The Holy Terrors (Les Enfants Terribles) (11 page)

Elisabeth stood up, said with a smile:

“Now listen. Just relax, don’t worry. It’s perfectly simple.
I’m going to talk to Paul.”

“No, no,” cried Agatha, starting up in terror, “Paul must never
guess! For God’s sake, promise me you’ll never breathe a
hint….”

“Hush, darling, hush. You’re in love with Paul. If he loves you back,
everything’s fine. I won’t give you away, I promise you. I’ll just
sound him casually. I’ll soon find out. You know you can trust me; go to sleep
now. Don’t budge from your room.”

Elisabeth went down one flight of stairs. She was wearing a bathrobe fastened round the
waist by a necktie. It was too long and got in her way. But she was walking, not of her
own volition, but as if mechanically controlled, impelled to turn left, turn right, to
open doors and close them with precision, without getting the hem of her bathrobe caught
in her moving sandals. She felt she had become a robot, wound up to go through certain
gestures; unless it went on going through its paces it would fall to pieces. Her heart
thudded, heavy, dull, against her ribs, like an axe falling upon wood; there was a
singing in her ears; her brain gave back no echo of her brisk forward march. Dreams
resound sometimes with footsteps, mindless, purposeful, like hers; dreams lend us a gait
lighter than winged flight, a step able to combine the statue’s weight of
inorganic marble with the subaqueous freedom of a deep-sea diver.

Hollow, leaden, buoyant, Elisabeth advanced along the corridor, her white wrap, billowing
round her ankles, seeming to float her onward like a cloud, one of those foamy
cloud-cushions devised by primitive painters to bear some Being of the angelic order.
Only a faint humming persisted in her head, and in her breast nothing any more but an
axe thudding out its mortal strokes.

From this time onward she was never to look back. The genius of the Room informed her
utterly. She was possessed by it, as men of action—sea-captains, say, or
financiers—in moments of supreme emergency may suddenly become possessed and know
by inspiration what act, what word, what gesture will save their ships and fortunes from
the rocks; or as a criminal, in a blinding flash of intuition, lights on the one, the
fool-proof alibi certain to save him from the gallows. Her feet brought her to the
bottom of the little staircase leading to the gallery. Gérard appeared in the
doorway.

“I was looking for you,” he said. “Paul’s in a very queer
mood. He asked me to come and find you. How’s the invalid?”

“She’s got a sick headache; she’s trying to get some sleep and
doesn’t want to be disturbed.”

“I’ll just look in on her.”

“Don’t. She’s got to be kept quiet. Go to my room. Wait there till I
come. I’m going to see Paul.”

Secure in the knowledge of Gérard’s unquestioning obedience, Elisabeth
dismissed him and advanced into the room. For one moment the old Elisabeth shook off her
cerements, took in the counterfeit before her of remembered moonlight, of remembered
snow; the gleam of linoleum, the shadow shapes of furniture reflected in its polished
surface; and in the center, behind its high, frail barricades, the sacred precincts of
the Chinese city.

She walked all round them, pushed aside a panel in the screens, and found Paul sitting on
the floor, his head and shoulders flung back against a pile of rugs. He was weeping. His
tears were not like Agatha’s; neither were they the tears he had shed once for
ruined friendship. One after another they formed between his eyelids, swelled, brimmed
over, trickled down his cheeks, collected near the corner of his lip, then fell again,
slowly, drop after heavy drop.

The impact of his letter should have been violent. The letter could not have failed to
reach Agatha. This vacuum, this suspense, was killing him; he could no longer bear the
strain of self-control and silence. At all costs he must know, must be delivered from
uncertainty. Elisabeth must be questioned; she had this moment come from Agatha.

“What letter?”

Had she not been forewarned, Elisabeth would doubtless have become provocative. In the
ensuing battle she might well have shown herself in her true colors; and Paul might well
have held his tongue. But instead of a litigious adversary, he found himself before a
judge—a merciful judge—and he confessed. He poured out everything—his
change of heart, his inability to deal with it, his letter written as a last
resort—and begged Elisabeth to tell him whether or no Agatha was likely to reject
his suit.

These successive depth-charges served only to set her automatically functioning upon
another track. She was appalled to hear of the special delivery letter. Suppose Agatha
already had this trump card up her sleeve…. Suppose she had been playing
it…. Or had she put it aside unopened, then suddenly recognized the handwriting,
and torn it open? Was she opening it now, this very instant? Was she already on her way
to Paul?

“Just a moment, my pet,” she said. “Wait, I’ve got some
important things to tell you. Agatha never said a word about your special delivery
letter. It can’t have flown away. It’s simply got to be found. I’m
just going upstairs. I’ll be back in no time.”

She hurried away. Suddenly it struck her that the letter might still be in the hall;
considered in retrospect, Agatha’s despair seemed certainly authentic. No one had
gone out. Gérard never bothered to look at the letters. If it had been left
downstairs, it might still be there.

It was still there. The crumpled, dog-eared yellow envelope lay like a dead leaf on the
salver.

She switched on the light. It was Paul’s handwriting, a clumsy schoolboy scrawl,
and the name on the envelope his own. Paul had written to himself! She tore it open.

This was a house devoid of writing paper; any odd scrap was used for scribbling messages.
Paul had torn a page from an exercise book to write on. She unfolded it, and read:

Agatha, don’t be angry. I love you. I was a fool. I thought you were my enemy.
I’ve found out now that I love you and that if you don’t love me, I
shall die. 1 am on my knees, begging for an answer. I’m in agony. I
shan’t stir from the gallery
.

