THE HOUSE OF THE SECRET (_LA MAISON DES HOMMES VIVANTS_) BY CLAUDE FARRÃRE AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY ARTHUR LIVINGSTON [Illustration: Logo] NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 681 FIFTH AVENUE Copyright, 1923 By E. P. Dutton & Company _All Rights Reserved_ _First edition limited to 1500 copies_ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA The House of the Secret I This day, January 20, 1909, I have decided to set my story down in writing. Dangerous and terrifying the task! But I must perform it. For day after tomorrow I shall be dead. Day after tomorrow.... Just two days! And death from old age! Of this I am as certain as a man can be of anything. What, then, have I to lose by speaking? Speak I must! That much I owe to the unsuspecting men and women who are to survive me. They are in danger; and I must warn them.... Day after tomorrow I shall be safe. Day after tomorrow I shall be dead.... And this is my testament and last will, written in my own hand! To all men and women, my brothers and my sisters, I bequeath--a Secret, _the_ Secret. May my death serve as a warning to them, one and all! Such is my last will and testament.... Now I am quite in my right mind--let there be no doubt of that. I am sound, absolutely sound, in mind and, for that matter, in body. I have never known what it means to be sick. But I am old, old beyond human experience of age. How old, I wonder? Eighty? A hundred? Make it a hundred and fifty! It really doesnât matter. I have nothing to decide the question. You might find my birth certificate, papers I may have written, people who may have known me. Such things would not help. Not even my own sensations give me any accurate impression of my actual age. I have been old for such a very few days! I have had no time to grow accustomed to the sudden change. There is no comparison, either, between my absorption of the centuries and ordinary old age--this last, indeed, has never been mine. I became what I am instantaneously, one may say. I am cold, inside here, in my blood, in my flesh, in my bones. And tired, horribly, unendurably tired, with a fatigue that sleep cannot alleviate! My arms and legs are heavy and my joints are stiff. My teeth are chattering. I cannot bring them together on my food. I struggle to stand erect; but my shoulders stoop inexorably. I am hard of hearing. My eyes are dim. And these infirmities are the more excruciating because they each are new. No living man, I am sure, has ever been quite as miserable as I. But it will all be over in two days! Forty-eight hours! Two thousand eight hundred and forty-eight minutes! What is a matter of two days? The prospect fills my heart with hopefulness; though death, in itself, is a terrible thing, far more terrible than living men imagine. That I know, as no one else knows. But I am ready! The life I am leading has ceased to be anything resembling life. So then, I am in my right mind. My head is clear. Furthermore, I am about to die. Two considerations, these, that should dispel all doubt as to my veracity. A man does not lie when he stands on the threshold of Eternity! So I beg of you who find this little book of mine, of all you who read this story of my Adventure--in the name of your God, if you have one, do not doubt me! I am not spinning you a yarn, nor telling you a tale for an idle hour. A great danger hangs over you, over your son, your daughter, your wife, your dear ones! Do not scorn my warning, therefore! Do not shrug your shoulders, or tap your forehead! I am not a lunatic! And death is standing near you! Do not laugh, either. But read, understand, believe--and, then--do as your best judgment dictates. Forgive me if I write with a trembling hand. The words may seem faint, almost illegible, at times. I found a pencil lying in a gutter on the roadside. Its point is dulled, and it is too short for my stiffened fingers. And this paper--from a funeral register--is not of the best. Its broad black border leaves very little space and compels me to cramp my lines. A broad black border! How inconvenient! Yet how appropriate! This funeral page is perchance the best for such a story as mine! Here I begin. And again I beg of you; doubt me not, but read, understand, believe! II It all started with a letter from Colonel Terrisse, commander of field artillery, to Vice-Admiral de Fierce, commander-in-chief of the Western Mediterranean, prefect of the Maritime reserve, line-officer, and governor of the fortress of Toulon. The letter in question came in to Staff Headquarters by the evening mail of Monday, December 21, 1908. Notice now! That was the twenty-first of _last_ December. It is now the 20th of January, 1909. Not quite a month ago! It will be a month tomorrow, day for day. A month! One single month! Gods of Heaven and Hell! The Colonelâs letter reached Headquarters by the evening mail--military headquarters, you understand, not the naval. At Toulon, as is the case with similar stations, the vice-admiral in command functions in a double capacity as maritime prefect and military governor. His residence is the mansion of the prefecture; while his adjutant occupies the governorâs house. There are thus separate offices communicating by telephone. The wire is for obvious reasons a private one, independent of the city âcentral.