no mere question of coincidence could explain that seeming pursuit. I
take it that the individuals had come over to England on the track of the
little French envoy; for it was after he had bidden us good-night outside
the Salisbury Hotel that they had turned to follow us. He had told us,
too, that earlier in the evening he had spent a hour smoking and
strolling about Salisbury Court whilst anxiously awaiting Wareham's
arrival with his promised answer. Whether these men were French police
spies, whether they were simply members of some swell mob who know that
the little gentleman with the huge head and the coal-black hair sometimes
journeyed to London with a fortune in diamonds in his possession, must
remain a mystery. As for Wareham and myself, when we had again reached
Fleet Street we hailed a passing hansom and drove away to Waterloo.
VIII
OTHER PERSONAL ADVENTURES
I had another alarm a few days later. Returning one evening by train from
Waterloo, I was followed into the compartment I selected by a party of
five men, two of whom I recognised. One was the landlord of the Raynes
Park Hotel, now deceased, and the other his son. Their companions proved
to be Frenchmen, which somehow struck me as a curious circumstance. This
was the time when a letter addressed by me to Paris for M. Zola appeared
to have gone astray, and when we were therefore rather apprehensive of
some action on the part of the French authorities. Could it be that the
two Frenchmen who had followed me into the railway carriage in the
company of a local licensed victualler were actually staying at Raynes
Park, within half a mile of my home? And, if so, what could be their
purpose?
I remained silent in my corner of the carriage, pretending to read a
newspaper; but on glancing up every now and then I fancied that I
detected one or another of the Frenchmen eyeing me suspiciously. They
conversed in French, either together or with the landlord's son--who
spoke their language, I found--on a variety of commonplace topics until
we had passed Earlsfield and were fast approaching Wimbledon. Then, all
at once, one of them inquired of the other: 'Shall we get out at
Wimbledon or Raynes Park?'
'We'll see,' replied the other; and at the same time it seemed to me that
he darted a very expressive glance in my direction.
I now began to feel rather nervous. It was my own intention to alight at
Wimbledon, as I had an important message from M. Zola to communicate to
Wareham that evening. But it now occurred to me that the best policy
might be to go straight home. If these men were French detectives, or
French newspaper men of the anti-Dreyfusite party, who by shadowing me
hoped to discover M. Zola's retreat, it would be most unwise for me to go
to Wareham's. If once the latter's name and address should be ascertained
by detectives, communications between M. Zola and his friends would be
jeopardised. On the other hand, of course, I might be mistaken with
regard to the men; and before all else I ought to make sure whether they
really had any hostile intentions. So I resolved to leave the train at
Wimbledon, as I had originally proposed doing, and then shape my course
by theirs.
As soon as the train pulled up I rose to alight, and at that same moment
the Frenchman who had said 'We'll see,' exclaimed to his companion:
'Well, I think we will got out here.'
I waited to hear no more. I rushed off, threw my ticket to an inspector,
climbed the steps from the platform, descended another flight into the
station-yard, hurried into the Hill Road, and did not pause until I
reached the first turning on the right. This happened to be the Alexandra
Road, in which Wareham's local office is situated.
Then I turned round and, sure enough, I saw the two Frenchmen, the
licensed victualler and his son, deliberately coming towards me.
Forthwith, under cover of a passing vehicle, I crossed the street to the
corner of St. George's Road, which offered a convenient, shady retreat.
Then I awaited developments. To my great relief the party of four went
straight on up the Hill Road.
Nevertheless, this might only be a feint, and I hesitated about going to
Wareham's immediately. Before anything, I had better let those suspicious
Frenchmen get right away. So I retraced my steps towards the station, and
entered the saloon bar of the South-Western Hotel. There I found a
foreign gentleman, whether French or Italian I do not know, whom I had
previously met about Wimbledon on various occasions. A short, rather
stout, and elderly man, formerly, I believe, in business in London, and
now living on his income, he had more than once spoken to me of the
Dreyfus case, Zola, Esterhazy, and all the others. And on this particular
evening he approached me with a smile, and inquired if there were any
truth in the reports he had heard to the effect that M. Zola had lately
been seen in Wimbledon.
