"Look at yourself!" I spat. "Look at yourself in the mirror and see why you must wear a mask.
Look
!"
He stared at the glass with such dumb, disbelieving horror that all the fury shriveled and died within me. And then, before I could stop him, he screamed and flung himself at the mirror, pummeling the glass with his clenched fists in a mad frenzy of terror.
The glass shattered. Shards flew in all directions, embedding themselves in his wrists and fingers, so that suddenly he was bleeding from dozens of lacerations. But still he went on screaming and pounding the fractured mirror with bloody hands; and when I tried to restrain him he bit me— he bit me like a wild animal that was out of its mind with fear.
A hand fell on my arm. Marie's voice, oddly cold and determined, told me to go downstairs and find bandages. When I returned, she had coaxed him from the debris of smashed glass and was picking the slivers from his fingers with a pair of tweezers. I could not watch…
I waited for her in the drawing room, but she did not come back down again. I assumed she had put him to bed and was sitting with him; 1 did not dare to go upstairs and see. Worming my way into the farthest corner of the sofa, 1 spent the rest of the night stitching steadily at a new mask and staring into the empty hearth.
Shortly before dawn, when he woke screaming from the 'first of what proved to be a long succession of nightmares, she came into the room with a candle in her hand, looking gray and drained… and angry.
"He's asking for you," she said grimly. "God knows why, but it's you he wants. Go upstairs and comfort him."
She stood in front of me like an avenging angel and 1 shrank from her strangely uncompromising figure.
"I can't," I whispered. "I can't go to him."
Without warning she suddenly leaned forward and dealt me a resounding slap across the cheek.
"Get up!" she stormed. "Get up, you spoiled, sniveling brat! All your life you've been spoiled… by your parents, by Charles, by me… everyone pandering to Madeleine, dear, pretty Madeleine. Well, it's not enough simply to be pretty, do you hear me, Madeleine? It doesn't excuse you from human obligations. It doesn't permit you to poison a child's mind and cripple his soul. You should hang for what you have done to him since he was born… you should burn!"
She struck me again and then turned away, sobbing hopelessly and sinking into the chair beside the hearth. And shocked as I was, I found myself remembering the day I had found her in the dormitory at the convent, standing on the bed to avoid the huge spider that sat peaceably in her path to the door.
"Get rid of it, but don't hurt it," she had begged me with white-faced intensity. "It can't help being ugly."
I had dropped a book on the spider, in my brisk, heartless manner, and squashed it nicely. She had refused to speak to me for days after…
I could not get that picture out of my head, as I dragged myself up the staircase, with one hand against my burning cheek. I could not forget that mangled spider…
The floorboards creaked beneath my feet and I heard renewed terror in Erik's cry.
"Mama? Mama?"
"Hush," I murmured. "It's me, Erik… Hush, now."
I heard him sigh with relief as I walked into the room. One small bandaged hand groped briefly in my direction, then subsided wearily back on the coverlet.
"I don't feel well," he complained fretfully.
"I know." I sat stiffly on the edge of my bed, thinking how small he looked in its great expanse, how small and how helpless. "I'm sorry. Go back to sleep now and you'll feel better in the morning."
He clutched at the coverlet in alarm.
"I don't want to go to sleep," he panted. "If I go to sleep it will come back… the face! The face will come back!"
I closed my eyes and swallowed hard over the lump which seemed to be blocking my air passage.
"Erik," I said helplessly, "you must try to forget about the face now."
"I can't forget it," he whispered. "It was there in the mirror and it frightened me. Did you see it, Mama, did you see it too?"
"Erik, the face will never hurt you."
"I don't want it to come back!" He sobbed wildly. "I want you to make it go away forever!"
I took a deep breath and looked down on the little corpse face against the pillow. The deep-socketed eyes were staring desperately into mine, seeking the reassurance that I alone could give. And I knew then that, in spite of his rapidly burgeoning genius, he was still too young to bear the reality of this burden.