â I was in the officersâ room when the mail came in; and I opened the letter. Among my duties was that of reading and sorting the correspondence of the military commander. I was a captain of cavalry detailed to the General Staff. I was young--just thirty-three--thirty-three, mark you! And that was less than a calendar month ago! Four weeks and two days ago, to be exact. I opened the letter; and read it. It was a matter of no great interest that I could see. I am going to transcribe it textually, however, for I can see it right before me now. _XVth Army Corps_ FORTRESS OF TOULON _Toulon, Dec. 21, 1908._ _Corr. No. 287_ _Re: Broken Telegraph Wires_ Vice-Admiral Charles de Fierce, Commander-in-Chief of Western Mediterranean, Headquarters, Navy Yard, Toulon. Sir:-- I have the honor to report that telegraph poles Nos. 171, 172, 173, 174, 175 are down as the result of a wash-out occurring on Dec. 19th last, and that, in consequence, the Tourris-Grand Cap line is out of commission. I have issued the necessary orders for repairs. In view of the heavy rains and the long distance the repair crew will have to cover over muddy roads, it is probable that the poles cannot be in place again under forty-eight hours. All communication by wire between Toulon and Grand Cap will accordingly be impossible for that length of time. I have the honor to be, sir, Your Obedient Servant, TERRISSE, _Colonel-in-Command of Field Artillery_. I need not observe that, in peace times, Toulon and the Grand Cap have nothing of importance to say to each other, with the single exception of days when there is target practice. The Grand Cap is one of the mountains in the chain east of Toulon. It is a bold, forbidding pile of rock, crowned with a modern and fairly strong battery. Ordinarily the place is held by a corporalâs guard, a full garrison being stationed there only during periods of manÅuvre. The country around the mountain is a rough uncultivated heath virtually uninhabited. Charcoal burners camp there from time to time; but there are no farms nor permanent settlements. The wire leading to that God-forsaken place could be down for more than two days without the worldâs coming to an end on that account! I was intending to file the colonelâs letter and let it go at that, when the telegraph corporal knocked at the office door. âA call for you, Captain,â he said, âfrom Naval Headquarters!â âIâll be there directly,â I replied. As I rose from my chair, I chanced to look at the clock over the fireplace. It was three P.M., to the minute. I stepped down the corridor to the telephone booth, which was in the adjoining room. I took up the receiver. The voice calling me by name over the wire, was, as I recognized to my surprise, that of Vice-Admiral de Fierce, himself. âHello! That you, Narcy!â âAt your service, Admiral!â âBarras tells me you have a horse down at SolliÃ¨s-Pont. Is that right?â âQuite so, Admiral. I left my bay down there, last night.â âWhat condition is he in? Pretty good?â âExcellent! Hasnât worked for some days. I was intending to use him tomorrow, for the inspection at Fenouillet.â âSplendid! However, the inspection at Fenouillet is off. But Iâve got a dirty job to attend to; and I donât see anybody handy except you.â âQuite at your service, Admiral!â âGood!... You know the wire is down between here and the Grand Cap?â âI just received a letter to that effect from Colonel Terrisse.â âNow thatâs a nuisance, just at this moment. The guard up at the battery there must be informed at all hazards that the seventy-fives will be working over at Roca-Troca tomorrow.â âTomorrow, Admiral?â âYes, firing starts at noon. We canât put it off, because General Felte must get away from Toulon tomorrow night at the latest. Theyâre going to shell the approaches to the mountain; and weâve got to warn any wood-choppers there may be in the neighborhood. Otherwise somebody will be getting hurt! What time is it now, Narcy?â âThree five, Admiral.â âHow far do you make it, from here to SolliÃ¨s-Pont?â âTen or twelve miles.â âGood! Well, telephone your orderly ... you have a man down there, havenât you?...â âYes, Admiral!â â ... tell him to get your horse ready and bring it to you somewhere along the road.... Are you in uniform?â âNo, Admiral, military regulations permit civilian after luncheon as you know. I am wearing a riding suit, however, with boots and spurs. I was thinking of trying out Colonel Lescautâs new mare this afternoon.â âFine! Iâll send my car over to get you in five minutes. My man will drive you down to SolliÃ¨s-Pont, and youâll be there by 3:40. Thereâs no way of going on by auto, is there?â âTo the Grand Cap? Impossible, Admiral. Even Valaury is difficult for wagons.â âYou know the way?â âI think so. I went over the ground once last year, during evolutions. Beyond Valaury you have to take a trail, a sort of mountain road.â âBut a horse can do it?â âIt was on a horse that I went there.â âVery well, then. Try to make it. But the Grand Cap is a good hour and a half beyond SolliÃ¨s-Pont, and it gets dark at five. You understand that?â âIâll spend the night up on the Cap, of course.â âYes. And it wonât be so bad. Thereâs an officersâ building there with good beds. The guard will fix you up. And you can come back in the morning. Sorry to give you a job like this, Narcy. But I donât just see any other way out of it. Weâve got to get word to the people there. I had thought of sending a car around, by way of Revest. But just our luck! The road is torn up all the way from Ragas to MoriÃ¨re. The simplest thing is for someone who knows the road to ride out from SolliÃ¨s-Pont. And you seem to be the only man in sight.â âGlad to be of use, Admiral. Your car is here now. I hear the engine out in the yard.â âBe sure to telephone your man at SolliÃ¨s-Pont.