CHAPTER XII
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 fromthe 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 onthe wood and the stone.
"Oh, Coralie, Coralie!" he cried in his despair. "It's I who havebrought you to this! What an abyss I've dragged you into! It was madnessto try to fight this out by myself! I ought to have called in those whounderstand, who are accustomed to it! . . . No, I was going to be soclever! . . . Forgive me, Coralie."
She had sunk into a chair. He, almost on his knees beside her, threw hisarms around her, imploring her pardon.
She smiled, to calm him:
"Come, dear," she said, gently, "don't lose courage. Perhaps we aremistaken. . . . After all, there's nothing to show that it is not all anaccident."
"The date!" he said. "The date of this year, of this day, written inanother hand! It was your mother and my father who wrote the first . . .but this one, Coralie, this one proves premeditation, and an implacabledetermination 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, butwe have friends also. They will look for us."
"They will look for us, but how can they ever find us, Coralie? We tooksteps to prevent them from guessing where we were going; and not one ofthem knows this house."
"Old Simeon does."
"Simeon 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, nowthat Simeon has played his part."
"And what then, Patrice?"
He felt that she was overcome and began to be ashamed of his ownweakness:
"Well," he said, mastering himself, "we must just wait. After all, theattack may not materialize. The fact of our being locked in does notmean that we are lost. And, even so, we shall make a fight for it, shallwe not? You need not think that I am at the end of my strength or myresources. Let us wait, Coralie, and act."
The main thing was to find out whether there was any entrance to thehouse which could allow of an unforeseen attack. After an hour's searchthey took up the carpet and found tiles which showed nothing unusual.There was certainly nothing except the door, and, as they could notprevent this from being opened, since it opened outwards, they heapedup most of the furniture in front of it, thus forming a barricade whichwould protect them against a surprise.
Then Patrice cocked his two revolvers and placed them beside him, infull sight.
"This will make us easy in our minds," he said. "Any enemy who appearsis a dead man."
But the memory of the past bore down upon them with all its awfulweight. All their words and all their actions others before them hadspoken and performed, under similar conditions, with the same thoughtsand the same forebodings. Patrice's father must have prepared hisweapons. Coralie's mother must have folded her hands and prayed.Together they had barricaded the door and together sounded the walls andtaken up the carpet. What an anguish was this, doubled as it was by alike 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 certainpages, at the end of a chapter or volume, were lines constituting noteswhich 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 oflove and affection. And they spent more than two hours waiting anddreading what might happen.
"There will be nothing," said Patrice. "And perhaps that is the mostawful part of it, for, if nothing occurs, it will mean that we aredoomed not to leave this room. And, in that case . . ."
Patrice did not finish the sentence. Coralie understood. And togetherthey received a vision of the death by starvation that seemed tothreaten them. But Patrice exclaimed:
"No, no, we have not that to fear. No. For people of our age to die ofhunger takes several days, three or four days or more. And we shall berescued before then."
"How?" asked Coralie.
"How? Why, by our soldiers, by Ya-Bon, by M. Masseron! They will beuneasy 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 thetwo gardens. Besides, everything we do is set down in my diary, which isin the desk in my room. Ya-Bon knows of its existence. He is bound tospeak of it to M. Masseron. And then . . . and then there is Simeon.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 ofhunger, then the enemy must have contrived another form of torture.Their inability to do anything kept them on the rack. Patrice began hisinvestigations again. A curious accident turned them in a new direction.On opening one of the books through which they had not yet looked, abook published in 1895, Patrice saw two pages turned down together. Heseparated 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 instore for them; and Patrice's father and Coralie's mother knew thedanger which they ran in coming to the lodge. It remained to be seenwhether Patrice's father had been able to carry out his intention.
Between the two windows, as all around the room, was a wainscoting ofvarnished wood, topped at a height of six feet by a cornice. Above thecornice was the plain plastered wall. Patrice and Coralie had alreadyobserved, without paying particular attention to it, that thewainscoting seemed to have been renewed in this part, because thevarnish of the boards did not have the same uniform color. Using one ofthe iron dogs as a chisel, Patrice broke down the cornice and lifted thefirst board. It broke easily. Under this plank, on the plaster of thewall, were lines of writing.
