IN THE ABYSS
"No, no, no!" cried Patrice. "I won't stand this!"
He flung himself against the windows and doors, took up an iron dog from
the fender and banged it against the wooden doors and the stone walls.
Barren efforts! They were the same which his father had made before him;
and they could only result in the same mockery of impotent scratches on
the wood and the stone.
"Oh, Coralie, Coralie!" he cried in his despair. "It's I who have
brought you to this! What an abyss I've dragged you into! It was madness
to try to fight this out by myself! I ought to have called in those who
understand, who are accustomed to it! . . . No, I was going to be so
clever! . . . Forgive me, Coralie."
She had sunk into a chair. He, almost on his knees beside her, threw his
arms around her, imploring her pardon.
She smiled, to calm him:
"Come, dear," she said, gently, "don't lose courage. Perhaps we are
mistaken. . . . After all, there's nothing to show that it is not all an
accident."
"The date!" he said. "The date of this year, of this day, written in
another hand! It was your mother and my father who wrote the first . . .
but this one, Coralie, this one proves premeditation, and an implacable
determination to do away with us."
She shuddered. Still she persisted in trying to comfort him:
"It may be. But yet it is not so bad as all that. We have enemies, but
we have friends also. They will look for us."
"They will look for us, but how can they ever find us, Coralie? We took
steps to prevent them from guessing where we were going; and not one of
them knows this house."
"Old Siméon does."
"Siméon came and placed his wreath, but some one else came with him,
some one who rules him and who has perhaps already got rid of him, now
that Siméon has played his part."
"And what then, Patrice?"
He felt that she was overcome and began to be ashamed of his own
weakness:
"Well," he said, mastering himself, "we must just wait. After all, the
attack may not materialize. The fact of our being locked in does not
mean that we are lost. And, even so, we shall make a fight for it, shall
we not? You need not think that I am at the end of my strength or my
resources. Let us wait, Coralie, and act."
The main thing was to find out whether there was any entrance to the
house which could allow of an unforeseen attack. After an hour's search
they took up the carpet and found tiles which showed nothing unusual.
There was certainly nothing except the door, and, as they could not
prevent this from being opened, since it opened outwards, they heaped
up most of the furniture in front of it, thus forming a barricade which
would protect them against a surprise.
Then Patrice cocked his two revolvers and placed them beside him, in
full sight.
"This will make us easy in our minds," he said. "Any enemy who appears
is a dead man."
But the memory of the past bore down upon them with all its awful
weight. All their words and all their actions others before them had
spoken and performed, under similar conditions, with the same thoughts
and the same forebodings. Patrice's father must have prepared his
weapons. Coralie's mother must have folded her hands and prayed.
Together they had barricaded the door and together sounded the walls and
taken up the carpet. What an anguish was this, doubled as it was by a
like anguish!
To dispel the horror of the idea, they turned the pages of the books,
works of fiction and others, which their parents had read. On certain
pages, at the end of a chapter or volume, were lines constituting notes
which Patrice's father and Coralie's mother used to write each other.
"_Darling Patrice_,
"I ran in this morning to recreate our life of
yesterday and to dream of our life this afternoon. As
you will arrive before me, you will read these lines.
You will read that I love you. . . ."
And, in another book:
"_My own Coralie_,
"You have this minute gone; I shall not see you until
to-morrow and I do not want to leave this haven where
our love has tasted such delights without once more
telling you . . ."
They looked through most of the books in this way, finding, however,
instead of the clues for which they hoped, nothing but expressions of
love and affection. And they spent more than two hours waiting and
dreading what might happen.
"There will be nothing," said Patrice. "And perhaps that is the most
awful part of it, for, if nothing occurs, it will mean that we are
doomed not to leave this room. And, in that case . . ."
Patrice did not finish the sentence. Coralie understood. And together
they received a vision of the death by starvation that seemed to
threaten them. But Patrice exclaimed:
"No, no, we have not that to fear. No. For people of our age to die of
hunger takes several days, three or four days or more. And we shall be
rescued before then."
"How?" asked Coralie.
"How? Why, by our soldiers, by Ya-Bon, by M. Masseron! They will be
uneasy if we do not come home to-night."