Elisabeth shrugged her shoulders, grimaced contemptuously. Dashing down his own address,
Paul, in his desperation, had mechanically prefixed it with his name as well. It was
typical of him. He would never change.

Supposing this letter had come hurtling back to him like a boomerang, instead of lying
impotent upon the table in the hall? He would have lost heart, lost hope, and, utterly
humiliated by his own absent-mindedness, destroyed it. She would spare him that.

She retired to the lavatory in the gentlemen’s cloakroom, tore the letter into
fragments, and pulled the plug on them.

Forthwith returning to her luckless brother, she told him that she had found Agatha fast
asleep, adding that there was a special delivery letter on the bedside table; she had
seen it, a yellow envelope with a sheet of ruled paper sticking out of it. She had
recognized it because it was obviously one from the copybook on Paul’s table.

“Didn’t she even mention it when she was talking to you?”

“No, and I’d rather she never knew I’d seen it. And we must be
particularly careful not to seem to be inquiring after it. She’d be sure to say
she doesn’t know what we’re talking about.”

Paul had never managed to envisage the actual consequences of his letter. Wishful
thinking had inclined him towards optimism. What he had never expected was this abyss,
this void. The tears streamed down his rigid face.

Elisabeth was prodigal of words of consolation, interspersing them with a minute account
of a recent
tête-à-tête
with Agatha. The darling girl had
broken down and told her all—how she loved Gérard, how he loved her back,
how they intended to be married.

“It’s odd,” she persisted, “that Gérard hasn’t
said anything to you. I know he’s afraid of me; I seem to scare him stiff. But
it’s different with you. I suppose he thought you wouldn’t take it
seriously.”

Paul was dumb, drinking this inconceivable and bitter cup. Elisabeth continued to
elaborate her theme. Paul must be mad! Agatha was a simple girl and Gérard was
such a nice boy. They were made for one another. Gérard’s uncle was
getting old; Gérard would come into money; he would be free to marry Agatha and
found a respectable bourgeois family. There seemed no impediment to their happiness. It
would be monstrous, criminal, yes, criminal to throw a monkey wrench, to cause trouble,
to upset Agatha, to shatter Gérard, to poison both their futures. Paul could not,
must not, do it. It had been nothing but a passing fancy. When he thought it over, he
would see for himself that a frivolous fancy such as his must yield to genuine and
reciprocated love.

For a whole hour she went on talking, talking, delivering a lecture on his bounden duty.
She felt herself inspired, launched on the flood of her own oratory. She sobbed. Paul
bowed his head submissively, placed himself without reservation in her hands. He
promised to hold his tongue and try to look cheerful when the young couple broke their
news to him. It was clear from Agatha’s silence that she had decided to forget
about the letter, to make light of it, to forgive him. There might, of course, be a
little awkwardness between them now: if Gérard noticed, it would never do. But he
and Agatha would have the wedding to look forward to—that would tide them over. In
no time they would be off on their honeymoon, and bygones would definitely be
bygones.

Elisabeth dried Paul’s tears, kissed him, tucked him in, and left him in his
fortress. There was work to be done. The killer’s instinct told her to strike
blow on blow and never stop to think. Night-spinning spider, dexterous, deliberate, she
went on her way, drawing her thread relentlessly behind her, hanging it to the four
corners of the night.

She went to her own room, where she found Gérard expectantly hovering about.

“What’s the news?” he asked eagerly.

She quelled him with a glance.

“How often have I told you not to yell? It’s one of your worst habits.
Well, the news is that Paul’s ill. He hasn’t got the sense to realize it.
I know by his eyes, by his tongue. He’s got a temperature. It’s for the
doctor to say whether it’s a relapse or just a bout of flu. Meanwhile,
I’ve taken it upon myself to keep him in bed and not allow him any visitors. You
can have the bed in his old room.”

“No. I’d better be off.”

“Don’t go. I want to talk to you.”

Her voice was ominous.

Bidding him be seated, she paced up and down in front of him and presently inquired what
he proposed to do about Agatha.

“Do what? Why?” he asked.

“What do you mean by ‘why’?” And in harsh, cutting tones she
told him he was not going to get away with it—he knew perfectly well that Agatha
was in love with him, was expecting him to propose, and couldn’t understand what
he was playing at.

Gérard’s jaw dropped. He stared at her dumbfounded.

“Agatha….” he stammered. “Agatha….”

“Yes, Agatha!” she blazed at him.

He really was a half-wit. His outings with Agatha should have given him a clue. And
gradually she built up a picture of Agatha, not as a sisterly companion, but as a
would-be wife, filling out the canvas with a wealth of dates and proofs, until
Gérard was shaken to the core. She went on to say that Agatha was in great
distress; she had got it into her head that Gérard was in love with her,
Elisabeth, which was ridiculous, and anyway out of the question in view of her superior
financial status.

Gérard longed for the ground to open and swallow him up. It cut him to the quick
to hear her thus degrade herself—and him—with this uncharacteristic, this
vulgar talk of money. She saw her advantage, seized it, and dealt him blow on mortal
blow, forbade him any more to pine for her, ordered him to marry Agatha and never to
divulge her rôle of go-between. She had been forced into it by his obtuseness; and
Agatha must never feel herself beholden to her for her married happiness—not for
the whole world would she, Elisabeth, have that.