"The mask will make the face go away," I said, as gently as I could. "As long as you wear it, you will never see the face anymore."
"Is the mask magic?" he demanded with sudden, passionate interest.
"Yes." I bowed my head, so that our eyes no longer met. "I made it magic to keep you safe. The mask is your friend, Erik. As long as you wear it, no mirror can ever show you the face again."
He was silent then, and when I showed him the new-mask he accepted it without question and put it on hastily with his clumsy, bandaged fingers. But when I stood up to go, he reacted with panic and clutched at my gown.
"Don't go! Don't leave me here in the dark."
"You are not in the dark," I said patiently. "Look, I have left the candle."
But I knew, as I looked at him, that it would have made no difference if I had left him fifty candles. The darkness he feared was in his own mind and there was no light in the universe powerful enough to take that darkness from him.
With a sigh of resignation I sat back on the bed and began to sing softly; and before I had finished the first verse, he was asleep.
The bandages on his hands and wrists showed white and eerie in the candlelight, as I eased my skirts from his grasp.
I knew that Marie was right.
Physically and mentally, I had scarred him for life.
I became altogether reliant on Father Mansart for the sensible management of Erik's soul and intellect. When he suggested sending examples of the child's designs to the School of
Fine Arts in Paris, I made no murmur of protest. I knew that he had an old acquaintance there, a friend who had once shared his education at the Lycee Henri-Quatre and now lectured on architecture. If Professor Guizot could be persuaded to take an interest in my son, I was ready to accept whatever advice or assistance he might be prepared to give me. Erik was already showing signs of boredom, and when he was bored he was unbearably badly behaved and inclined to dangerous mischief. He could not be sent to school and I had little chance of engaging a tutor suitable to his extraordinary needs; Professor Guizot seemed to be my only hope of preserving sanity, and I awaited his visit with a growing degree of desperation.
He did not hurry down to Boscherville and when he finally arrived, I sensed he was extremely skeptical. Like Father Mansart, he was in late middle age, portly and a little pompous in bearing. In spite of his studied courtesy it was quite obvious that he considered he had been dragged from Paris on a wild-goose chase. I believe it was only out of a sense of obligation to an old school friend that he had come at all, and he appeared determined to look upon the occasion as a little holiday. He seemed more interested in discussing the possibility of duck shooting in the neighboring village of Duclair and it was with a feeling of increasing despair that I finally suggested, rather pointedly, that he might like to talk to Erik.
"Ah, yes," he observed with a sudden, quite unmistakable coolness entering his voice, "the child prodigy. By all means show him in, madame. I'm sure I shall not need to detain him overlong."
He measured me with a look of unveiled suspicion and I felt myself flushing hotly beneath his glance. When Erik came into the room, I saw the professor's guarded surprise at the sight of the mask, but he made no comment. He shook hands with the boy and waited patiently for him to climb onto a chair at the dining-room table, before placing a sheet of paper in front of him and asking him to name what he saw.
"It's an arch," said Erik politely, "a basket arch."
"That is correct." I heard mild astonishment in the professor's voice. "Perhaps you would like to show me the keystone."
Erik pointed.
"The abutment and the impost?"
Erik pointed again and I saw the professor frown.
"Center, span, haunch, and crown," he barked in quick succession. "Voussoirs… extrados."
Erik's finger moved unerringly across the sheet and I heard him give a faint sigh of boredom at this dull and apparently pointless exercise.
The professor took out a handkerchief and passed it across his mottled forehead; he suddenly looked uncomfortably warm.
"What is the springing line?" he demanded with abrupt aggression.
"The level at which an arch springs from its supports," Erik replied calmly.
The professor sat down unexpectedly and stared at the child.
"Draw me ten different types of arches and name them," he ordered.
Erik glanced across at me impatiently. I knew he was insulted by the simplicity of the task, but when I glared at him he picked up his lead and began to draw with swift obedience.
I withdrew from the room at that point and left them together. Three hours later, when the professor joined me in the drawing room, he was in his shirtsleeves. He looked disheveled and exhausted, not at all the worldly, rather supercilious gentleman who had entered my house with such aplomb shortly after noon.
