Читать книгу Devil's Laughter: A Tale of Paris - John Hunter A.A. - Страница 7

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For the first time in her life Gabrielle understood grief. It seemed incredible that her mother should be dead, that she should never again hear her voice, nor speak to her, nor kiss her. She had never realized how complete and awful could be a sense of loss, utter and absolute.

Her mother was dead. She could not be called back even for a single moment. It was stupendous. It stunned her, so that she sat for hours, dry-eyed, looking straight before her, conscious only of immeasurable loneliness.

In those hours she did not see her father. For years, since she had been able to understand men and affairs, she knew that a barrier had existed between him and her mother. He had always seemed to her a strange man, aloof, secretive—loving, perhaps, in his aloof way—yes, she felt sure he loved his children—but lacking in qualities that would have made him beloved.

In him Gabrielle thought she might find no comfort. Certainly, he could never replace the great good friend she had called her mother.

Her thoughts were largely incoherent, weighed down by her grief, intermittently presenting themselves. She wished John Calverley had not gone away from Paris, for she knew he would have been an invaluable sympathizer in this hour of her life’s greatest sorrow. Thinking of him reminded her of Baring, and while the death of her mother had robbed her of the joy she had felt in making a new friend, she yet could contemplate Baring with gentleness and hope that she could meet him again.

She was aroused by a tap on the door, and in response to her call Anton walked into the room. The boy was pale, but steady. He came and seated himself beside Gabrielle, and for a little while neither of them spoke. Anton’s hand lay over Gabrielle’s and her hand turned, so that her fingers crept into his.

At last Anton said: “Try not to grieve too much, won’t you? I don’t think mother would wish us to be too sad.”

He paused a moment, and Gabrielle nodded. She knew what he meant. She knew that perhaps in death had come a release from the strange and secret burden which had so obviously weighed her mother down for many years.

Anton went on awkwardly: “If there’s anything I can do, Gabrielle... I mean, somehow, these things always seem more terrible for a woman. Men can stand them better.”

Her fingers tightened on his, and she smiled wanly. “There’s nothing, Anton.” She looked at him, and her eyes filled with tears. Impulsively she slipped sideways, her head buried against his shoulder, and began to cry. He sat with his arm round her and held her close, and comforted her.

After a time she drew back. “It’s selfish of me,” she said, “to put my grief on you, when you have your own to bear. But I just couldn’t help it, Anton.”

He patted her cheek. “That’s all right.” His voice broke as he spoke.

They sat for a long time silent. Gabrielle was glad to have him with her, loving him and admiring him, knowing that he loved her and would always serve her. There was a vast comfort in the knowledge. She was intensely and tremendously proud of him, as was he of her, and the fact of his presence helped her. They had always been chums. As a boy Anton had fought her battles; as a young man he had watched over her. She knew that he would always watch over her.

She had recovered her poise somewhat when her maid came into her room and told her her father wished to see her. Anton followed her from the room, explaining that he had to go down to the Rue Royale to see a man on business, but that he would be back soon.

It was a long time before they saw each other again.

Gabrielle found Laroche standing with his back to the window, a shadowed figure, motionless, his shoulders slightly hunched, and as she closed the door behind her she felt suddenly cold, as if she had encountered a draught of chill air. It was with difficulty that she refrained from shivering.

Laroche stepped forward to the big flat-topped desk. His movement was slow. His eyes were fixed on Gabrielle’s face. It was she who broke the silence.

“What’s the matter, father?” She spoke a little breathlessly.

Laroche did not immediately reply. He was watching her, examining her, noting the beauty of which he had been so proud, and to which he now could no longer lay claim; considering that beauty, and how he could use it as a weapon against the memory of the woman who had deceived him.

There was no sorrow in his heart, only that bleak hate, strong and steady, implacable. His conduct of the interview now beginning was already clearly planned in his thoughts. Ever since his wife had died he had considered it, planned it, framed sentences, made decisions.

“Sit down,” he said.

Gabrielle seated herself. She saw that there was a paper under the hand of Laroche as it rested on the desk.

