DEATH AND THE MASK
But this plan was never carried out. Not that I hesitated to put it
into action--I was always determined upon it, and any doubt that came
to me about the existence of the danger to be avoided, arose only when
all chance of realizing my projects had passed.
As long as they were still possible, on the contrary, I awaited with
patience the opportunity of accomplishing them, and I will even admit
that my growing terror ceaselessly urged me to have done with it all.
Everywhere danger showed itself to my hallucinated eyes, and all the
more perfidiously that there was often nothing to be afraid of.
It was easy to see that it was time for me to leave Fonval and I longed
with all my strength to go, but I had resolved to choose the moment
when Lerne should listen to my proposal sympathetically, so that thus I
might only use my threat as a last resource.
And the moment was long in coming. The discovery would not come to
birth. Its failure was undermining the Professor’s health. His
fainting-fits--or rather his experiments, grew more frequent, and were
rapidly weakening him, and his temper suffered in consequence.
Our walks were the one thing which had not lost their power of cheering
him up.
He still kept singing “_Rum fil dum_,” stopping every ten yards to
utter some scientific truth. But the motor-car, of all things, exerted
its magic over the magician, so in spite of the bad result obtained in
the same conditions some months before, I had to make up my mind to
speak to him during the journey in my 80 h. p., and should have done
so--but for the _accident_.
* * * * *
It took place in the woods of Lourcq, three kilometers this side of
Grey, as we were coming back to Fonval from a run to Vouziers.
We were climbing a slight hill at full speed. My uncle was driving. I
was going over in my mind the speech which I was going to make, and
was repeating to myself for the hundredth time the phrases which I
had prepared some time before, while apprehension dried up my tongue.
Ever since our setting-out, I had put off the attack on my tyrant from
moment to moment--rehearsing the firm tone which would intimidate him.
Before each turn in the road I had said to myself, “It is there I shall
speak,” but we had passed through all the villages, and gone round all
the turns in the road, without my being able to articulate a syllable,
and now I had hardly ten minutes left!
Well, I should open fire when we got to the top of the incline.
My first phrase was ready at the gates of my memory, and was awaiting
expression, when the car lurched alarmingly towards the right, then
towards the left, skidding on its two side wheels.
We were going to overturn!
I seized the wheel, and put on all the brake I could, with feet and
hands. The car gradually came under control, again slackened its speed,
and stopped right at the top of the hill.
Then I looked at Lerne. He was leaning out of his seat, his head
nodding from side to side, and his eyes staring vacantly behind his
spectacles. One of his arms was hanging down.
A fainting-fit! We had had a narrow escape; so, those fainting-fits
were really _syncope_. What had I been imagining with my silly ideas?
However, my uncle was not coming to. When I took off his mask, I saw
that his clean-shaven face was as pale as a wax candle. His ungloved
hands too looked as if they were of wax. I took them, and being quite
ignorant of medicine, I slapped them vigorously, as one does to
actresses, for hysterics.
This form of applause was in the nature of a _claque_ in the repose of
the countryside--sonorous and funereal; it greeted the withdrawal of
the great charlatan from the stage.
_Frédéric Lerne had indeed ceased to live._ I perceived it from his
chilled fingers--from his livid cheeks, his soulless eye, and his
heart, which had stopped beating. The cardiac affectation about which I
had been so skeptical, had just put an end to his life, as is the way
with those diseases, without any warning.
Stupefaction, and the reaction from the narrow shave I had just had,
kept me motionless. So, in a second, there remained nothing of Lerne
except food for worms, and a name fit for oblivion!
Nothing! in spite of my hatred for this detestable man, and my relief
at knowing that he no longer had power to harm me, I was awestruck by
the swift death which had spirited away this monster’s intelligence.
Like a puppet deprived of the hand that gave it life, and prostrate on
the edge of the stage, Lerne lay stretched out, limp, his arm hanging
down, and his funereal Pierrot’s face made whiter by Death.
And yet, as the spirit departed from it into the Unknown, the dead body
of my uncle seemed to me to grow more beautiful. The soul is so praised
in comparison with the flesh, that one is astonished at seeing the
latter become beautiful at the departure of the former. I followed the
progress of the phenomenon on Lerne’s features. The Great Mystery shed
the light of a divine serenity over his brow, as if life were a cloud
whose passing reveals some strange sun; and thus whilst the countenance
took on the hue of white marble, the puppet became a statue.