â âThe corporal will do that for me. Iâm off without losing a secondâs time!â âAnd ever so much obliged, eh, Narcy? Call and see me when you get back!â I hung up the receiver. The telegraph corporal was standing outside the booth with my water-proof and my soft felt hat. A misty rain was falling outside. I hurried back into the office, gave a turn at the combination on the safe, and locked the cabinet for the correspondence files. This latter operation wasted a good half minute. The lock was out of order and refused to turn. After some cursing on my part, it yielded to the key. Through the white lace curtains hanging over the office windows a bright, though grayish light was streaming in from the waning afternoon. The stove was glowing red, giving the room a touch of cosiness that I was to exchange with some regret for the raw damp outside. On the table I noticed Colonel Terriseâs letter, which, in my haste, I had forgotten to file. I thought of opening the cabinet again. But no, that would take too much time. Not knowing what else to do with the letter, I folded it and slipped it into the inside pocket of my waistcoat.... That is why I can see it now! In the courtyard of Headquarters a hostler was currying the adjutant-generalâs mare. He spat out the stub of his cigar and saluted me. In the west, a dim outline of the sun was visible through a thin place in the clouds. A tree near-by was dripping with great drops of moisture. The swinging of the outer gate rang a bell in the sentinelâs box. I remember that a dog, sleeping inside, raised his head lazily and looked up. Beside the curbing on the street, the Admiralâs auto was standing, its sixty horse-power motor purring softly but powerfully. I opened the side door and stepped in.... We were off! III At the corner of Rue Revel and the Place de la LibertÃ© we skidded as the chauffeur turned sharply to avoid a child playing just off the sidewalk. We slowed down along the Boulevard de Strasbourg on account of crowded traffic. I was shaken up as we stopped short under the Porte NÃ´tre Dame to prevent collision with a truck. We sped along through the Faubourg de Saint-Jean-du-Var between two rows of tall narrow houses propped one against the other. Every three quarters of a mile we passed a trolley car. Some workmen were repairing the road under the railroad bridge. They had to jump to get out of our way; but a train passing overhead drowned the curses they sent after us. It had stopped raining; but the road was still wet and slippery. The gray sky seemed to reach down and touch the roofs of dark tiling. Not a ray of sunshine brightened the landscape, depressing under the best conditions, but ghastly now under that mournful light. We reached the outskirts of the settled region. One straight unbroken line of mud, the road reached out into the foggy heath. Here now to the left the foot-hills of the Faron were rising one above the other. I leaned out over the running board to get a good look at the top of the mountain. A thick bank of fog was hiding it from view. That was bad! The Grand Cap was higher still. I might have some trouble in groping my way along, and I might easily take the wrong trail. Yes, that was something to think about.... Though it worried me only for an instant. The village of Valette, the first town outside Toulon in the direction of Nice! We were making forty miles an hour. Children scampered this way and that to get off the road ahead of us, screaming at the top of their voices. I looked at my watch. It was twenty-six minutes past three. I pulled the wind shield down and nudged the chauffeur with my elbow. âWe can speed her up, now, eh, till we get to the bad road?â âYes, Captain.â The auto lunged ahead at a fifty-mile clip. The macadam lay straight and level ahead of us. Here was the hamlet of La Garde, perched on its hill-top around its dilapidated castle. The train of thought was quite involuntary--but these ruins brought back to my memory a womanâs face--the face of Madeleine, Madeleine de ... I almost betrayed her name ... whom I had met just a year before in those self-same ruins. The old walls stood out with their battlements cut clean against the darkening sky. The plain below was a naked, leprous tangle of stupid olive-trees.... But that day, I had crossed the courtyard of the castle; and, I remembered, behind the tower I had spied the slender, agile form of a woman. She was a sight-seer, probably, resting for a moment on the top step of the stairway leading to the old postern. My heels clacked on the pavement, and she looked around my way--a dazzling vision of greenish golden hair, with eyes of emerald. Madeleine.... How endlessly, limitlessly far away all those days now seem! But they are so remotely past for me, alone. That woman is still alive ... still young ... still beautiful. Indeed it were indiscreet to give even the four syllables of her name. But there are so many Madeleines in the world--Madeleines even with hair of greenish gold and emerald eyes! Still at fifty miles an hour we swept into and through the village of FarlÃ¨de. A mile or two ahead the first houses of SolliÃ¨s-Pont were coming into view. I looked at my watch. Three thirty-nine! At three forty, to a second, we reached the turning where a road makes off from SolliÃ¨s-Pont to Aiguiers and thence toward the Grand Cap. My orderly was waiting there, holding my horse playfully by the nose. We stopped so short that I struck hard against the wind-shield with my chest. A moment later I was in the saddle. Some women of the village sat looking at me with interest from their door-steps. They thought the speed of my arrival and the suddenness of my departure were a bit suspicious. I remember hearing one of them remark in a shrill ProvenÃ§al dialect: âAnyhow itâs not the kind of weather for a dress parade ... no girls are out!