"You yourself said, Patrice, that they cannot know where we are."
"They'll find out. It's quite simple. There is only the lane between the
two gardens. Besides, everything we do is set down in my diary, which is
in the desk in my room. Ya-Bon knows of its existence. He is bound to
speak of it to M. Masseron. And then . . . and then there is Siméon.
What will have become of him? Surely they will notice his movements?
And won't he give a warning of some kind?"
But words were powerless to comfort them. If they were not to die of
hunger, then the enemy must have contrived another form of torture.
Their inability to do anything kept them on the rack. Patrice began his
investigations again. A curious accident turned them in a new direction.
On opening one of the books through which they had not yet looked, a
book published in 1895, Patrice saw two pages turned down together. He
separated them and read a letter addressed to him by his father:
"_Patrice, my dear Son_,
"If ever chance places this note before your eyes, it
will prove that I have met with a violent death which
has prevented my destroying it. In that case, Patrice,
look for the truth concerning my death on the wall of
the studio, between the two windows. I shall perhaps
have time to write it down."
The two victims had therefore at that time foreseen the tragic fate in
store for them; and Patrice's father and Coralie's mother knew the
danger which they ran in coming to the lodge. It remained to be seen
whether Patrice's father had been able to carry out his intention.
Between the two windows, as all around the room, was a wainscoting of
varnished wood, topped at a height of six feet by a cornice. Above the
cornice was the plain plastered wall. Patrice and Coralie had already
observed, without paying particular attention to it, that the
wainscoting seemed to have been renewed in this part, because the
varnish of the boards did not have the same uniform color. Using one of
the iron dogs as a chisel, Patrice broke down the cornice and lifted the
first board. It broke easily. Under this plank, on the plaster of the
wall, were lines of writing.
"It's the same method," he said, "as that which old Siméon has since
employed. First write on the walls, then cover it up with wood or
plaster."
He broke off the top of the other boards and in this way brought several
complete lines into view, hurried lines, written in pencil and slightly
worn by time. Patrice deciphered them with the greatest emotion. His
father had written them at a moment when death was stalking at hand. A
few hours later he had ceased to live. They were the evidence of his
death-agony and perhaps too an imprecation against the enemy who was
killing him and the woman he loved.
Patrice read, in an undertone:
"I am writing this in order that the scoundrel's plot
may not be achieved to the end and in order to ensure
his punishment. Coralie and I are no doubt going to
perish, but at least we shall not die without
revealing the cause of our death.
"A few days ago, he said to Coralie, 'You spurn my
love, you load me with your hatred. So be it. But I
shall kill you both, your lover and you, in such a
manner that I can never be accused of the death, which
will look like suicide. Everything is ready. Beware,
Coralie.'
"Everything was, in fact, ready. He did not know me,
but he must have known that Coralie used to meet
somebody here daily; and it was in this lodge that he
prepared our tomb.
"What manner of death ours will be we do not know.
Lack of food, no doubt. It is four hours since we were
imprisoned. The door closed upon us, a heavy door
which he must have placed there last night. All the
other openings, doors and windows alike, are stopped
up with blocks of stone laid and cemented since our
last meeting. Escape is impossible. What is to become
of us?"
The uncovered portion stopped here. Patrice said:
"You see, Coralie, they went through the same horrors as ourselves. They
too dreaded starvation. They too passed through long hours of waiting,
when inaction is so painful; and it was more or less to distract their
thoughts that they wrote those lines."
He went on, after examining the spot:
"They counted, most likely, on what happened, that the man who was
killing them would not read this document. Look, one long curtain was
hung over these two windows and the wall between them, one curtain, as
is proved by the single rod covering the whole distance. After our
parents' death no one thought of drawing it, and the truth remained
concealed until the day when Siméon discovered it and, by way of
precaution, hid it again under a wooden panel and hung up two curtains
in the place of one. In this way everything seemed normal."
Patrice set to work again. A few more lines made their appearance:
"Oh, if I were the only one to suffer, the only one to
die! But the horror of it all is that I am dragging my
dear Coralie with me. She fainted and is lying down
now, prostrate by the fears which she tries so hard to
overcome. My poor darling! I seem already to see the
pallor of death on her sweet face. Forgive me,
dearest, forgive me!"
