his escape from the place by climbing over the wall of the
garden at night. He rushed to the canal, sobbing, and, with a prayer,
uttered as much to the Lady in Black as to God Himself, threw himself
in the water. Happily, in his despair, the poor child had forgotten
that he knew how to swim.
If I have reported this passage in the life of Rouletabille at some
length, it is because it seems to me that it is all important to the
thorough comprehension of his future. At that time, of course, he was
ignorant that he was the son of Larsan. Rouletabille, even as a child
of nine years, could not without agony harbor the idea that the Lady
in Black might believe him to be a thief, and thus, when the time came
that he imagined--an imagination too well founded, alas!--that he was
bound by ties of blood to Larsan, what infinite misery he experienced!
His mother, in hearing of the crime of which he had been accused,
must have felt that the criminal instincts of the father were coming
to light in the son, and, perhaps--thought more cruel than death
itself--she may have rejoiced in believing him dead.
For everyone believed him dead. They found his footsteps leading to
the canal, and they fished out his cap. How had he lived after leaving
the school? In a most singular fashion. After swimming to dry land
and making up his mind to fly the country, the lad, while they were
searching for him everywhere in the canal and out of it, devised a most
original plan for travelling to a distance without being disturbed. He
had not read that most interesting tale, _The Stolen Letter_. His
own invention served him. He reasoned the thing out, as he always did.
He knew--for he had often heard them told by the heroes
themselves--many stories of little rascals who had ran away from their
parents in search of adventures, hiding themselves by day in the fields
and the wood, and travelling by night--only to find themselves speedily
captured by the gendarmes, or forced to return home because they had no
money and no food, and dared not ask for anything to eat along the road
which they followed, and which was too well guarded to admit of their
escape if they applied for aid. Our little Rouletabille slept at night
like everyone else, and travelled in broad daylight, without hiding
himself. But, after having dried his garments (the warm weather was
coming on, and he did not suffer from cold), he tore them to tatters.
He made rags of them, which barely covered him, and begged in the open
streets, dirty and unkempt, holding out his hands and declaring to
passers-by that if he did not bring home any money his parents would
beat him. And everyone took him for some gypsy child, hordes of which
constantly roamed through the locality. Soon came the time of wild
strawberries. He gathered the fruit and sold it in little baskets of
leaves. And he assured me, in telling the story, that if it had not
been for the terrible thought that the Lady in Black must believe that
he was a thief, that time would have been the happiest of his life. His
astuteness and natural courage stood him well in stead through these
wanderings, which lasted for several months. Where was he going? To
Marseilles. This was his plan:
He had seen in his illustrated geography views of the Midi, and he had
never looked at those pictures without breathing a sigh and wishing
that he might some day visit that enchanted country. Through his
gypsy-like manner of living, he had made the acquaintance of a little
caravan load of Romanies, who were following the same route as himself,
and who were journeying to Ste. Marie’s of the Sea to render homage to
a new king of their tribe. The lad had an opportunity to render them
some small service, and finding him a pleasant, well-mannered little
fellow, these people, not being in the habit of asking everyone whom
they met for his history, desired to know nothing more about him. They
believed that, on account of ill treatment, the child had run away from
some troop of wandering mountebanks, and they invited him to travel
with them. Thus he arrived in the Midi.
In the neighborhood of Arles, he separated himself from his travelling
companions, and at last came to Marseilles. There was his paradise!
Eternal summer--and the port.
The port was the favorite resort of all the gamins of the locality,
and this fact was the greatest safeguard for Rouletabille. He roamed
over the docks as he chose, and served himself according to the
measure of his needs, which were not great. For example, he made of
himself an “orange fisher.” It was at the time that he exercised this
lucrative calling that, one beautiful morning upon the quay, he made
the acquaintance of M. Gaston Leroux, a journalist from Paris, and this
acquaintance was destined to have such an influence upon the future of
Rouletabille that I do not consider it out of place to transcribe here
in full the article in which the editor of _Le Matin_ recorded
that first memorable interview.
THE LITTLE ORANGE FISHER.
