strong man cares nothing for life._” It remained to be seen.
Boris felt a great swimming in his head; but he nerved himself and,
hiding his agitation, “Is it true you’ve signed?” he asked.
“Here! You can see for yourself.” And George held out the paper, so
that Boris could read the three names on it.
“Have you ...” he began timidly.
“Have we what?...” interrupted George, so brutally that Boris did not
dare go on. What he wanted to ask, as George perfectly understood, was
whether the others had bound themselves likewise, and whether one could
be sure that they wouldn’t funk either.
“No, nothing,” said he; but from that moment he began to doubt them;
he began to suspect they were saving themselves and not playing fair.
“Well and good!” thought he then; “what do I care if they funk? I’ll
show them that I’ve got more pluck than they have.” Then, looking
George straight in the eyes: “Tell Ghéri he can count on me.”
“Then you’ll sign?”
Oh! there was no need now--he had given his word. He said simply: “As
you please.” And, in a large painstaking hand, he inscribed his name on
the accursed paper, underneath the signatures of the three Strong Men.
George brought the paper back in triumph to the two others. They agreed
that Boris had behaved very pluckily. They took counsel together.
Of course, the pistol wouldn’t be loaded! For that matter there were no
cartridges. Phiphi still had fears, because he had heard it said that
sometimes a too violent emotion is sufficient in itself to cause death.
His father, he declared, knew of a case when a pretence execution....
But George shut him up:
“Your father’s a dago!”
No, Ghéridanisol would not load the pistol. There was no need to. The
cartridge which La Pérouse had one day put into it, La Pérouse had not
taken out. This is what Ghéridanisol had made sure of, though he took
good care not to tell the others.
They put the names in a hat; four little pieces of paper all alike, and
folded in the same manner. Ghéridanisol, who was “to draw,” had taken
care to write Boris’s name a second time on a fifth, which he kept in
his hand; and, as though by chance, his was the name to come out. Boris
suspected they were cheating; but he said nothing. What was the use of
protesting? He knew that he was lost. He would not have lifted a finger
to defend himself; and even if the lot had fallen on one of the others,
he would have offered to take his place--so great was his despair.
“Poor old boy! you’ve no luck,” George thought it his duty to say. The
tone of his voice rang so false, that Boris looked at him sadly.
“It was bound to happen,” he said.
After that, it was agreed there should be a rehearsal. But as there was
a risk of being caught, they settled not to make use of the pistol.
They would only take it out of its case at the last moment, for the
_real_ performance. Every care must be taken not to give the alarm.
On that day, therefore, they contented themselves with fixing the hour,
and the place, which they marked on the floor with a bit of chalk. It
was in the class-room, on the right hand of the master’s desk, in a
recess, formed by a disused door, which had formerly opened on to the
entrance hall. As for the hour, it was to be during preparation. It was
to take place in front of all the other boys; it would make them sit up.
They went through the rehearsal when the room was empty, the three
conspirators being the only witnesses. But in reality there was not
much point in this rehearsal. They simply established the fact that,
from Boris’s seat to the spot marked with chalk, there were exactly
twelve paces.
“If you aren’t in a panic, you’ll not take one more,” said George.
“I shan’t be in a panic,” said Boris, who was outraged by this
incessant doubt. The little boy’s firmness began to impress the other
three. Phiphi considered they ought to stop at that. But Ghéridanisol
was determined to carry on the joke to the very end.
“Well! to-morrow,” he said, with a peculiar smile, which just curled
the corner of his lip.
“Suppose we kissed him!” cried Phiphi, enthusiastically. He was
thinking of the accolade of the knights of old; and he suddenly flung
his arms round Boris’s neck. It was all Boris could do to keep back his
tears when Phiphi planted two hearty, childish kisses on his cheeks.
Neither George nor Ghéri followed Phiphi’s example; George thought his
behaviour rather unmanly. As for Ghéri, what the devil did he care!...