Nervous as I was at that moment, I was about to give him a sharp reply,
when the door of the saloon bar opened, and to my intense alarm in
marched the two Frenchmen who had already inspired me with so much
distrust. Their friends were behind them; and I could only conclude that
my movements had somehow been observed by them, and that now I was
virtually caught, like a rat in a trap.
I was the more startled, too, when my foreign acquaintance (about whom I
really knew very little) abruptly quitted me to accost the new comers.
But this gave me breathing time. The door was free, and so, leaving the
refreshment I had ordered untouched, I bolted out of the house in much
the same way as a thief might have done, and ran, as if for my life,
right down the Alexandra Road until I reached Wareham's office. And there
I seized the knocker in a frenzy, and made such a racket as might have
awakened the dead. The door suddenly opened, and I fell into the arms of
Everson, Wareham's managing clerk.
'Great Scott!' said he. 'What is the matter? You've nearly brought the
house down!'
'Shut the door!' I replied. 'Shut the door!'
'But what has happened to you?'
I had seated myself on the stairs, and a full minute went by before I
could begin my story. Then I told Everson all that had befallen me. Some
Frenchmen were on Zola's track; they must be the very same men who had
shadowed Wareham and myself from the Salisbury Hotel some nights
previously; and now they were in Wimbledon, having heard, no doubt, that
M. Zola had been seen there. Wareham must be warned of it. Every
precaution must be taken; we must remove our charge from Oatlands, and so
forth.
Everson puffed away at his pipe and listened meditatively. At last he
remarked, 'Well, it is a curious business if what you say is true. What
were these Frenchmen like?'
Forthwith I began to describe them as accurately as I could. The first
likeness I sketched must have been a faithful one, for Everson started,
and exclaimed, 'And the other. Was he not so-and-so and so-and-so?'
'Yes, he was. But how do you know that?' I rejoined, with considerable
surprise.
'Why, because I know who the men are! Although you saw them with Mr.
Savage of the Raynes Park Hotel, it doesn't follow that they are staying
at Raynes Park. As a matter of fact they live here in this very road.
They have been here I daresay, eight or nine months now. And as for being
detectives, my dear sir, they are musicians!'
'You don't mean it!'
I collapsed again. To think that out of a mere chain of chance
coincidences I should have forged a perfect melodramatic intrigue! To
think that I should have let my fancy run away with me in such a fashion,
and have worked myself into such a state of nervousness and alarm! I
could not help feeling a trifle ashamed. 'Well,' I pleaded, 'for my part,
I had never seen the men before, either in Wimbledon or elsewhere. Of
course, I am short-sighted, and my eyes sometimes play me tricks;
however, as you are sure--'
'Sure!' repeated Everson; and again he described the men in such a way as
to convince me that there was no mistake in the matter. 'Moreover,' he
added, 'I saw them go past the house this very morning when they went up
to town.'
'Well,' I rejoined, 'I suppose I am losing my head. Ten minutes ago I
could have sworn that those men were after me.'
'Your statement that you never saw them before,' said Everson, 'does not
surprise me. As a rule they go to town every morning, and as you are
seldom in Wimbledon in the evening you can't very well meet one another.'
'I suppose you regard me as a bit of a fool?' I inquired.
'Oh, no. The circumstances were curious enough, and in your place I might
have drawn the same conclusions. Only I don't think I should have hurried
off to a friend's house and have nearly "knocked" it down.'
We both laughed, and then I apologised.
'As a matter of fact,' said I, 'all this is the natural outcome of
events. The beginning was long ago. I have a secret which I find haunting
me when I get up in the morning; all day long it occupies my mind; at
night it clings to me and follows me through my sleep. And I grow more
and more suspicious; it seems as if everybody I meet has designs upon my
secret. Every Frenchman I don't know is a detective or a process server
with a copy of the Versailles judgment in his pockets. And thus I shall
soon become a monomaniac if I do not discover some remedy. I think I
shall try the shower-bath system.'
Then I recalled experiences dating from long prior to M. Zola's arrival
in England. First mysterious offers of important documents bearing on the
Dreyfus case--documents forged a la Lemercier-Picard, hawked about by
adventurers who tried to dispose of them, now in Paris, now in Brussels,
and now in London. Needless to say that I, like others, had rejected them
with contempt. Then had come an incident that Everson already know of: a
stranger with divers aliases beseeching me for private interviews in M.