As the sun, piercing through the cloudless heavens, struck with its
ardent rays the golden robe of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, I descended
toward the quay. The scene which met my eyes was one which was worth
going far to see. Townfolk, sailors and workmen were moving about,
the former idly looking on, while the others tugged at the pulleys
and drew up the cables of their vessels. The great merchant vessels
glided like huge beasts of burden between the tower of St. Jean and
the fort of St. Nicholas, caressing the sparkling waters of the Old
Port in their onward motion. Side by side, shoulder to shoulder, the
smaller barks seemed to hold out their arms to each other, to throw
aside their veils of mist and to dance upon the water. Beside them,
tired with the long journey, worn out from ploughing for so many days
and nights over unknown seas, the heavy laden East Indiamen rested
peacefully, lifting their great, motionless sails in rags toward the
skies.
My eyes, sweeping swiftly over the scene through the forest of masts
and sails paused at the tower which commemorated the fact that it was
twenty-five centuries since the children of Ancient Phœnicia first
cast anchor upon this happy shore, and that they had come by the water
ways of Ionia. Then my attention returned to the border of the quay,
and I perceived the little orange fisher.
He was standing erect, clad in the rags of a man’s coat which hung
down almost to his feet, bareheaded and barefooted, with blonde curly
locks and black eyes, and I should think that he was about nine years
old. A string passed around his shoulder supported a big sailcloth
sack. His left hand rested on his waist and his right hand held a
stick three times as tall as himself, which was surmounted by a little
wooden hook. The child stood motionless and lost in thought. When I
asked him what he was doing there, he told me that he was an orange
fisher.
He seemed very proud of being an orange fisher and did not ask me for
a penny, as the little vagabonds of the neighborhood are accustomed to
demand toll of every bystander. I spoke to him again, but this time
he made no answer, for he was too intent on watching the water. On
one side of us was the beautiful steamer Fides, in from Castellmare
and on the other a three masted schooner from Genoa. Further off were
two ships loaded with fruits which had just arrived from Baleares
that morning, and I saw that they were spilling a part of their
cargo. Oranges were bobbing up and down upon the water and the light
current sent them in our direction. My “fisher” leaped into a little
canoe, came quickly to the vessel, and, armed with his stick and hook,
waited. Then he began his gathering. The hook on his stick brought him
one orange, then a second, a third and a fourth. They disappeared in
the sack. The boy gathered a fifth, jumped upon the quay and tore open
the golden fruit. He plunged his little teeth in the pulp and devoured
it in an instant.
“You have a good appetite.” I told him.
“Monsieur,” he replied, flushing slightly as he spoke, “I don’t care
for any food but fruit.”
“That is a very good diet,” I replied as gravely as he had spoken.
“But what do you do when there are no oranges?”
“I pick up coal.”
[Illustration: He stood erect, wrapped in the rags of a long coat
which hung about his legs, bareheaded and barefooted.]
And his little hand, diving into the sack, brought out an enormous
piece of coal.
The orange juice had rolled down his chin to his coat. The coat had a
pocket. The little fellow took a clean handkerchief from this pocket
and carefully wiped both chin and coat. Then he proudly put the
handkerchief back.
“What is your father’s work?” I asked.
“He is poor.”
“Yes, but what does he do?”
The orange fisher shrugged his shoulders.
“He doesn’t do anything, he is poor.”
My inquiries into his family affairs did not seem to please him. He
turned away from the quay and I followed him. We came in a moment to
the “shelter,” a little square of sea which holds the small pleasure
yachts--the neat little boats all polished wood and brass, the neat
little sailors in their irreproachable toilettes. My ragamuffin looked
at them with the eye of a connoisseur and seemed to find a keen
enjoyment in the spectacle. A new yacht had just been launched and her
immaculate sail looked like a white veil against the blue sky.
“Isn’t it pretty?” exclaimed my little companion.
The next moment he fell over a board covered with fresh tar and when
he picked himself up, he looked with dismay at the stain on his coat
which seemed to be his proudest possession. What a disaster! He looked
as if he could have burst into tears. But quick as thought he drew out
his handkerchief and rubbed and rubbed the spot, then he looked at me
piteously and said:
“Monsieur, are there any other stains? Did I get anything on my back?”
I assured him that he had not, and with an expression of satisfaction,
he put the handkerchief back in his pocket once more.