* * * * *
Tears dimmed my eyes. I took off my hat. If my uncle had perished
fifteen years before, in the fullness of happiness and wisdom, that
Lerne of long ago could not have been more beautiful to see.
But I could not go on dreaming in this way, keeping up a conversation
with a corpse on a frequented road. So I raised him in my arms calmly,
deliberately, and placed him on my left; a strap from the grid fixed
him firmly in the seat. With his gloves on his hands again, his cap
pulled down over his eyes, his spectacles on his nose, he seemed as if
asleep.
We set off side by side.
Nobody at Grey noted the stiffness of my neighbor, and I was able to
take him back to Fonval, with veneration in my heart for the dead man,
and full of pity for this old lover who had suffered so much. I forgot
the offenses in the presence of the offender’s death. He filled me with
a profound respect, I must also say, with an invincible repugnance,
which kept me from him in the depths of my seat.
Since our meeting in the middle of the labyrinth on the morning of my
arrival, I had not addressed a word to the Germans. I went to seek them
in the laboratory, leaving the car and its sepulchral chauffeur in
front of the hall door in charge of the servant.
The assistants understood at once, by my gesticulations, that something
extraordinary had happened, and followed me. They had that anxious
look of criminals who foresee disaster in every trifle. When they were
certain what had befallen them, the three accomplices could not hide
their dismay and anxiety. They talked together excitedly. Johann was
domineering: the two others became obsequious. I awaited their pleasure.
At last they helped me to carry the Professor’s body up to his room,
and on to the bed.
Emma saw us, gave a cry and fled, while the Germans made off without
more ado.
Barbe came, and I left her with my uncle. The stout serving-woman wept
a few tears, paying a tribute to Death as a thing in itself, and not to
the shade of her master.
She looked at him from the top of her bulky person. Lerne was
changing. The nose became pinched--the nails became blue.
“You will have to lay out the body,” I said suddenly.
“Leave that to me,” replied Barbe. “It is not a cheerful business, but
I know all about it.”
I turned my back on her and her preparations. Barbe possessed the
knowledge of the peasant women, who are all, more or less, midwives and
undertakers.
She soon came and announced to me, “It is all done, properly now.
Nothing is wanting except Holy Water and the decorations, which I can’t
find.”
Lerne was so white on his white bed, that they mingled together, and
resembled an alabaster sarcophagus, with its effigy on it, and both
hewn from the same block of marble. My uncle, with his hair carefully
parted, had been clothed in a frilled shirt, and a white tie. His pale
hands were clasped together, and held a rosary. A crucifix showed like
a star on his breast. His knees and feet stood out under the sheets
like sharp snowy hills, very far away.
On the night-table, behind the bowl, in which there was no Holy Water,
and in which lay useless a sprinkler of withered boxwood, two candles
were burning.
Barbe had turned this piece of furniture into a sort of altar, and I
scolded her sharply for this piece of absurdity. She replied that that
was the “custom,” and then shut the shutters.
Shadow’s sank into the face of the dead man, thus anticipating the
sequel, and creating a premature _livor_.
“Open the window wide,” I said, “let the daylight in, and the songs of
the birds, and the scents of the garden.”
The servant obeyed me, although it was against the “custom”; then, when
she had received her instructions from me for the necessary ceremonies,
she left me at my wish.
From the park there came the powerful aroma of dead leaves. It is
infinitely sad! One breathes it in, in the way one listens to a funeral
hymn. Crows passed cawing, as they caw when they fly in great numbers
from a steeple. The approach of evening darkened the day.
I examined the room; for I felt I must look anywhere but at the dead.
Over the writing-desk was a drawing in chalk, which represented my
Aunt Lidivine, smiling. It is wrong to make portraits smile! They are
destined to see too many sad things, just as Lidivine, in colors,
having smiled to see her husband carrying on his illicit amours, smiled
again, in the tragic presence of his remains.
The picture was twenty years old, but the chalk powder, which
resembles the dust of age, made it look more time-worn. Every day made
it darker. It seemed to remove, far away into the past my aunt and her
own youth. It displeased me.
I endeavored to interest myself in other things--in the falling
dusk--in the early bats--in the knickknacks of the room--in the candles
which threw a feeble light with their dancing flames.