Patrice and Coralie exchanged glances. Here were the same sentiments
which they themselves felt, the same scruples, the same delicacy, the
same effacement of self in the presence of the other's grief.
"He loved your mother," Patrice murmured, "as I love you. I also am not
afraid of death. I have faced it too often, with a smile! But you,
Coralie, you, for whose sake I would undergo any sort of torture
. . . !"
He began to walk up and down, once more yielding to his anger:
"I shall save you, Coralie, I swear it. And what a delight it will then
be to take our revenge! He shall have the same fate which he was
devising for us. Do you understand, Coralie? He shall die here, here in
this room. Oh, how my hatred will spur me to bring that about!"
He tore down more pieces of boarding, in the hope of learning something
that might be useful to him, since the struggle was being renewed under
exactly similar conditions. But the sentences that followed, like those
which Patrice had just uttered, were oaths of vengeance:
"Coralie, he shall be punished, if not by us, then by
the hand of God. No, his infernal scheme will not
succeed. No, it will never be believed that we had
recourse to suicide to relieve ourselves of an
existence that was built up of happiness and joy. No,
his crime will be known. Hour by hour I shall here set
down the undeniable proofs. . . ."
"Words, words!" cried Patrice, in a tone of exasperation. "Words of
vengeance and sorrow, but never a fact to guide us. Father, will you
tell us nothing to save your Coralie's daughter? If your Coralie
succumbed, let mine escape the disaster, thanks to your aid, father!
Help me! Counsel me!"
But the father answered the son with nothing but more words of challenge
and despair:
"Who can rescue us? We are walled up in this tomb,
buried alive and condemned to torture without being
able to defend ourselves. My revolver lies there, upon
the table. What is the use of it? The enemy does not
attack us. He has time on his side, unrelenting time
which kills of its own strength, by the mere fact that
it is time. Who can rescue us? Who will save my
darling Coralie?"
The position was terrible, and they felt all its tragic horror. It
seemed to them as though they were already dead, once they were enduring
the same trial endured by others and that they were still enduring it
under the same conditions. There was nothing to enable them to escape
any of the phases through which the other two, his father and her
mother, had passed. The similarity between their own and their parents'
fate was so striking that they seemed to be suffering two deaths, and
the second agony was now commencing.
Coralie gave way and began to cry. Moved by her tears, Patrice attacked
the wainscoting with new fury, but its boards, strengthened by
cross-laths, resisted his efforts:
At last he read:
"What is happening? We had an impression that some one
was walking outside, in the garden. Yes, when we put
our ears to the stone wall built in the embrasure of
the window, we thought we heard footsteps. Is it
possible? Oh, if it only were! It would mean the
struggle, at last. Anything rather than the maddening
silence and endless uncertainty!
"That's it! . . . That's it! . . . The sound is
becoming more distinct. . . . It is a different sound,
like that which you make when you dig the ground with
a pick-ax. Some one is digging the ground, not in
front of the house, but on the right, near the
kitchen. . . ."
Patrice redoubled his efforts. Coralie came and helped him. This time he
felt that a corner of the veil was being lifted. The writing went on:
"Another hour, with alternate spells of sound and
silence: the same sound of digging and the same
silence which suggests work that is being continued.
"And then some one entered the hall, one person; he,
evidently. We recognized his step. . . . He walks
without attempting to deaden it. . . . Then he went to
the kitchen, where he worked the same way as before,
with a pick-ax, but on the stones this time. We also
heard the noise of a pane of glass breaking.
"And now he has gone outside again and there is a new
sort of sound, against the house, a sound that seems
to travel up the house as though the wretch had to
climb to a height in order to carry out his plan.
. . ."
Patrice stopped reading and looked at Coralie. Both of them were
listening.
"Hark!" he said, in a low voice.
"Yes, yes," she answered, "I hear. . . . Steps outside the house . . .
in the garden. . . ."