XIX
BORIS
THE next afternoon, the bell assembled all the boys in the class-room.
Boris, Ghéridanisol, George and Philippe were seated on the same
bench. Ghéridanisol pulled out his watch and put it down between Boris
and him. The hands marked five thirty-five. Preparation began at
five o’clock and lasted till six. Five minutes to six was the moment
fixed upon for Boris to put an end to himself, just before the boys
dispersed; it was better so; it would be easier to escape immediately
after. And soon Ghéridanisol said to Boris, in a half whisper, and
without looking at him, which gave his words, he considered, a more
fatal ring:
“Old boy, you’ve only got a quarter of an hour more.”
Boris remembered a story-book he had read long ago, in which, when the
robbers were on the point of putting a woman to death, they told her
to say her prayers, so as to convince her she must get ready to die.
As a foreigner who, on arriving at the frontier of the country he is
leaving, prepares his papers, so Boris searched his heart and head
for prayers, and could find none; but he was at once so tired and so
over-strung, that he did not trouble much. He tried to think, but could
not. The pistol weighed in his pocket; he had no need to put his hand
on it to feel it there.
“Only ten minutes more.”
George, sitting on Ghéridanisol’s left, watched the scene out of the
corner of his eye, pretending all the while not to see. He was working
feverishly. The class had never been so quiet. La Pérouse hardly knew
his young rascals and for the first time was able to breathe. Philippe,
however, was not at ease; Ghéridanisol frightened him; he was not very
confident the game mightn’t turn out badly; his heart was bursting; it
hurt him, and every now and then he heard himself heave a deep sigh.
At last, he could bear it no longer, and tearing a half sheet of paper
out of his copy-book (he was preparing an examination, but the lines
danced before his eyes, and the facts and dates in his head) scribbled
on it very quickly: “Are you quite sure the pistol isn’t loaded?”; then
gave the note to George, who passed it to Ghéri. But Ghéri, after he
had read it, raised his shoulders, without even glancing at Phiphi;
then, screwing the note up into a ball, sent it rolling with a flick
of his finger till it landed on the very spot which had been marked
with chalk. After which, satisfied with the excellence of his aim, he
smiled. This smile, which began by being deliberate, remained fixed
till the end of the scene; it seemed to have been imprinted on his
features.
“Five minutes more.”
He said it almost aloud. Even Philippe heard. He was overwhelmed by a
sickening and intolerable anxiety, and though the hour was just coming
to an end, he feigned an urgent need to leave the room--or was perhaps
seized with perfectly genuine colic. He raised his hand and snapped
his fingers, as boys do when they want to ask permission from the
master; then, without waiting for La Pérouse to answer, he darted from
his bench. In order to reach the door he had to pass in front of the
master’s desk; he almost ran, tottering as he did so.
Almost immediately after Philippe had left the room, Boris rose in his
turn. Young Passavant, who was sitting behind him, working diligently,
raised his eyes. He told Séraphine afterwards that Boris was
frightfully pale; but that is what is always said on these occasions.
As a matter of fact, he stopped looking almost at once and plunged
again into his work. He reproached himself for it bitterly later. If he
had understood what was going on, he would certainly have been able to
prevent it; so he said afterwards, weeping. But he had no suspicions.
So Boris stepped forward to the appointed place; he walked slowly, like
an automaton--or rather like a somnambulist. He had grasped the pistol
in his right hand, but still kept it in the pocket of his coat; he
took it out only at the last moment. The fatal place was, as I have
said, in the recess made by a disused door on the right of the master’s
desk, so that the master could only see it by leaning forward.
La Pérouse leant forward. And at first he did not understand what his
grandson was doing, though the strange solemnity of his actions was of
a nature to alarm him. Speaking as loudly and as authoritatively as he
could, he began:
“Master Boris, kindly return at once to your....”