The wind rose, and took off my attention for the moment. It streamed
moaning through the leafage, and as one heard it groaning in the
chimney, one fancied one could hear the passage of Time. With a sudden
stronger gust, it put out a candle. The other flickered, and I shut the
window quickly.
Suddenly, I was sincere with myself, and no longer sought to be my own
dupe. I required to look at the dead man, to keep an eye on his seeming
powerlessness; then I lit the lamp and placed Lerne in a flood of light.
Really, he was handsome--very handsome! Nothing remained of the
grim physiognomy which I had encountered, after fifteen years of
absence--nothing! except, perhaps, a certain irony on the mouth--the
shade of a grin.
Had my late uncle still some _arrière pensée_? Dead, he seemed still to
be defying Nature. Dead! he who in his lifetime had set his finger to
creation!
And his work appeared to me in all the sublime audacity and criminal
boldness, which made him worthy of the pillory, as well as of the
pedestal, of the rod of the slave and of the palm of the victor.
Of yore, I knew he was worthy of honor, and I would have taken my oath
that he would never have deserved dishonor; but what astounding chance,
some five years ago, had befallen, which had made of him the wicked
lord of a castle who murdered his guests?
I kept asking myself this, and meanwhile the shades of Klotz and
Macbeth seemed to be crying out their torture in the recesses of the
moaning chimney.
The gust, turning to a gale, whistled at the loosely fitting doors.
The flames of the candles became restless. The curtains rose and fell
again, with melancholy motions. The hair of Lerne was blown about,
white and feathery. The storm disordered those hairs, and brushed them
this way and that, and whilst the spirit hand of the gale sported
amongst the long hair, I, transfixed with amazement, bent over the
bed, looking at something that appeared and disappeared under the
silvery locks--_a purple scar, which encircled Lerne’s head from temple
to temple_, the dreadful semi-crown which indicated the Circeean
operation! My uncle had been operated on by whom? Otto Klotz, of course!
Light had penetrated the mystery. Its last veil, a winding-sheet,
had been torn. All was explained now--all! The sudden metamorphosis
of the Professor, coinciding with the disappearance of the principal
assistant, with Macbeth’s journey, and the eclipse of Lerne; all! The
brutal letters, the changed handwriting--my failure to recognize him;
the German accent, his failures of memory, and also the violent temper
of Klotz--his rashness, and passion for Emma, and then his wicked
activities and the crimes committed on Macbeth and on me!
All! All!! All!!!
Calling to mind Emma’s account, I was able to reconstitute the history
of an unimaginable crime.
Four years before my return to Fonval, Lerne and Otto Klotz returned
from Nanthel, where they had passed the day. Lerne was probably in a
happy mood. He was going once more to take up his noble studies in
grafting, whose only aim was to relieve humanity. But Klotz, being
in love with Emma, was hoping to divert those efforts to another
object--one of profit--one of lucre--the exchange of brains: doubtless
this very idea (which he was not able to carry out at Manheim for want
of money), he had already proposed to my uncle, and without any result.
But the assistant had his own Macchiavelian idea. With the help of
his three compatriots, warned beforehand, and hidden in the thicket,
he struck down the Professor, gagged him, and shut him up in the
laboratory--this man, whose wealth and independence--in other words,
whose personality--he invaded.
* * * * *
The next day, before dawn, he went back to the laboratory, where Lerne,
who was being watched, awaited him.
His three accomplices administered anesthetics to both, and placed the
brain of Klotz in my uncle’s skull.
As for the brain of Lerne, they no doubt contented themselves with
placing it as best they might in the skull of Klotz, who was now only a
dead body, and they buried it all in haste with the other _débris_.
So there is Otto Klotz behind the mask, clothed in the appearance
he desired, dressed like Lerne, master of Fonval, of Emma and the
laboratory--a sort of monk of St. Bernard sheltered in the shell of the
being whom he killed.
Emma saw him come out of the laboratory. He entered the _château_, pale
and trembling, upset the usual habits and customs, made the criss-cross
roads of the labyrinth, and then, sure of impunity, began his terrible
experiments.
Fortunately the body-snatcher had died too soon, without reaping
the reward of a robbery of which he was now the victim, since the
heart-disease which had just carried off the spirit of Klotz, belonged
really to the body of Lerne.
In this manner is the burglar in a house punished when the roof falls
in upon him.
I now understand why that mask had resumed the real expression of
my uncle. The soul of the German no longer inhabited it, to give it
Klotz’s expression.