â I believe those were the last words I heard that day ... that day, which was the last day of my life, really.... IV I took the Aiguiers road. The going was good--not too slippery, not too hard. My horse was trotting cheerfully along, at an easy swinging canter. He was a fine animal and I loved him--a perfect Arles thoroughbred, high in the withers, short in the cropper, with a fine spread of neck and shoulders. A courageous fellow, too, and so good-natured! I had picked him out at my leisure and just to my taste, during a turn of duty at the ministry in Paris. There you have facilities for such things that officers in garrison never dream of.... I called him _Siegfried_. We had come to know each other very well; and, in all our intimacy as comrades, I never discovered a defect in him worth mentioning. Siegfried took me to Aiguiers without stopping once for breath. Aiguiers is a little cluster of houses backed up against one of the last foot-hills of the Maurras chain. Beyond there, the road began to get more difficult. It ran along a hillside above a ravine cut deep by the Gapeau. There were sharp turns conforming to the twists in the bed of the little torrent, where the water mirrored gray with the pallor of the leaden clouds. It now began to rain again, in huge drops that made visible circles in the silent pools of the stream. I suggested a gallop to Siegfried. Away off to the right, the bell-tower of SolliÃ¨s-Toucas pierced a clump of cherry trees. Then the road turned sharp to the left hiding the distant village from view. Now there was nothing ahead but a deserted country, on which the sky was raining in a thick, dispiriting drizzle. Halfway up a steep fold in the ground, Siegfried slowed down to a walk. The other side was a more gradual slope, the inner rim of the great bowl of Valaury--a sort of crater, half filled, and perhaps two miles in diameter. Now the Grand Cap, hitherto concealed by the Maurras ridge, was in plain view. It came forward, as it were, out of the rain, sullenly dominating all the smaller hills around it. But its peaks were quite invisible, lost in the ceiling of clouds. It was nothing but a truncated cone, a huge pillar propping up the leaden architecture of mist and sky above it. Stray flecks of fog were wandering here and there along its sides, drifting slowly down to the break between the heath and the farm lands. For a second time the danger of going forward into that thick and sticky gloom occurred to me. Even if I found the trail, it might be hard, if not impossible, to keep to it.... But, for the moment, the floor of the basin was clear and the path before me broad and level. A word to Siegfried and he joyfully resumed his gallop. Madeleine had often gone with me on early morning rides. There in the pine groves, which drape the Points of CÃ©pet and Sicie in gorgeous green, we would trot along side by side inhaling the cool, resinous air. The memory came to me at just this moment; for the evening breeze was rising and I had breathed it deeply in. It felt damp and musty to my lungs, polluted with a strange odor of rotting leaves and oozing ground. I straightened up in my saddle for a deeper breath, a keener sense, of the uncanny smell. Yes, it was the same as before--and the queer notion came to me that it was the breath of the mountain, close, cadaverous, nauseous. A creeping, disagreeable chill ran over me! Siegfried, meanwhile, was galloping on; but in a moment or two I reined him in. We were well across the bowl, and the other slope, steep and slippery, was before us. At the top of a knoll four huts were gathered in jumbled array. No one seemed to be living in them, but a dog came out and sniffed at Siegfriedâs heels, without, however, barking. We came to a fork in the trail. I stopped to consult my military map and get my bearings. Straight in front of me, the Grand Cap blocked the horizon with a formidable chaos of precipitous rocks. Its first foothills were perhaps a mile and a half ahead. Now this was East; so North would be on my left hand. I studied the map for a while. It was not so very clear, but I did make out the fork where I then was standing and the two paths between which I had to choose. So far as I could see, they both led up to the battery; the one to the right, by way of the old convent of Saint Hubert and the village of MoriÃ¨re-la-Tourne; the one to the left, through the hamlet of MoriÃ¨re-les-Vignes and MoriÃ¨re itself. I decided to take the latter route. Had I selected the other, Adventure doubtless would have missed me! As I went on again, I thought I could make out a sort of pinkish cast to the clouds heaped up along the mountain. I was headed west now. That radiance must be, therefore, a shaft from the setting sun making its way through the bank of mist and fog. Before long it would be pitch dark. Instinctively, I looked back to the eastward, better to gauge the approach of night; and frank uneasiness came over me as I thought of the long distance still to go. Darkness, indeed, had already settled on the plains. It was climbing the heights of SolliÃ¨s, engulfing the basin of Valaury, and striding rapidly, stealthily, along up the mountain trail behind me. Now it was passing us, reaching the dangerous slopes of the mountain far ahead. The path was barely perceptible, and Siegfried