But he suddenly recognized the pistol: Boris had just raised it to his
temple. La Pérouse understood and immediately turned icy cold as if
the blood were freezing in his veins. He tried to rise and run towards
Boris--stop him--call to him.... A kind of hoarse rattle came from his
throat; he remained rooted to the spot, paralytic, shaken by a violent
trembling.
The shot went off. Boris did not drop at once. The body stayed upright
for a moment, as though caught in the corner of the recess; then the
head, falling on to the shoulder, bore it down; it collapsed.
When the police made their enquiry a little later, they were astonished
not to find the pistol near Boris’s body--near the place, I mean, where
he fell, for the little corpse was carried away almost immediately and
laid upon a bed. In the confusion which followed, while Ghéridanisol
had remained in his place, George had leapt over his bench and
succeeded in making away with the weapon, without anyone’s noticing
him; while the others were bending over Boris, he had first of all
pushed it backwards with his foot, seized it with a rapid movement,
hidden it under his coat, and then surreptitiously passed it to
Ghéridanisol. Everyone’s attention being fixed on a single point, no
one noticed Ghéridanisol either, and he was able to run unperceived
to La Pérouse’s room and put the pistol back in the place from which
he had taken it. When, in the course of a later investigation, the
police discovered the pistol in its case, it might have seemed
doubtful whether it had ever left it, or whether Boris had used it,
had Ghéridanisol only remembered to remove the empty cartridge. He
certainly lost his head a little--a passing weakness, for which, I
regret to say, he reproached himself far more than for the crime
itself. And yet it was this weakness which saved him. For when he came
down and mixed with the others, at the sight of Boris’s dead body
being carried away, he was seized with a fit of trembling, which was
obvious to everyone--a kind of nervous attack--which Madame Vedel and
Rachel, who had hurried to the spot, mistook for a sign of excessive
emotion. One prefers to suppose anything, rather than the inhumanity
of so young a creature; and when Ghéridanisol protested his innocence,
he was believed. Phiphi’s little note, which George had passed him and
which he had flicked away with his finger, was found later under a
bench and also contributed to help him. True, he remained guilty, as
did George and Phiphi, of having lent himself to a cruel game, but he
would not have done so, he declared, if he had thought the weapon was
loaded. George was the only one who remained convinced of his entire
responsibility.
George was not so corrupted but that his admiration for Ghéridanisol
yielded at last to horror. When he reached home that evening, he flung
himself into his mother’s arms; and Pauline had a burst of gratitude to
God, who by means of this dreadful tragedy had brought her son back to
her.
XX
EDOUARD’S JOURNAL
WITHOUT exactly pretending to explain anything, I should not like to
put forward any fact which was not accounted for by a sufficiency of
motive. And for that reason I shall not make use of little Boris’s
suicide for my _Counterfeiters_; I have too much difficulty in
understanding it. And then, I dislike police court items. There is
something peremptory, irrefutable, brutal, outrageously real about
them.... I accept reality coming as a proof in support of my thought,
but not as preceding it. It displeases me to be surprised. Boris’s
suicide seems to me an _indecency_, for I was not expecting it.
A little cowardice enters into every suicide, notwithstanding La
Pérouse, who no doubt thinks his grandson was more courageous than he.
If the child could have foreseen the disaster which his dreadful action
has brought upon the Vedels, there would be no excuse for him. Azaïs
has been obliged to break up the school--for the time being, he says;
but Rachel is afraid of ruin. Four families have already removed their
children. I have not been able to dissuade Pauline from taking George
away, so that she may keep him at home with her; especially as the
boy has been profoundly shaken by his schoolfellow’s death, and seems
inclined to reform. What repercussions this calamity has had! Even
Olivier is touched by it. Armand, notwithstanding his cynical airs,
feels such anxiety at the ruin which is threatening his family, that he
has offered to devote the time that Passavant leaves him, to working in
the school, for old La Pérouse has become manifestly incapable of doing
what is required of him.