Klotz the murderer of Lerne, and not Lerne the assassin of Klotz! I
could not get over it.
That is a confidence which the double person had forgotten to make to
me, and vexed at having been his dupe so long, I said to myself, that,
had I been living alone with him, I should probably have discovered his
imposture, but that the society of people as easily deceived as Emma
was, or accomplices like the assistants, whether duped themselves or
trying to dupe me, had dragged me into this delusion.
Ah! Aunt Lidivine, thought I, you were right to smile with your lips
of chalk. Your Frédéric fell into a villainous trap five years ago,
and the mind which has just quitted that form, is not his. Nothing
alien any longer remains in it, except a deserted brain--a carnal globe
as uninteresting as the liver. So it is your husband whom we are
watching; it is the other who has just died, and paid his debt.
At this idea I sobbed heart-broken, in the presence of the strange
corpse, but the sardonic grin, left at the time of its flight by the
evil soul like a stamp, still checked my emotions.
I effaced it with the tip of my finger, forming the mouth, which was
now stiff, and hardly malleable into the shape I wanted.
At the moment, when I was stepping back, the better to judge of the
effect, there was a gentle scratching at the door.
“It’s I, Nicolas, I, Emma!”
Poor simple girl! Should I tell her the truth? How would she take such
a strange turn of destiny? I knew her; having been many times fooled,
she would have reproached me with trying to mystify her, so I held my
peace.
“Take a rest,” said she, in a low tone. “Barbe will take your place.”
“No, no,” said I, “let me be.”
I felt I must keep this vigil by the side of my dead uncle to the end.
I had accused him of too many crimes, and I felt the need of asking
forgiveness of his memory, and of that of my aunt; and that is why,
despite the wild fury of the storm, we conversed all night long--the
dead man, the chalk drawing and myself.
After Barbe had come at dawn, I went out into the cool of the morning,
which soothes the skin and allays the fever of a long night of watching.
The park in autumn exhaled an odor of decay as of a cemetery. The great
wind in the night had piled up all the leaves and my steps rustled in
the thick bed. Only one or two could be seen here and there on the
skeleton trees, and I could scarce tell whether they were leaves or
sparrows.
In a few hours the park had prepared itself for winter. What was going
to become of the marvelous hothouse, at the coming of frost? Perhaps I
should be able to get into it by reason of that death which had flung
the Germans off their guard.
I made my way obliquely in its direction, but what I saw from a
distance made me quicken my steps.
The door of the hothouse was open, and smoke escaped from it--acrid and
foul--and also made its way through the openings in the glass.
I went in.
The Rotunda, the Aquarium and the third hall, were a picture of
confusion. They had pillaged, broken and burned everything. Heaps of
filth were accumulated in the middle of the three halls. I there found
jumbled together, broken plants, shattered pots, bits of glass and sea
anemones, flowers defiled, close to dead beasts.
In short,--three disgusting rubbish heaps, wherein the triple palace
beheld the end of its pleasant, moving, or repulsive marvels. Some rags
were still burning in a corner. In another, a heap of branches--the
most compromising ones--were just hissing embers.
No doubt the assistants had worked feverishly at this task of
destruction, in order that no vestige of their labors should remain,
and the storm alone had prevented me from hearing them, but it was not
likely they had stopped short there in their congenial task.
To make sure of that, I examined the shambles near the cliff. In that
gaping ditch there was nothing but bones and carcasses of unimportant
animals, some without a skull, others without a head. Klotz was no
longer there. Nell was not there.
The sack of the laboratory gave me the impression of a masterpiece. It
proved the innate capacity of men in general, and certain nations in
particular, for this sort of diversion.
I ransacked the house at will; all the doors banging and clashing as
the wind caught them.
In the courtyard there only remained living animals which had not yet
undergone any treatment. I did not discover the others till later on,
so here there was nothing destroyed. The operating rooms, on the other
hand, disclosed an indescribable chaos of broken bottles, the mingled
contents of which flooded the tiles with a pool of chemicals. A jumble
of books, notes and notebooks, was spread over the holocaust of twisted
implements.
Lastly, most of the surgical instruments had been stolen. The villains
had fled with the secret of the Circeean operation, and the implements
needed for performing it. The building where they had lived, indeed,
with its chests and cupboards emptied, its furniture upside-down,
proved the flight of the three associates.