"It's the same method," he said, "as that which old Simeon has sinceemployed. First write on the walls, then cover it up with wood orplaster."
He broke off the top of the other boards and in this way brought severalcomplete lines into view, hurried lines, written in pencil and slightlyworn by time. Patrice deciphered them with the greatest emotion. Hisfather had written them at a moment when death was stalking at hand. Afew hours later he had ceased to live. They were the evidence of hisdeath-agony and perhaps too an imprecation against the enemy who waskilling 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 s
uch 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. Theytoo dreaded starvation. They too passed through long hours of waiting,when inaction is so painful; and it was more or less to distract theirthoughts that they wrote those lines."
He went on, after examining the spot:
"They counted, most likely, on what happened, that the man who waskilling them would not read this document. Look, one long curtain washung over these two windows and the wall between them, one curtain, asis proved by the single rod covering the whole distance. After ourparents' death no one thought of drawing it, and the truth remainedconcealed until the day when Simeon discovered it and, by way ofprecaution, hid it again under a wooden panel and hung up two curtainsin 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 sentimentswhich they themselves felt, the same scruples, the same delicacy, thesame effacement of self in the presence of the other's grief.
"He loved your mother," Patrice murmured, "as I love you. I also am notafraid 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 thenbe to take our revenge! He shall have the same fate which he wasdevising for us. Do you understand, Coralie? He shall die here, here inthis room. Oh, how my hatred will spur me to bring that about!"
He tore down more pieces of boarding, in the hope of learning somethingthat might be useful to him, since the struggle was being renewed underexactly similar conditions. But the sentences that followed, like thosewhich 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 ofvengeance and sorrow, but never a fact to guide us. Father, will youtell us nothing to save your Coralie's daughter? If your Coraliesuccumbed, 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 challengeand 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. Itseemed to them as though they were already dead, once they were enduringthe same trial endured by others and that they were still enduring itunder the same conditions. There was nothing to enable them to escapeany of the phases through which the other two, his father and hermother, had passed. The similarity between their own and their parents'fate was so striking that they seemed to be suffering two deaths, andthe second agony was now commencing.
Coralie gave way and began to cry. Moved by her tears, Patrice attackedthe wainscoting with new fury, but its boards, strengthened bycross-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 hefelt 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 werelistening.
"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 openbehind the wall of building-stones, and listened. There was really someone walking; and the knowledge that the enemy was approaching gave themthe same sense of relief that their parents had experienced.
Some one walked thrice round the house. But they did not, like theirparents, recognize the sound of the footsteps. They were those of astranger, or else steps that had changed their tread. Then, for a fewminutes, they heard nothing more. And suddenly another sound arose; and,though in their innermost selves they were expecting it, they werenevertheless stupefied at hearing it. And Patrice, in a hollow voice,laying stress upon each syllable, uttered the sentence which his fatherhad 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 ofthe 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 hadalready been performed and because it was announcing and preparing thedeath once before announced and prepared.
An hour passed. The work went on, paused and went on again. It was likethe sound of a spade at work in a courtyard, when the grave-digger is inno hurry and takes a rest and then resumes his work.
Patrice and Coralie stood listening side by side, their eyes in eachother's eyes, their hand
s 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 nottrouble to listen! We have only to remember. There: 'He goes to thekitchen and digs as he did just now, but on the stones this time.' . . .And then . . . and then . . . oh, Coralie, the same sound of brokenglass!"
It was memories mingling with the grewsome reality. The present and thepast formed but one. They foresaw events at the very instant when thesetook place.
The enemy went outside again; and, forthwith, the sound seemed "totravel up the house as though the wretch had to climb to a height inorder to carry out his plans."
And then . . . and then what would happen next? They no longer thoughtof consulting the inscription on the wall, or perhaps they did not dare.Their attention was concentrated on the invisible and sometimesimperceptible deeds that were being accomplished against them outside,an uninterrupted stealthy effort, a mysterious twenty-year-old planwhereof each slightest detail was settled as by clockwork!