kept slipping alarmingly. For the first time, I clearly realized that my mission involved far greater risks that an uncomfortable night of wandering out in the cold and rain. V It must have been somewhere on the northernmost spur of the Maurras range that I lost my way. It was not yet night, exactly, but it was far from broad daylight. The trail seemed to come to an end in a tangled clump of bushes, that looked like all the other underbrush on the solitary heath. Siegfried went courageously in, however, slipping about, but shrewdly feeling the ground with a forefoot before he rested his weight upon it. I relied mostly on his instinct to determine what was path and what was heather. Unfortunately I had forgotten that at the northern tip of the ridge the Tourris trail makes off to the left from the route to the Grand Cap. I should have remembered this, I suppose; for the Tourris trail makes a well-known tramp from Toulon--up to the famous Col de la Mort de Gauthier. Strangely significant name! My horse turned off on that trail, a fact of which I was not at once aware, because I had not even noticed the fork when we came to it. If the path hitherto had been bad, it now became positively dangerous. The ground was rough, broken by boulders and ledges and with deep ravines and rain-courses. We had left the rolling knolls about the basin of Valaury and were skirting the first rocky escarpments of the mountains. Siegfried went down on his knees a number of times. Meanwhile long streamers of cloud kept reaching down from the ceiling of mist above us, a ceiling that was closer and closer to our heads as we reached the higher land. Eventually we found ourselves in a sort of transparent, almost luminous, haze, which I knew was the forerunner of the bank of thick fog I had been watching as it drifted along some thirty feet above our heads. âProvence always was a dirty hole!â I swore, as I well remember. But at just this moment, the trail, if trail it could be called, took a sharp descent. Now we should have been going up-grade all along, and this sudden drop surprised me. Nothing of the kind had been indicated on my chart. I thought for a moment of consulting the map again, but the annoyance of unfolding the unwieldy paper and of studying in such wretched light all that maze of ditches and indentations deterred me. Besides, the drop soon came to an end and we were going uphill again, across a sort of hollow thickly overgrown with brush. The path was now a thing of the past decidedly. We were in a thicket of cat-briar which scratched Siegfriedâs belly and sides and cut my hands as I tried to keep the nettles off my own face. I could not get a good look at the ground, so thick was the undergrowth, but I observed that Siegfried was advancing with greater and greater reluctance. That much was evident. He did not like this going blindly into a territory where he scented danger. Now there was another sharp drop followed by a third up-grade. This convinced me that I was certainly off the road. I had been crossing a sort of saddle with three humps in line. No such ground figured on the trail to the Grand Cap. I thought I would keep on, however, to the top of the next rise. From there, perhaps, I could get a look around. And it turned out as I had hoped. From the top of the grade ahead, I could see a broad plain shut in on all sides by mountains. These were lost in the distance; but even in that heavy weather their outlines were characteristic enough. This massive barrier to the West could be nothing but the Faron--the âSleeping Dogâ as it is sometimes called from its unusual contour. Over here was the Coudon, just as surely; there was no mistaking its eastern spur, sharp-pointed like the prow of a vessel cutting into the plain. Where was I then? There could be no doubt. I had made the summit of âWalterâs Deathâ itself! So then, I must hurry back, and make as good time as possible! I must try to find the fork where I had gone astray and take the trail that went out to the right from there. Time was an important matter. I might still have a half hour left before complete nightfall. Siegfried was loathe to plunge back into the maze of cat-briar from which we had just so painfully emerged. His nose had been scratched in a number of places. I pressed my knees into his sides to intimate that speed was a consideration. Pluckily he went back down the incline, and at the bottom, indeed, he broke into a trot. And he trotted on--but not for long. Just before we were reaching the second grade, I suddenly felt my saddle give way beneath me. I fell, and so did Siegfried. I remember the rough scratch of the brambles as I shot through them and the thud with which I struck on a stone. I lay stunned for the fraction of a minute; then I jumped to my feet, bleeding, bruised, torn, but unhurt, all in all. Not so with Siegfried! I knelt beside my poor, poor horse. His left forefoot had caught in a crevice between two stones, and his leg had snapped like a pipe-stem at the ankle. Never again would Siegfried take me on my morning gallop! Never would he leave that fatal gully into which he had gone so much against his will! I wept. We men of the cavalry think more of our horses than we do of our friends and of our lovers. I wept! But then, in a sort of reaction to cold brutality, I drew my revolver, pressed the muzzle into Siegfriedâs ear, closed my eyes, and fired. The noble body trembled for a brief second; then it lay limp and relaxed under that shroud of bush and cat-briar. Coldly, mechanically, I returned my pistol to its