They went to one of the windows, where they had left the casement open
behind the wall of building-stones, and listened. There was really some
one walking; and the knowledge that the enemy was approaching gave them
the same sense of relief that their parents had experienced.
Some one walked thrice round the house. But they did not, like their
parents, recognize the sound of the footsteps. They were those of a
stranger, or else steps that had changed their tread. Then, for a few
minutes, they heard nothing more. And suddenly another sound arose; and,
though in their innermost selves they were expecting it, they were
nevertheless stupefied at hearing it. And Patrice, in a hollow voice,
laying stress upon each syllable, uttered the sentence which his father
had written twenty years before:
"It's the sound which you make when you dig the ground with a pick-ax."
Yes, It must be that. Some one was digging the ground, not in front of
the house, but on the right, near the kitchen.
And so the abominable miracle of the revived tragedy was continuing.
Here again the former act was repeated, a simple enough act in itself,
but one which became sinister because it was one of those which had
already been performed and because it was announcing and preparing the
death once before announced and prepared.
An hour passed. The work went on, paused and went on again. It was like
the sound of a spade at work in a courtyard, when the grave-digger is in
no hurry and takes a rest and then resumes his work.
Patrice and Coralie stood listening side by side, their eyes in each
other's eyes, their hands in each other's hands.
"He's stopping," whispered Patrice.
"Yes," said Coralie; "only I think . . ."
"Yes, Coralie, there's some one in the hall. . . . Oh, we need not
trouble to listen! We have only to remember. There: 'He goes to the
kitchen and digs as he did just now, but on the stones this time.' . . .
And then . . . and then . . . oh, Coralie, the same sound of broken
glass!"
It was memories mingling with the grewsome reality. The present and the
past formed but one. They foresaw events at the very instant when these
took place.
The enemy went outside again; and, forthwith, the sound seemed "to
travel up the house as though the wretch had to climb to a height in
order to carry out his plans."
And then . . . and then what would happen next? They no longer thought
of consulting the inscription on the wall, or perhaps they did not dare.
Their attention was concentrated on the invisible and sometimes
imperceptible deeds that were being accomplished against them outside,
an uninterrupted stealthy effort, a mysterious twenty-year-old plan
whereof each slightest detail was settled as by clockwork!
The enemy entered the house and they heard a rustling at the bottom of
the door, a rustling of soft things apparently being heaped or pushed
against the wood. Next came other vague noises in the two adjoining
rooms, against the walled doors, and similar noises outside, between the
stones of the windows and the open shutters. And then they heard some
one on the roof.
They raised their eyes. This time they felt certain that the last act
was at hand, or at least one of the scenes of the last act. The roof to
them was the framed skylight which occupied the center of the ceiling
and admitted the only daylight that entered the room. And still the same
agonizing question rose to their minds: what was going to happen? Would
the enemy show his face outside the skylight and reveal himself at last?
This work on the roof continued for a considerable time. Footsteps shook
the zinc sheets that covered it, moving between the right-hand side of
the house and the edge of the skylight. And suddenly this skylight, or
rather a part of it, a square containing four panes, was lifted, a very
little way, by a hand which inserted a stick to keep it open.
And the enemy again walked across the roof and went down the side of the
house.
They were almost disappointed and felt such a craving to know the truth
that Patrice once more fell to breaking the boards of the wainscoting,
removing the last pieces, which covered the end of the inscription. And
what they read made them live the last few minutes all over again. The
enemy's return, the rustle against the walls and the walled windows, the
noise on the roof, the opening of the skylight, the method of supporting
it: all this had happened in the same order and, so to speak, within the
same limit of time. Patrice's father and Coralie's mother had undergone
the same impressions. Destiny seemed bent on following the same paths
and making the same movements in seeking the same object.
And the writing went on:
"He is going up again, he is going up again. . . .
There's his footsteps on the roof. . . . He is near
the skylight. . . . Will he look through? . . . Shall
we see his hated face? . . ."
"He is going up again, he is going up again," gasped Coralie, nestling
against Patrice.
The enemy's footsteps were pounding over the zinc.
"Yes," said Patrice, "he is going up as before, without departing from
the procedure followed by the other. Only we do not know whose face will
appear to us. Our parents knew their enemy."