A few steps further on, upon the walk which stretches in front of the
red and yellow, and blue houses, the windows of which are brave with
wares of many kinds, we found an oyster stand. Upon the little tables
were displayed piles of oysters in their shells, and flasks of vinegar.
When we passed by the oyster stand, as the fish appeared fresh and
appetizing, I said to the orange fisher.
“If you cared for anything to eat except fruit, I might ask you to
have some oysters with me.”
His black eyes glistened and we sat down together to eat our oysters.
The merchant opened them for us while we waited. He started to bring
us vinegar, but my companion stopped him with an imperious gesture.
He opened his bag carefully and triumphantly produced a lemon. The
lemon, having been in close contact with the bit of coal, might have
passed for black itself. But my guest took out his handkerchief and
wiped it off. Then he cut the fruit and offered me half, but I like
oysters without other flavor, so I declined with thanks.
After our luncheon we went back to the quay. The orange fisher asked
me for a cigarette and lighted it with a match which he had in another
pocket of his coat.
Then, the cigarette between his lips, puffing rings toward the sky
like a man, the little creature threw himself down on the ground and
with his eyes fixed upon the statue of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, took
the very pose of the boy who is the most beautiful ornament of the
Brussels tower. He did not lose a line of the attitude, and seemed
very proud of the fact and apparently desired to play the part exactly.
Upon the following day Joseph Josephin met M. Gaston Leroux once more
upon the quay, and the man handed him a newspaper which he carried
in his hand. The boy read the article pointed out to him, and the
journalist gave him a bright new 100-sous piece. Rouletabille made no
difficulties about accepting it, and seemed to even find the gift a
natural one. “I take your money,” he said to Gaston Leroux, “because
we are collaborators.” With his hundred sous he bought himself a fine
new bootblack’s box and installed himself in business opposite the
Bregaillon. For two years he polished the boots of those who came to
eat the traditional bouillabaisse at this hostelry. When he was not at
work, he would sit on his box and read. With the feeling of ownership
which his box and his business had brought him, ambition had entered
his mind. He had received too good an education and had been too well
instructed in rudimentary things not to understand that if he did not
himself finish what others had begun for him, he would be deprived of
the best chance which he had of making for himself a place in the
world.
His customers grew interested in the little bootblack, who always had
on his box some work of history or mathematics, and a harness maker
became so attached to him that he took him into his shop.
Soon Rouletabille was promoted to the dignity of working in leather,
and was able to save. At the age of sixteen years, having a little
money in his pocket, he took the train for Paris. What did he intend to
do there? To look for the Lady in Black.
Not one day had passed without his having thought of the mysterious
visitor to the parlor of the boarding school, and, although no one
had ever told him that she lived in Paris, he was persuaded that no
other city in the world was worthy to contain a lady who wore so sweet
a perfume. And then his little schoolmates, who had been able to see
her form when she glided out of the parlor, had often said: “See! the
Parisienne is here again to-day!” It would have been difficult to
exactly define the ideas in Rouletabille’s head, and perhaps he himself
scarcely knew what they were. His longing was merely to see the Lady
in Black--to watch her reverently--at a distance, as a devotee watches
the image of a saint. Would he dare to speak to her? The importance of
the accusation of theft which had been brought against him had only
grown greater in Rouletabille’s imagination as time had gone by, and
he believed that it would always be a barrier between himself and the
Lady in Black, which he had not the right to try to throw down. Perhaps
even--but, come what might, he longed to see her. That was the only
thing of which he was sure.
As soon as he reached the capital, he looked up M. Gaston Leroux, and
recalled himself to the latter’s memory, telling him that, although
he felt no particular liking for the life, which he considered rather
a lazy one for a man who liked to be up and doing, he had decided to
become a journalist. And he fairly demanded that his old acquaintance
should at once give him a trial as a reporter.
Leroux tried to turn the youth from his project. At last, tired of his
persistent requests, the editor said:
“Well, my lad, since you have nothing special to do just now, go and
find the left foot of the body in the Rue Oberkampf.”
And with these words, M. Leroux turned away, leaving poor Rouletabille
standing there with half a dozen young reporters tittering around him.