“Within an hour,” added Laroche, steadily, “you will have left this house for ever. Do you understand?”

“I?” Gabrielle leaned forward. “Father! What is it? What do you mean?” Her grief-stunned brain tried in vain to grasp the full significance of his words.

Laroche gestured wearily. It was part of his plan that he should display no wrath; that in all his attitude should be only grief, the shocked despair of a man who finds his life’s beliefs wrecked.

“It is very difficult for me to tell you what it is necessary for you to know, Gabrielle. In the past twenty-four hours I have lost two things which were valuable to me—my wife, and my belief in her.” He paused, as though overcome by emotion.

Gabrielle breathed: “Why do you say that of my mother? What has happened?”

“That is what you are here to learn—what I find so difficult to tell you. Perhaps, since you have been old enough to understand, you have observed that your mother was—how can I put it?—aloof; that she largely isolated me from her affections and her company.”

Gabrielle nodded. She could not speak.

Laroche dropped heavily into a chair beside him. It was the movement of a man weighed down with suffering. His shadowed eyes were considering Gabrielle carefully. His smoothly working brain was marking every little change in her expression.

“I thought it might be that she was too devoted to her children, as some women are. There is a type of woman who, when children come along, shuts her husband out. I was content to bear it, for I loved all three of you. But last night I discovered the truth.”

Gabrielle was sitting like stone. Laroche’s very steadiness had more effect on her than the wildest declamation, the most vivid display of wrath. He was acting superbly. He spoke like a man under the utmost restraint, yet whose emotions were near to breaking point.

He held up the paper. “This was written by your mother last night as she lay dying. It came into my hands. It is unfinished; but it told me enough to force me to examine her private papers and effects. Perhaps you would care to read it, because I find myself unable to tell you what it contains.” He passed the letter across.

He had carefully mutilated it, tearing off sections of it, taking out a page, and doing it so cleverly that it looked still as though a dying, fumbling woman had scrawled on scraps of paper the message she was destined never to finish.

The word “John” at the beginning was gone. The middle page was gone, but as they were not numbered that did not matter. The lower part of the last page was gone. Gabrielle read:

“I am dying. Something has happened to my heart. I have pretended to feel a little better, so that now I am alone and can write this to you. I want you to fetch Gabrielle from this house immediately you read this. I feel that I have no time to write either fully or carefully, but I want you to try and understand, try and read in this letter all I cannot put down.”

That was on the first page.

The last page had been torn away at the lower part, and held no signature. It began:

“My strength is rapidly failing. One day you may learn everything about my husband. I must hurry to tell you the truth about Gabrielle. Take her away when I am gone. She is not his child, but mine and yours, born of our love in those days in the Tyrol.”

There was no more.

Gabrielle read it once, and again, and again. Then she looked up. It was her mother’s handwriting. The phraseology was characteristic of her mother. She knew beyond all doubting, that her mother had written it.

Laroche said quietly: “You are twenty-two. I have been married to your mother for twenty-nine years.”

“It’s impossible.” Gabrielle could hardly hear her own words.

“So I thought—at first.” Laroche half started to his feet, very naturally, very cleverly. His voice lifted. “By God! To think....” He checked himself, and sat down, speaking more quietly. “But no. You are not to blame. I must be calm.” He sat, his fingers working nervously; then spoke in a hoarse strained voice: “Do you realize that that woman betrayed me?”

Gabrielle allowed the letter to fall from her fingers. The immensity of the disclosure overwhelmed her, so that she was incapable of speech or thought. In this tremendous moment of discovery she was hardly conscious of any vast emotion, but felt stunned.

“It can’t be. It can’t be.” She spoke to herself rather than to Laroche.

“You have read,” said Laroche, brusquely. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, fingers interlaced. This was the time for him to deliver his stroke, to make the most difficult and pitiless move in the campaign of devilry he had planned. “There is in Paris a criminal called Le Cagnard. Though he is unknown his name has occasionally occurred in the newspapers when some petty scoundrel or other has been captured and has talked. Have you observed it?”