She shuddered at her image of the man who had killed her mother; and she
asked:
"It was he, was it not?"
"Yes, it was he. There is his name, written by my father."
Patrice had almost entirely uncovered the inscription. Bending low, he
pointed with his finger:
"Look. Read the name: Essarès. You can see it down there: it was one of
the last words my father wrote."
And Coralie read:
"The skylight rose higher, a hand lifted it and we saw
. . . we saw, laughing as he looked down on us--oh,
the scoundrel--Essarès! . . . Essarès! . . . And then
he passed something through the opening, something
that came down, that unrolled itself in the middle of
the room, over our heads: a ladder, a rope-ladder.
"We did not understand. It was swinging in front of
us. And then, in the end, I saw a sheet of paper
rolled round the bottom rung and pinned to it. On the
paper, in Essarès' handwriting, are the words, 'Send
Coralie up by herself. Her life shall be saved. I give
her ten minutes to accept. If not . . .'"
"Ah," said Patrice, rising from his stooping posture, "will this also be
repeated? What about the ladder, the rope-ladder, which I found in old
Siméon's cupboard?"
Coralie kept her eyes fixed on the skylight, for the footsteps were
moving around it. Then they stopped. Patrice and Coralie had not a doubt
that the moment had come and that they also were about to see their
enemy. And Patrice said huskily, in a choking voice:
"Who will it be? There are three men who could have played this sinister
part as it was played before. Two are dead, Essarès and my father. And
Siméon, the third, is mad. Is it he, in his madness, who has set the
machine working again? But how are we to imagine that he could have done
it with such precision? No, no, it is the other one, the one who directs
him and who till now has remained in the background."
He felt Coralie's fingers clutching his arm.
"Hush," she said, "here he is!"
"No, no."
"Yes, I'm sure of it."
Her imagination had foretold what was preparing; and in fact, as once
before, the skylight was raised higher. A hand lifted it. And suddenly
they saw a head slipping under the open framework.
It was the head of old Siméon.
"The madman!" Patrice whispered, in dismay. "The madman!"
"But perhaps he isn't mad," she said. "He can't be mad."
She could not check the trembling that shook her.
The man overhead looked down upon them, hidden behind his spectacles,
which allowed no expression of satisfied hatred or joy to show on his
impassive features.
"Coralie," said Patrice, in a low voice, "do what I say. . . . Come.
. . ."
He pushed her gently along, as though he were supporting her and leading
her to a chair. In reality he had but one thought, to reach the table
on which he had placed his revolvers, take one of them and fire.
Siméon remained motionless, like some evil genius come to unloose the
tempest. . . . Coralie could not rid herself of that glance which
weighted upon her.
"No," she murmured, resisting Patrice, as though she feared that his
intention would precipitate the dreaded catastrophe, "no, you mustn't.
. . ."
But Patrice, displaying greater determination, was near his object. One
more effort and his hand would hold the revolver.
He quickly made up his mind, took rapid aim and fired a shot.
The head disappeared from sight.
"Oh," said Coralie, "you were wrong, Patrice! He will take his revenge
on us. . . ."
"No, perhaps not," said Patrice, still holding his revolver. "I may very
well have hit him. The bullet struck the frame of the skylight. But it
may have glanced off, in which case . . ."
They waited hand in hand, with a gleam of hope, which did not last long,
however.
The noise on the roof began again. And then, as before--and this they
really had the impression of not seeing for the first time--as before,
something passed through the opening, something that came down, that
unrolled itself in the middle of the room, a ladder, a rope-ladder, the
very one which Patrice had seen in old Siméon's cupboard.
As before, they looked at it; and they knew so well that everything was
being done over again, that the facts were inexorably, pitilessly linked
together, they were so certain of it that their eyes at once sought the
sheet of paper which must inevitably be pinned to the bottom rung.
It was there, forming a little scroll, dry and discolored and torn at
the edges. It was the sheet of twenty years ago, written by Essarès and
now serving, as before, to convey the same temptation and the same
threat:
"Send Coralie up by herself. Her life shall be saved.
I give her ten minutes to accept. If not . . ."