But the boy was not daunted in the least. He searched through the files
of the paper and found out that the _Epoch_ was offering a large
reward to the person who would bring to its office the foot which was
missing from the mutilated body of a woman, which had been found in the
Rue Oberkampf.
The rest we know. In “The Mystery of the Yellow Room,” I have told
how Rouletabille succeeded on this occasion, and in what manner there
revealed itself to him his own singular calling--that of always
beginning to reason a matter out from the point where others had
finished.
I have told, too, by what chance he was led one evening to the Elysee,
where he inhaled as he passed by the perfume of the Lady in Black. He
realized then that it was Mlle. Stangerson who had been his visitor at
the school, and for whom he had been seeking so long. What more need I
add? Why speak of the sensations which his knowledge as to the wearer
of the perfume aroused in the heart of Rouletabille during the events
at the Glandier, and, above all, after his trip to America? They may be
easily guessed. How simple a thing now to understand his hesitations
and his whims! The proofs brought by him from Cincinnati in regard
to the child of the woman who had been Jean Roussel’s wife had been
sufficiently explicit to awaken in his mind a suspicion that he himself
might be that child, but not enough so to render him certain of the
fact. However, his instinct drew him so strongly to the professor’s
daughter that he could scarcely resist his longing to throw himself
into her arms and press her to his heart and cry out to her: “You are
my mother! you are my mother!”
And he fled from her presence just as he had fled from the vestry on
the day of her wedding, in order that there should not escape from
him any sign of the secret tenderness that had burned in his breast
through so many long years. For horrible thoughts dwelt in his mind.
Suppose he were to make himself known to her, and she were to repulse
him--cast him off--turn from him in horror--from him, the little thief
of the boarding school--the son of Roussel--Ballmeyer--the heir of
the crimes of Larsan! Suppose she were to order him to get out of her
sight, never to come near her again, nor to breathe the same air which
brought back to him, whenever he came near her, the perfume of the Lady
in Black! Ah, how he had fought, on account of these frightful visions,
to restrain himself from yielding to the almost overwhelming impulse
to ask each time that he came near her, “Is it you? Are you the Lady
in Black?” As to her, she had seemed fond of him from the first, but,
doubtless, that was because of the Glandier affair. If she were really
the Lady in Black, she must believe that the child whom he had been was
dead. And if it were not she--if by some fatality which set at naught
both his instincts and his powers of reasoning, it were not she! Could
he, through any imprudence, risk having her discover that he had fled
from the school at Eu under ban as a thief? No, no--not that! She had
often said to him:
“Where were you brought up, my boy? What school did you attend when you
were a child?” And he had replied: “I was in school at Bordeaux.”
He might as well have answered, “At Pekin.”
However, this torture could not last always, he told himself. If it
were she, he would know how to say things to her that must open her
heart. Anything would be better than to be sure that she was not the
Lady in Black, but some stranger who had never held him to her heart.
But he must be certain--certain beyond any doubt, and he knew how to
place himself in the presence of his memories of the Lady in Black,
just as a dog is sure of finding its master. The simile which presented
itself quite naturally to his imagination was simply that of “following
the scent.” And this led us, under the circumstances which I have
narrated, to Trepot and to Eu. However, it is by no means certain that
decisive results would have been gained from this expedition--at least
in the eyes of a third person, like myself--had it not been for the
influence of the odor--if the letter from Mathilde, which I had handed
to Rouletabille in the train, had not suddenly, with its faint, sweet
perfume, brought to us directly the evidence which we were seeking. I
have never read this letter. It is a document so sacred in the eyes
of my friend, that other eyes will never behold it, but I know that
the gentle reproaches which it contained for the boy’s rudeness and
lack of confidence in the writer, had been so tender that Rouletabille
could no longer deceive himself, even if the daughter of Professor
Stangerson had not concluded the note with a final sentence, through
which throbbed the heart of a despairing mother, and which said that
“the interest which she felt in him arose less from the services he had
rendered her, than because of the memories which she had of a little
boy, the son of a friend, whom she had loved very dearly, and who had
killed himself ‘like a little man with a broken heart’ at the age of
nine years, and whom Rouletabille greatly resembled.”