"Madame," he said solemnly, "I must thank you for permitting me the most remarkable experience of my entire academic career."
I had the grace to remain silent, for I sensed he had something difficult to say and that he was not a man to whom gracious apology came easily.
"I have to confess that I came here today fully expecting to expose a rather clever hoax," he admitted uncomfortably. "When I received those designs in Paris my first thought was that my old friend had become the victim of a confidence trick. I'm afraid I suspected you, madame, of taking advantage of a kindly and overcredulous nature for your own spurious purposes."
I stared at him without comment and he spread his thick hands in a gesture of defeated wonder.
"What can I say to you, madame? You must already be well aware that your son's advancement is little short of preternatural."
I clasped my hands together in relief.
"Then you admit his genius?"
He shook his head slowly. "Genius is a human attribute. What I have seen today cannot be defined by any word that is known to me. His aptitude is quite beyond belief. Madame, I should find it extraordinarily difficult to resist shaping such boundless talent."
I closed my eyes briefly, feeling as though a great weight had been taken from my shoulders. The professor fell silent for a moment, fingering the jacket that lay over one arm, and suddenly all my uneasiness returned.
"I understand from Father Mansart's letter that there is a serious physical deformity that precludes his attendance at any of our usual seats of educational excellence."
"That is correct," I said faintly, aware that my heart had begun to sink.
"Forgive me, madame… but would it be improper to inquire… ?
"The mask." I bit my lip. "You wish to know the reason for the mask."
"1 must admit to finding it somewhat eccentric, even disturbing. In this age of enlightenment one hardly expects to find a child imprisoned in such a fashion. Surely no accident of birth, however severe, can warrant so primitive a measure."
My head jerked up at the ignorant criticism.
"You wish to see?" I demanded coldly. "You are prepared to show no disgust—no fear that would distress him?"
He smiled faintly. "I think you will find that I am a man of the world," he asserted with contemptuous confidence.
"And you will not allow what you see to interfere with your previous judgment."
Now he was quite plainly insulted.
"Madame, we are not living in the sixteenth century! This is an age of empirical and rational judgment."
"So you think," I said.
With a shrug I went to the door, called Erik into the room, and removed the mask.
I have to admit that Professor Guizot was as good as his word. He lost his high, port-wine coloring as the blood fled from his pendulous cheeks, leaving them gray and flaccid; but not by a flicker of his eye or a twitch of his white lips did he betray what he must have felt when he looked at the child's dead face.
When we were alone once more, I indicated the chair by the fire.
"You may sit, if you wish, monsieur."
"Thank you." He sank down by the hearth, arranging his jacket across his knees with a furtive gesture of shaken nerves. "I wonder if I might trouble you for a glass of water?" he said huskily.
I brought him brandy instead and he accepted it without question, gulping at the rich brown liquid with relief before setting it down on the little circular table beside him with a trembling hand.
"I think you will allow the necessity of a mask," I said.
"Yes," he replied, in a tone of deep feeling, "I very much fear that I do."
"And?" I prompted inexorably.
He glanced at the empty brandy glass with regret, but I did not offer him any more; a terrible fear and anger was starting to build inside me.
"I had intended, if you were agreeable, to take the boy into my own household, where I might instruct him at my leisure and make arrangements for him to take his baccalaureate. But now I see such an arrangement would not be possible. My wife, you understand, is of a nervous disposition, and we have inquisitive neighbors… No, I fear it is quite unthinkable. I have my position in society to consider."
I clenched my fists. "You will not teach him."
"Madame…" he protested helplessly.
"I knew! I knew you would refuse once you had seen!"
"Madame, I beseech you to be reasonable. This child—"
"Is a monstrous freak!"
"I did not say that," he retorted with dignity, "and I must beseech you not to put words into my mouth. I have every intention of teaching him, I assure you, but it could not be done in Paris where I am so much in the public eye."