Zola's interest, a request which I ultimately granted, and which led to a
rather curious experience. I had declined to see my correspondent alone,
and had given him the address of Wareham, who had been present at the
interview. And at first the stranger, a tall and energetic looking man,
with sunburnt face and heavy moustaches, had refused to disclose his
business in Wareham's presence. If at last he did so, it was solely
because I told him that before coming to any decision in the matters
which he might have to submit to me I should certainly lay them before my
solicitor. So the result would be the same, whether he spoke out before
Wareham or not. And Wareham very properly added that a solicitor was, in
a measure, a confessor bound to observe professional secrecy.
At last the man told us his business, and it proved to be a scheme for
rescuing Dreyfus from Devil's Island and carrying him to an American
port. Neither Wareham nor myself was able to take the matter seriously,
but our visitor spoke with great earnestness, as though he already saw
the suggested feat accomplished. He had a ship at his disposal, and a
crew also. He gave particulars about both. If I remember rightly, the
ship lay at Bristol. He knew Cayenne and Devil's Island, and Royal
Island, and so forth. He was convinced of the practicability of the
venture, he had weighed all the _pros_ and _cons_, and it rested with
Dreyfus's friends and relatives to decide whether or no he (the prisoner)
should be a free man within another six weeks.
Wareham laughed. He was thinking of 'Captain Kettle,' and said so. But
the would-be rescuer protested that all this was no romancing. Oh! he was
not a philanthropist, he should expect to be well paid for his services;
but the Dreyfus family was rich, and M. Zola, too, was a man of means. So
surely they would not begrudge the necessary funds to release the unhappy
prisoner from bondage.
But I replied that though the Dreyfus family and M. Zola also were
anxious to see Dreyfus free, they were yet more anxious to prove his
innocence. Personally I knew nothing of the Dreyfus family, and could
give no letter of introduction to any member of it, such as I was asked
for. And, as regards M. Zola, I was sufficiently acquainted with his
character to say that he would never join in any such enterprise. He
intended to pursue his campaign by legal means alone, and it was useless
to refer the matter to him.
Then the interview ended rather abruptly. A French client of Wareham's
happened to call at that very moment, and was heard speaking in French in
the hall. This seemed to alarm the stranger, who ceased pressing his
request that I should give him letters of introduction to prominent
Dreyfusites. He rose abruptly, saying that the time would come when we
should probably regret having refused to entertain his proposals, and
hurrying past the waiting French client he ran off down the Alexandra
Road in much the same way as I myself subsequently ran off from the
French 'detectives' who were simply harmless disciples of St. Cecilia.
To this day I do not know whether the man was a lunatic, an imposter
seeking money, or an _agent provocateur_, that is, one who imagined that
he might through me inveigle M. Zola into an illegal act which would lead
to prosecution and imprisonment. The last-mentioned status that I have
ascribed to my interviewer is by no means an impossible one, considering
the many dastardly attempts made to discredit and ruin M. Zola. And yet,
suspicious and abrupt as was the man's leave-taking when he heard French
being spoken outside Wareham's private room (where the interview took
place), I nowadays think it more charitable to assume that he was a
trifle crazy. One thing is certain, he had come to the wrong person in
applying to me to aid and abet him in the foolhardy enterprise he spoke
of.
This is the first time I have told this anecdote in any detail; but at
the period when the incident occurred I spoke of it casually to a few
friends, to which circumstance I am inclined to attribute the earlier
paragraphs which appeared in the newspapers about American schemes for
delivering Dreyfus. The person whom I saw was, I believe, a
German-American.
Well, this incident, preposterous as it may appear (but truth, remember,
is quite as fantastic as fiction), had proved another link in the chain
of suspicious occurrences in which I had been mixed up prior to M. Zola's
exile. Other curious little incidents had followed, and thus for many
months I had been living--even as we lived long ago in besieged Paris--in
distrust of all strangers, and the climax had come with my foolish fears
respecting a couple of French musicians. The story I have told goes
against me, but the man who cannot tell a story against himself when he
thinks it a good one can have, I think, little grit in his composition.