place. Then I walked away, up toward the top of the second hill, where I sat down on the first stone I came to. A quarter of an hour must have passed before I came really to myself and thought of considering the plight in which I found myself. It was not an enviable one! Here I was, on foot, well off any beaten trail, virtually lost in the most lonesome waste of the mountains of Provence. I had passed a deserted hut some four miles back on the road. The battery on the Cap must be fully seven or eight miles further on beyond the fork. And my duty it was to get there regardless of my helplessness in that impenetrable thicket, from which twilight was rapidly fading now, yielding to black night. VI Again I beg of you who read me.... Believe! Believe! Believe! I was seated on a stone, to one side of what I took for the path. My eyes turned down toward the hollow from which I had just come--the place where the body of my horse was lying. Then I looked in the other direction, over toward the first hump of the double saddle of three hills. I was intending to rise and start out on my way again. It was my duty.... I was in honor bound to make the summit of the Grand Cap, find the battery, deliver my dispatch. Suddenly, on the hill-top--the first one--it could not have been more than a hundred yards away, I perceived a human form, standing out in dark profile against the still livid sky. I say it was a human figure. It was that of a woman, and she was coming toward me at a rapid pace. In joyous surprise I sprang to my feet. Certainly this was the last thing on earth I could have hoped for in such a place and at such an hour. Even in daytime it is rare to find a peasant, a wood-chopper, or a hunter in the neighborhood of the _Mort de Gauthier_! There are no trees worth cutting on those barren mountain sides. There are no fruits nor berries, nor even game. Yet here on this cold, rainy, foggy night I was meeting a woman--the only woman, as I was willing to bet, who had been along that trail in a monthâs time. Somebody from Valaury or MoriÃ¨re, probably, hurrying to get home by nightfall. She would be well acquainted with the region, doubtless, and would be only too glad to set me right about the trails. I took two or three steps in her direction, observing, however, that she would pass right in front of me, in any case! How fast she was coming, too! How easily she managed all that rough uneven ground! She was now some twenty yards away. And I stopped in utter stupefaction! She was not a peasant girl, by any means. That dress! It was of a fashionable cut, such as a society woman of distinction might wear. An afternoon otter cloak, edged with ermine, in the latest style; a large loosely hanging muff, of ermine also; a turban hat with plumes, the latter lying flat and pasted to the crown by the rain and mist. She had no umbrella and no heavier coat. There was nothing about her that seemed probable in that wilderness. I glanced in panic around me to be sure I was indeed in the foothills of those mountains and not in the winter-garden of some fashionable hotel on the Blue Coast; that it was the same desert in which I had lost my way, and that it was a cold, raw, rainy night of December. I could scarcely breathe now, and a cold chill began to run up and down my back. Was it not an apparition? Perhaps, but no ordinary apparition at any rate! Here was no impalpable, supernatural body. For I could hear the crunching of her feet on the leaves, a slight squeak in her shoes, and the silken rustle of her garments as they brushed against the brambles. The woman came up to me, passed me, barely grazing my body. She was looking fixedly ahead, without stopping, without turning her eyes this way or that. I had first a front view of her features, then another in profile. I recognized her! It was she! âMadeleine!â The cry came from me involuntarily, a cry of terror absolute: âMadeleine!â The woman seemed not to hear, just as she had seemed not to see. She walked rapidly past and away down the trail into the underbrush of the hollow. VII Madeleine, Madeleine de.... But no. I must not write her name! I had met her the year before--that would be year before last, the year 1907. It was the month of May, I believe, but of that I cannot be sure. It seems so long, long ago, such a frightfully long, long, time ago! My memory is faltering like a waning candle flame flickering above its last drop of molten wax, sputtering with bursts of blue and yellow light as it is about to die out! So then, the month of May, in the year 1907.... At this moment, a clearer flash of my memory comes--I see everything as vividly as I lived it then. It was in the courtyard of the castle at La Garde. I had strolled up the winding path to the ancient ruins; and behind the tower of the old donjon, I found ... Madeleine sitting on the last step of the stairway leading up to the postern. She turned at the sound of my footsteps and she blushed. That blush told me I had intruded on a very personal, a very intimate, reverie. At our feet stretched the leprous plain and beyond the southern limit of the plain, the sea. A radiant sky, not a trace of vapor veiling the glare of the naked sun! The ugly plain caught fire from the rain of light, became beautiful for a moment. It was one of those golden days, when the chest can scarcely contain the exultant throbbing of a drunken heart! When my eyes fell on the greenish golden hair of Madeleine, my heart began to throb intoxicated. When her emerald eyes fell on me, my bosom heaved with an inner, ecstatic joy. Later we knew that