Gabrielle aroused herself. “What is that you say?”

“I am speaking of Le Cagnard, the criminal.”

“Oh yes, father....” She checked herself, her eyes wide with horror.

Laroche smiled bleakly, appreciating her thoughts. “I am speaking of Le Cagnard. It seems that this man was once an officer in the Army. His name, apparently, is Noel Bruleau. He met your mother twenty-four years ago, before the name of Le Cagnard had been invented for him by scoundrels less evil then he, when Noel Bruleau was a junior officer and exceedingly handsome. I myself met him. I know now, from your mother’s papers, that Noel Bruleau became Le Cagnard, and that, had things been different, you might have been entitled to the name of Bruleau.”

Gabrielle stood up, clutching at the edge of the table. “That’s a lie,” she panted. “I don’t believe it. My mother.... this monstrous creature you mention.... Where are the papers?”

Laroche reached out his hand for a little packet of letters. He continued to speak soberly. “These are they. I am not sure whether you would wish to read them, for they contain much that is hurtful. When a woman loves so much that she is willing to give her honour to the man she adores, she writes many things her daughter might think need never have been set down. I have read them, and every word of them is burnt in my soul.”

He weighed the packet in his hand as though undecided, bluffing cleverly, gauging Gabrielle with absolute accuracy. “I think these are better destroyed,” he added.

There was a great fire burning in the grate, and into this fire he dropped John Calverley’s quiet love letters.

He turned and stood with his back to the flames, as though he would insure against any attempt to rescue the letters.

“Gabrielle, I have loved you all through these years. You know that.” There was an intensity in his voice which was not all acting. Watching her, he was realizing what he had lost. “I could have conducted this talk of ours differently, had I followed the first dictates of my head and my heart when I read that letter your mother wrote. You will, I hope, realize my position. I had thought myself your father all through these years. I had trusted your mother’s honour until the hour her lips were closed in death. Then ... wreckage....”

He paused. He was nervous. He was fighting a tremendous battle to continue to act, to refrain from tearing aside the veil and showing Gabrielle the slavering thing which planned her ruin, and prepared for that plan’s execution with soft words, quietly spoken.

“I say this so that you will understand. A father does not tear his daughter from his heart and throw her to the dogs.”

The truth of that statement was irrefutable. For no fault of her own this man, whom she had known as her father, was tearing her out of his heart. No father would do that. Therefore it must be true that her mother—that dear, dead woman who had stood in Gabrielle’s consciousness for all that was fine and pure—had sinned against the laws of God. But that she had sinned with such a creature as Le Cagnard—that was surely incredible.

The girl stood there white-lipped. She tried to beat back the flood of agonizing thoughts that surged through her brain—tried to hear what Laroche was saying in his curiously even voice.

“You and Anton I have cherished exceedingly; and now... there is this.”

Gabrielle was swaying slightly. “I suppose”—she said with difficulty—“what is written here must be true. I suppose my mother knew what she was writing. She was not mad. But this story of Le Cagnard. How can I believe it?”

“I asked myself that, Gabrielle, but the facts are monumental. I am willing to assist you to verify the story. As you know, in my business of finance, I encounter many men and have many channels of information at my disposal. I might, given time, get into touch with Le Cagnard. If I succeed I would arrange for you to see him and hear what he has to say. Would that satisfy you?”

Gabrielle suddenly threw out her hands. “We stand and talk here—calmly, quietly, argumentatively—and all the time my life and my faith and my belief are being ground to dust. I can’t stay. I can’t endure it. I can’t listen any longer.”

Laroche inclined his head. “The way is open for you to go at once.”

Gabrielle stepped round the table towards him. He stood motionless, and made no attempt to meet her. He kept his hands behind his back. She turned away from him and went out of the room. Within half an hour she had left the house.

Laroche picked up the telephone after she had left and asked for a certain number. Dekker answered the call, and Laroche said: “This is the master. You were talking of a girl the other night. I told you to keep clear. I withdraw that. The ban is lifted. Find her.”