From the time of my adventure with the French musicians I steeled myself
against excessive fears whilst remaining duly vigilant. On one point I
was still anxious, which was that M. Zola should be able to settle down
in a convenient retreat where him himself would enjoy all necessary
quietude; whilst we, Wareham and I, knowing him to be well screened from
his enemies, would be less liable to those 'excursions and alarums' which
had hitherto troubled us. As the next chapter will show, this
consummation was near at hand.
IX
A QUIET HOME AND A HAUNTED HOUSE
It was M. Zola himself who, after some stay at Oatlands, discovered, in
the course of his excursions with M. Desmoulin, a retreat to his liking.
It was a house in that part of Surrey belonging to a city merchant, who
was willing to let it furnished for a limited period. The owner met M.
Zola on various occasions and showed himself both courteous and discreet.
The details of the 'letting' were arranged between him and Mr. Wareham;
and my wife hastily procured servants for the new establishment. These
servants, however, did not speak French, and I settled with M. Zola that
my eldest daughter, Violette, should stay with him to act in some measure
as his housekeeper and interpreter. This was thrusting a young girl, not
quite sixteen, into a position of considerable responsibility, but I
thought that Violette would be equal to the task, provided she followed
the instructions and advice of her mother; and as she was then at home
for the summer holidays she was sent down to M. Zola's without more ado.
I shall have occasion to speak of her hereafter in some detail, in
connection with a very curious incident which marked M. Zola's exile.
Here I will merely mention that a Parisienne by birth and speaking French
from her infancy, it was easy for her to understand and explain the
master's requirements.
Like M. Zola, she was provided with a bicycle, and the pair of them
occasionally spent an afternoon speeding along leafy Surrey lanes and
visiting quaint old villages. The mornings, however, were devoted to
work, for it was now that M. Zola started on his novel, 'Fecondite,' the
first of a series of four volumes, which will be, he considers, his
literary testament.
These books, indeed, are to embody what he regards as the four cardinal
principles of human life. First Fruitfulness, as opposed to
neo-Malthusianism, which he holds to be the most pernicious of all
doctrines; next Work, as opposed to the idleness of the drones, whom he
would sweep away from the human community; then Truth, as opposed to
falsehood, hypocrisy, and convention; and, finally, Justice to one and
all, in lieu of charity to some, oppression to others, and favours for
the privileged few.
All four books--'Fruitfulness,' 'Work,' 'Truth,' and 'Justice'--are to be
stories; for years ago M. Zola arrived at the conclusion that mere essays
on sociology, though they may work good in time among people of culture,
fail to reach and impress the masses in the same way as a story may do.
It is, I take it, largely on this account that Emile Zola has become a
novelist. He has certainly written essays, but he knows how
inconsiderable have been their sales in comparison with those of his
works embodying precisely the same principles, but placed before the
world in the form of novels. To criticise him as a mere story-teller is
arrant absurdity.
He himself put the whole case in a nutshell when he remarked, 'My novels
have always been written with a higher aim than merely to amuse. I have
so high an opinion of the novel as a means of expression that I have
chosen it as the form in which to present to the world what I wish to say
on the social, scientific, and psychological problems that occupy the
minds of thinking men. I might have said what I wanted to say to the
world in another form. But the novel has to-day risen from the place
which it held in the last century at the banquet of letters. It was then
the idle pastime of the hour, and sat low down between the fable and the
idyll. To-day it contains, or may be made to contain, everything; and it
is because that is my creed that I am a novelist. I have, to my thinking,
certain contributions to make to the thought of the world on certain
subjects, and I have chosen the novel as the best means of communicating
these contributions to the world.'
If critics in reviewing one or another of M. Zola's books would only bear
these declarations of the author in mind, the reading public would often
be spared many irrelevant and foolish remarks.
M. Zola's device is _Nulla dies sine linea_, and even before the
materials for 'Fecondite' were brought to him from France he had given an
hour or two each day to the penning of notes and impressions for
subsequent use. With the arrival of his books and memoranda, work began
in a more systematic way. At half-past eight every morning he partook of
a cup of coffee and a roll and butter, no more, and shortly after nine he
was at his table in a small room overlooking the garden of the house he
had rented. And there he remained regularly, hard at work, until the
luncheon hour, covering sheet after sheet of quarto paper with serried
lines of his firm, characteristic handwriting.