that instant had been the beginning of our love; for Madeleine confessed to me that a deep mysterious thrill had moved her also, at sight of my own enthralling emotion.... And the incredible horror of it all! That was not quite two years ago. And this hollow bag of crackling bones was I, I, a young, strong, hopeful man, loved and in love! Less than two years ago! Sometime later: a _fiesta_ at a sumptuous country house, looking down on the sea! Precipitous promontories, into which the maritime fir trees shot their roots and hung out horizontally above the foaming surf! Paths winding in and out among the trees--and lanterns, lanterns everywhere, shedding a soft and mellow light about the groves! There I saw Madeleine a second time! An evening gown of cloth-of-silver, cut low over splendid shoulders; and my eyes lingered on them with imperious desire! We met by a balustrade hanging out over the sea. The subdued murmur of the breakers softened the echo of our voices. In the distance the wail of violins! Other couples walking to and fro on the path behind us! A man and woman came up to our terrace, broke the silence of our communion, went away again! We talked of indifferent things--the small change of conversation, withholding words of deeper import. We sat there for a long time. One by one the lanterns burned themselves out. A red oval moon came up out of the sea, reached out along the water in the outline of a glistening, elongated cypress tree. The violins fell silent. We walked back toward the villa. Madeleine rested a cold hand on my arm. A sudden exaltation came over me. That woman whom I had so passionately loved under the hot sunglow of an afternoon was now at my side. We were alone in that pine grove, alone under that moonlight! I threw an arm about her shoulders, drew her toward me, and pressed my lips to her lips in a kiss she did not avoid. This was less than two years ago! It is Hell to remember it now! VIII Madeleine was a vivacious creature. Her graceful, subtle, intelligent beauty was not coarsened by the ruddy vitality of her features and the warmth of passion evident in the Southern blood that raced through her blue veins. I must not linger on these impressions, however; they are of interest only to me. I am not writing a diary of my inner life! I am not writing my memoirs! This is a testament, in which I bequeath to the generations after me a Secret which it behooves all men and women, my brothers and sisters, to know. It were better, perhaps, to abbreviate my story, suppress everything not pertinent to that Secret. But I must convince the sceptical. The voice of Truth must be felt in every word I say. I must show myself to be really the man I pretend to be: Charles AndrÃ© Narcy, captain of cavalry, Distinguished Service Cross, detailed to Staff Headquarters, born in Lyons, April 27th, 1876, died at Toulon, December 21, 1908 (or January 22, 1909). That I am this person I can prove only by this story. What desperation! Only by this story! I must convince you by the detailed fullness of my account. And in this sense, everything, everything, has a bearing on the Secret. Now I must say that Madeleine was a beautiful, vivacious creature, plump with the healthy vigor of her ProvenÃ§al race. And as I took her in my arms for the first time, I noted what a firm, solid, _heavy_ person she was. Later, when once I took her in my arms again and playfully lifted her from her feet, she seemed to me much _lighter_, much _lighter_! Madeleine de X.... What horror! If only I could give her name! Then you would know! And she would confirm my story! However ... honor impels me at this point to evade a little, to falsify a number of dates, and places, and details. You must get the meaning of what I say; but what does it matter if I write âJuneâ instead of âOctober,â or âTamarisâ instead of âHyÃ¨res,â âtaxicabâ instead of âPeuchot.â I must be careful, all the more because from moment to moment the flame of my memory is weakening, trembling, threatening to go out, reviving again only after minutes of anguish! The flame of my memory, and the flame of my intelligence, also! If I am not on my guard, some word, blighting to a ladyâs honor, may escape me! She was the only daughter of a rich man! He was a hard, sour, ill-tempered fellow. During winter seasons he lived in a decrepit castle lost in the chalk dunes between Toulon and Aubagne. There he kept aloof from the world, receiving no visitors and making no calls himself. One of those domestic tragedies, as laughable in the eyes of society as they are torturing to the hearts they tear, had separated him from his wife some twelve or fifteen years before. The old folks in Toulon, Nice, Marseilles, used to refer amusedly to the story, which they considered a most savory scandal. I never had an appetite for such things. I am unable to tell exactly why that man and that woman separated! I was never a friend of either of them. I saw him occasionally, in the old days, at our officersâ balls. His wife I used to meet from time to time at various resorts along the Riviera. She had a luxurious villa at La Turbie and another at Beaulieu. Part of the year she lived on her own properties; another part in Paris; usually she spent two or three months with Madeleine in Toulon, for there her daughter married and settled permanently. In the summer months, Madeleine lived in a cottage of her own on CÃ©pet Point, where the peninsula juts out into the roadstead and is always exposed to a cool breeze. Inspections often took me to the batteries in that neighborhood, and I had