I dreaded seeing him again. It was in his little bedroom on the second
floor of the pension, that he received me. He took me by the arm at
once, and with a mysterious, almost a smiling air, which greatly
surprised me, for I was expecting tears:
“That noise,” he said, “you know ... the noise I told you about the
other day....”
“Well?”
“It has stopped--finished. I don’t hear it any more, however much I
listen.”
As one humours a child, “I wager,” said I, “that now you regret it.”
“Oh! no; no.... It’s such a rest. I am so much in need of silence. Do
you know what I’ve been thinking? That in this life we can’t know what
real silence is. Even our blood makes a kind of continual noise; we
don’t notice it, because we have become accustomed to it ever since
our childhood.... But I think there are things in life which we can’t
succeed in hearing--harmonies ... because this noise drowns them. Yes,
I think it’s only after our death that we shall really be able to hear.”
“You told me you didn’t believe....”
“In the immortality of the soul? Did I tell you that?... Yes; I suppose
I did. But I don’t believe the contrary either, you know.”
And as I was silent, he went on, nodding his head and with a
sententious air:
“Have you noticed that in this world God always keeps silent? It’s
only the devil who speaks. Or at least, at least ...” he went on, “...
however carefully we listen, it’s only the devil we can succeed in
hearing. We have not the ears to hear the voice of God. The word of
God! Have you ever wondered what it is like?... Oh! I don’t mean the
word that has been transferred into human language.... You remember the
Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word.’ I have often thought that the
word of God was the whole of creation. But the devil seized hold of it.
His noise drowns the voice of God. Oh! tell me, don’t you think that
all the same it’s God who will end by having the last word?... And if,
after death, time no longer exists, if we enter at once into Eternity,
do you think we shall be able to hear God then ... directly?”
A kind of transport began to shake him, as if he were going to fall
down in convulsions, and he was suddenly seized by a fit of sobbing.
“No, no!” he cried, confusedly; “the devil and God are one and the
same; they work together. We try to believe that everything bad on
earth comes from the devil, but it’s because, if we didn’t, we should
never find strength to forgive God. He plays with us like a cat,
tormenting a mouse.... And then afterwards he wants us to be grateful
to him as well. Grateful for what? for what?...”
Then, leaning towards me:
“Do you know the most horrible thing of all that he has done?...
Sacrificed his own son to save us. His son! his son!... Cruelty! that’s
the principal attribute of God.”
He flung himself on his bed and turned his face to the wall. For a few
moments a spasmodic shudder ran through him; then, as he seemed to have
fallen asleep, I left him.
He had not said a word to me about Boris; but I thought that in this
mystical despair was to be seen the expression of a grief too blinding
to be looked at steadfastly.
I hear from Olivier that Bernard has gone back to his father’s; and,
indeed, it was the best thing he could do. When he learnt, from a
chance meeting with Caloub, that the old judge was not well, Bernard
followed the impulse of his heart. We shall meet to-morrow evening, for
Profitendieu has invited me to dinner with Molinier, Pauline and the
two boys. I feel very curious to know Caloub.
A NOTE ON THE TYPE IN
WHICH THIS BOOK IS SET
_This book is set_ (_on the Linotype_) _in Elzevir No. 3, a
French Old Style. For the modern revival of this excellent face we are
indebted to Gustave Mayeur of Paris, who reproduced it in 1878, basing
his designs, he says, on types used in a book which was printed by the
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best work appearing between about 1590 and 1680. Although the Elzevirs
were not themselves type founders, they utilized the services of
the best type designers of their time, notably Van Dijk, Garamond,
and Sanlecque. Many of their books were small, or, as we should say
now, “pocket” editions, of the classics, and for these volumes they
developed a type face which is open and readable but relatively narrow
in body, although in no sense condensed, thus permitting a large amount
of copy to be set in limited space without impairing legibility._
SET UP, ELECTROTYPED, PRINTED AND
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=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=
Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced
quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and
otherwise left unbalanced.
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
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