M. Zola has retained possession of the MSS. of almost every work written
by him, and I know that these MSS. often differ largely from the books
actually given to the world. The 'copy' is not only extremely clear, but
remarkably free from erasures and interpolations. But when his first
proofs reach him M. Zola revises them with the greatest care. He will
strike out whole passages in the most drastic manner, and alter others
until they are almost unrecognisable.
He will even at the last moment change some character's name, and I know
all the inconvenience that arises on certain occasions from having had to
prepare portions of my translations from first proofs, through lack of
time to wait for the corrected matter.
This was notably the case with my version of 'Paris.' While that work was
passing through the Press M. Zola was already in all the throes of the
Dreyfus affair, and somehow, as he has acknowledged to me with regret, he
forgot to tell me that at the last moment he had changed the names of
several personages in the story. Thus Duthil (as originally written and
given in my translation) became Dutheil in the French book; Sagnier was
changed to Sanier; the Princess de Horn was renamed Harn and finally
Harth, and young Lord George Eliott became Elson.
Of course some of the reviewers of my translations attacked me virulently
for my unwarrantable presumption in changing the very names of M. Zola's
characters; they were unaware that the names given by me were those first
selected by the author, who had afterwards altered them and forgotten to
tell me of it.
Coming back to 'Fecondite,' I should say that M. Zola wrote an average of
three pages per day of that book during his exile in England. Work ceased
at the luncheon hour, as I have said, and consequently he could dispose
of his afternoons.
But it will be remembered that the summer of 1898 was exceptionally hot,
so hot indeed that M. Zola, though many years of his childhood were spent
under the scorching sun of Provence, found a siesta absolutely necessary
after the midday meal. It was only later that he ventured out on foot or
on his bicycle, often taking his hand camera with him.
At some distance from the house where he was residing, in the midst of
large deserted grounds, overrun with grass and weeds, there stood a
mournful-looking, unoccupied private residence of some architectural
pretensions, on the building of which a considerable sum had evidently
been expended. The place took M. Zola's fancy the first time he passed it
on his bicycle. The iron entrance gate was broken, and he was able to
enter the garden and peep through the ground-floor windows.
All spoke of decay and abandonment; and when, through my daughter, M.
Zola began to make inquiries about the place, he was told a fantastic
tragic story. A murder, it was said, had been committed there many years
previously; a poor little girl had been killed by her stepmother, and her
remains had been buried beneath a scullery floor.
There was also talk of the child's father, who at night drove up to the
house in a phantom carriage drawn by ghostly horses, and hammered at the
door of the mansion and shouted aloud for his dead child!
The story was alleged to be well known, and it was said that not a girl
from Chertsey to Esher, from Walton to Byfleet, would have dared to pass
that house after nightfall, when harrowing voices rang out through the
trees, and the shadowy horses of the ghostly carriage trotted swiftly and
silently over the gravel.
The story not only impressed my daughter Violette, but it greatly
interested M. Zola, on whose behalf I made various inquiries. For
instance, I closely questioned an old gardener who had known the district
for long years. All he could tell me, however, was that there were
certainly some strange rumours abroad among the womenfolk, but that for
his own part he had never heard of any crime and had never seen any
ghost.
And at last others told me quite a different story of the house's
abandonment, and this I here venture to give, though I certainly cannot
vouch for its accuracy. The place had been built, it seemed, some forty
years previously by a retired and wealthy London pawnbroker, a gaunt,
shrivelled old man, who, mounted on a white mare, had in his declining
years been a familiar figure on the roads of the district.
Extremely eccentric, he had largely furnished and decorated the house
with unredeemed articles that had been pledged with him. There was
nothing _en suite_. Old chairs of divers patterns were mingled with odd
tables and sideboards and sofas; there were also innumerable daubs
'ascribed' to old masters, and a wonderful display of Wardour-street
_bric-a-brac_. But, indeed, one has only to look at an average
pawnbroker's shop to picture what kind of articles the house must have
contained.