occasion for many a delightful promenade in the groves and forests of CÃ©pet and Sicie. I would ride up on horseback with an orderly, who came on the horse that Madeleine was to ride. We kept a side-saddle for her in the sentry box at one of the customsâ houses.... If you want details, there you have plenty of them. However.... I have figured it out: It was in the month of May, of the year 1907, that I met Madeleine for the first time at the old castle at La Garde; it was in the month of June of the same year that I encountered her for the second time at the _fiesta_; it was two or three weeks after that when I first took her in my arms and lifted her from her feet. And, she was a heavy person, robust, solid, well-built, but _heavy_, _heavy_! Some two months later, when we were playing on a beach, it occurred to me to take her in my arms and lift her again. I turned all my muscle to the task and prepared for the strain I so well remembered. To my surprise she was _light_, as _light_ as a feather, strangely, surprisingly _light_! I carried her about in my arms without effort. And she had been such a _heavy_ person! IX The dying flame of my memory burns up here into a brighter light. I remember the following with a strange, besetting vividness. As Madeleine rose from the sand some straws and bits of earth clung to her skirt, and I brushed them off. Under the trees that bordered the shore, our horses were browsing at some leaves, and I still can hear the crumpling sound as they chewed them. To get back into the saddle, Madeleine rested a foot in my hand; and again I had that sensation of her extraordinary _lightness_. I looked up at her in some alarm. As we rode along, I finally asked concernedly: âMy dear, have you been quite well these days past?â She seemed surprised at the question: âI?â âWhy yes, you! You seemed rather tired, I thought!â She opened her handbag, produced a beauty-box and looked into the tiny mirror that was on its cover. Then she laughed: âWhat can you be dreaming of, silly! You quite frightened me! But my skin is as rosy as a milkmaidâs!â That was true. The exhilaration of the drive had brought the ruddiest glow to her cheeks. She brushed them over with her powder puff, however. I might well have accepted the explanation, but a feeling of uneasiness came over me. Might there not be strange diseases that eat out the vitality of a person without changing appearances of perfect health? Certain fevers bring rosiness and not pallor to the features! I had not seen Madeleine for nearly a week just previous. She usually told me all she did. Perhaps she had been tiring herself in some way or other: âWhat have you been doing, love, since I saw you Tuesday?â âSince Tuesday?â she repeated with some hesitation. âHo!â said I, âWhat a memory! Yes, since Tuesday, to be sure!â âOh, yes!... It would be easier to remember if there were anything in particular,â she replied. âI have done nothing at all, stupid! Oh yes, thatâs so! I did go into town once! That was Thursday!â âAnd without telling me you were to be there, where I could have seen you?â She turned toward me and stared, with a certain perplexity, as one looks on discovering in the mind a thought, or a memory, one had never dreamed of finding there. She repeated my exclamation with an interrogative inflection: âWithout letting you know?â She looked dreamily down over the mane of her horse. Then she resumed. âThatâs true! I didnât let you know!â And she blushed in the most evident perplexity and confusion. I was quite amused; and I went on: âAnd I suppose you had a date with somebody ... somebody whose company was far more alluring than that of your old friend perhaps!...â She passed a hand across her forehead, as though to collect her thoughts; once, twice she did this. And I noticed that where her four fingers pressed upon her marble skin, four ruddy spots appeared. âDid I see someone?â she asked. âWhom did I see?â She asked the question quite innocently in a sort of dreamy reverie. I raised my voice in mock severity, the way one calls a child to order: ââWhom did I see!â How should I know, dearie, whom you saw? I was asking you?â She started imperceptibly, and then quite changing tone and manner, she resumed: âOh, I made a mistake ... Thursday! I didnât go into town, Thursday! It was Tuesday, and I took the train ... for Beaulieu!â âI see ... so your mother is at Beaulieu again. You paid her a visit?â âNonsense! Mother is at Aix! This is September, you see!â âWhy Beaulieu, then?â âWhy Beaulieu?â Again she seemed to have lapsed into a dream. As she answered, her lips quivered and each word came out with an effort that was noticeable. âBecause ... why yes ... I had some errands to do there.... I went to Beaulieu.... In fact ... see for yourself ...!â She dropped the reins and began looking through the little bag that was hanging from her wrist. âSee ... here is my ticket ...!â she added triumphantly. I was quite puzzled, less at the fact of her visit to Beaulieu than at her whole manner. And my astonishment was not relieved when I observed that the ticket had been punched but once. âYou got on the train--that is evident! But how do you happen to have the ticket, anyway? How did you get through the gate without giving it up?â Her eyes turned toward me vacantly, wide open, almost bulging: âWhy, I.... Yes.... How do I know? Of course not! I didnât give it up. I suppose the gateman failed to ask me
{'title': 'The House of the Secret (La maison des hommes vivants) by Claude Farrère', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}