The enemy entered the house and they heard a rustling at the bottom ofthe door, a rustling of soft things apparently being heaped or pushedagainst the wood. Next came other vague noises in the two adjoiningrooms, against the walled doors, and similar noises outside, between thestones of the windows and the open shutters. And then they heard someone on the roof.
They raised their eyes. This time they felt certain that the last actwas at hand, or at least one of the scenes of the last act. The roof tothem was the framed skylight which occupied the center of the ceilingand admitted the only daylight that entered the room. And still the sameagonizing question rose to their minds: what was going to happen? Wouldthe enemy show his face outside the skylight and reveal himself at last?
This work on the roof continued for a considerable time. Footsteps shookthe zinc sheets that covered it, moving between the right-hand side ofthe house and the edge of the skylight. And suddenly this skylight, orrather a part of it, a square containing four panes, was lifted, a verylittle 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 thehouse.
They were almost disappointed and felt such a craving to know the truththat Patrice once more fell to breaking the boards of the wainscoting,removing the last pieces, which covered the end of the inscription. Andwhat they read made them live the last few minutes all over again. Theenemy's return, the rustle against the walls and the walled windows, thenoise on the roof, the opening of the skylight, the method of supportingit: all this had happened in the same order and, so to speak, within thesame limit of time. Patrice's father and Coralie's mother had undergonethe same impressions. Destiny seemed bent on following the same pathsand 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, nestlingagainst Patrice.
The enemy's footsteps were pounding over the zinc.
"Yes," said Patrice, "he is going up as before, without departing fromthe procedure followed by the other. Only we do not know whose face willappear to us. Our parents knew their enemy."
She shuddered at her image of the man who had killed her mother; and sheasked:
"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, hepointed with his finger:
"Look. Read the name: Essares. You can see it down there: it was one ofthe 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--Essares! . . . Essares! . . . 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 Essares' 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 berepeated? What about the ladder, the rope-ladder, which I found in oldSimeon's cupboard?"
Coralie kept her eyes fixed on the skylight, for the footsteps weremoving around it. Then they stopped. Patrice and Coralie had not a doubtthat the moment had come and that they also were about to see theirenemy. And Patrice said huskily, in a choking voice:
"Who will it be? There are three men who could have played this sinisterpart as it was played before. Two are dead, Essares and my father. AndSimeon, the third, is mad. Is it he, in his madness, who has set themachine working again? But how are we to imagine that he could have doneit with such precision? No, no, it is the other one, the one who directshim 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 oncebefore, the skylight was raised higher. A hand lifted it. And suddenlythey saw a head slipping under the open framework.
It was the head of old Simeon.
"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 hisimpassive 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 leadingher to a chair. In reality he had but one thought, to reach the tableon which he had placed his revolvers, take one of them and fire.
Simeon remained motionless, like some evil genius come to unloose thetempest. . . . Coralie could not rid herself of that glance whichweighted upon her.
"No," she murmured, resisting Patrice, as though she feared that hisintention would precipitate the dreaded catastrophe, "no, you mustn't.. . ."
But Patrice, displaying greater determination, was near his object. Onemore 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 revengeon us. . . ."
"No, perhaps not," said Patrice, still holding his revolver. "I may verywell have hit him. The bullet struck the frame of the skylight. But itmay 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 theyreally had the impression of not seeing for the first time--as before,something passed through the opening, something that came down, thatunrolled itself in the middle of the room, a ladder, a rope-ladder, thevery one which Patrice had seen in old Simeon's cupboard.
As before, they looked at it; and they knew so well that everything wasbeing done over again, that the facts were inexorably, pitilessly linkedtogether, they were so certain of it that their eyes at once sought thesheet of paper which must inevitably be pinned to the bottom rung.
It was there, forming a little scroll, dry and discolored and torn atthe edges. It was the sheet of twenty years ago, written by Essares andnow serving, as before, to conv
ey the same temptation and the samethreat:
"Send Coralie up by herself. Her life shall be saved. I give her ten minutes to accept. If not . . ."