Читать книгу Robur the Conqueror - Jules Verne - Страница 13

CHAPTER

4

In which, regarding the valet Frycollin, the author seeks to clear the moon’s good name

Certainly, and more than once already, in the wake of such stormy discussions, as they left their meetings, the Weldon Institute had filled Walnut Street and the adjacent lanes with clamor. More than once, the inhabitants of that district had rightfully complained about noisy tail ends of discussions, which had disturbed them even within their houses. More than once, finally, the police had to intervene to allow passersby—most of them highly indifferent to the whole question of aerial navigation—to pass by. But never before that evening had the tumult reached such proportions, never had the complaints been more well founded, never had police intervention been more necessary.

Still, the members of the Weldon Institute had some excuse on their side. They had never bargained for an attack on their own ground. To those fanatic about the “Lighter-Than-Air,” somebody no less fanatic on the “Heavier-Than-Air” had said things that were completely disagreeable. Then, just as they were about to treat him as he deserved, he had eclipsed himself.

Now that demanded vengeance. To leave such injuries unpunished, one would have to have no American blood in his veins! Sons of Amerigo treated as sons of Cabot! Wasn’t that an insult, all the more unforgivable because it happened to be true—historically speaking?

So the club members rushed in groups into Walnut Street, then into the midst of neighboring streets, then throughout the whole district. They roused the occupants. They made them have their houses searched, even if it meant reimbursing them later for having invaded their privacy, which is particularly respected among peoples of Anglo-Saxon origin. Annoyances and examinations were all in vain. Robur was nowhere to be seen. Not a single trace of him. He could not have been harder to find if he had lifted off in the Weldon Institute’s balloon, the Go Ahead. After an hour’s hunting, the search had to be given up, and the colleagues separated, though not before swearing to extend the search across the whole terrain of the double America that makes up the New World.

By eleven o’clock, calm had more or less returned to the district. Philadelphia would be able to plunge itself once more into that pleasant sleep which is the enviable privilege of nonindustrial cities. The various members of the club thought of nothing but returning to their respective homes. To name but a few of the most noteworthy, William T. Forbes headed for his great sugar factory, where Miss Doll and Miss Mat had prepared his evening tea, sweetened with his own glucose. Truk Milnor set out for his mill, whose fire pump wheezed all day and night in the most remote neighborhood. The treasurer Jem Cip, publicly accused of having one foot more intestinal matter than is suitable for the human machine, regained the dining room where his vegetable supper awaited him.

Two of the most important balloonians—two only—did not appear to think of returning home so soon. They had seized the opportunity to talk with still more acrimony than before. These were the irreconcilable Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans, the president and secretary of the Weldon Institute.

At the club door, the valet Frycollin awaited Uncle Prudent, his master.

He set out following them, without troubling himself about the subject that had pitted the two colleagues against each other.

It was as a euphemism that the verb “talk” was employed to describe what the president and the secretary of the club were doing together. In reality, they were arguing with an energy that had its roots in their old rivalry.

“No, sir, no!” repeated Phil Evans. “If I had had the honor of presiding over the Weldon Institute, never, no, never would such a scandal have occurred!”

“And what would you have done, if you had had that honor?” demanded Uncle Prudent.

“I would have cut that public slanderer off before he had even opened his mouth!”

“It seems to me that to cut somebody off, you first have to let them speak!”

“Not in America, sir, not in America!”

And, as they shot back and forth with repartee more bitter than sweet, these two personages strayed into streets that brought them farther and farther away from their dwellings; they crossed districts of which, given the circumstances, they should have steered well clear.

Frycollin followed on; but he was not reassured to see his master venture into the midst of places already deserted. He did not like those kinds of places, the valet Frycollin, especially just before midnight. And the fact is that the darkness was profound, and the moon in her crescent had just begun to “serve her twenty-eight days.”¹

Frycollin therefore looked right and left, so they would not be spied upon by suspicious shadows. And, as it happened, he did believe he saw five or six big demons who seemed not to lose sight of them.

Instinctively, Frycollin drew closer to his master; but for nothing in the world would he have dared interrupt in the middle of the conversation, a few fragments of which had reached his ears.

In short, chance had it that the president and secretary of the Weldon Institute, without noticing it, were heading for Fairmont Park. There, at the height of their dispute, they crossed the Schuylkill River by its famous metal bridge; they met up with only a few lingering passersby, and found themselves at last in the midst of vast expanses of land, some spreading out in immense prairies, others shaded by beautiful trees, which make this park a domain unique the world over.

There, the valet Frycollin’s terrors assailed him with full force, and with all the more reason, for the five or six shadows had slipped after him onto the bridge over the Schuylkill River. The pupils of his eyes were so dilated that they spread right to the circumference of the iris. And, at the same time, his whole body shrank down, pulled in, as if he had been endowed with that contractility unique to mollusks and certain arthropods.

This is because the valet Frycollin was a total coward.

A genuine South Carolina Negro, with a doltish head on a scrawny little body. Aged exactly twenty-one, which is to say he had never been a slave, even at birth, but he hardly deserved anything better than slavery. Grimacing, gluttonous, lazy, and above all, of a cowardice beyond belief.² For three years, he had been in Uncle Prudent’s service. A hundred times he had almost been thrown out; but he had been retained, for fear the replacement would be worse. And yet, mixed up as he was in the life of a master perpetually ready to leap into the most audacious enterprises, Frycollin had to expect manifold occasions in which his cowardice was put through the hardest tests. But there were compensations. Not much fault was found with his gluttony, and even less with his laziness. Ah! valet Frycollin, if only you could have seen into the future!

And why had not Frycollin stayed in Boston, in the service of a certain Sneffel family that, on the brink of making a trip to Switzerland, had renounced it for fear of avalanches?³ Wasn’t that the house fit for Frycollin, and not that of Uncle Prudent, where recklessness was in permanent residence?

But there he was, and his master had even ended up getting used to his faults. Besides, he had one merit. Though a Negro by origin, he did not speak a Negro dialect—which is a considerable advantage, for nothing could be more disagreeable than that odious jargon in which possessive pronouns and infinitives are used to the point of excess.

Thus, it is well established that Frycollin was a coward, or, as the phrase goes, “cowardly as the moon.”

But, on that subject, it is only fair to protest against that insulting comparison to blonde Phoebe, sweet Selene, the chaste sister of the radiant Apollo. What right have we to accuse of cowardice an orb that, ever since the world was a world, has always looked the earth square in the face, without ever turning her back?

Be that as it may, at this hour—it was very close to midnight—the crescent of the pale slandered one⁴ was beginning to disappear in the west behind the park’s tall foliage. Its rays slid through the branches, scattering some shards of light on the ground and making the space under the trees seem a little less dark.

This permitted Frycollin to cast about a more inquisitive glance.

“Brrr!” said he. “They’re still there, those scoundrels! Surely they’re getting closer!”

He could no longer contain himself, and going toward his master:

“Master Uncle,” he said.

For that was what he called him, and what the president of the Weldon Institute wanted to be called.

At that moment, the argument between the two rivals had reached its apex. And, just as they were busy instructing each other to take a running jump, Frycollin was violently enjoined to join them.

Then, as they went on arguing nose to nose, Uncle Prudent moved farther into the deserted plains of Fairmont Park, ever more distant from the Schuylkill River and the bridge they would have to go back over to return to the town.

The three of them were now in the center of a tall thicket of trees, their tops immersed in the last light of the moon. On the edge of this thicket a wide clearing spread out, a vast oval field marvelously suitable for the contests of a racing ring. Not one bump in the terrain to bother galloping horses, not one clump of trees to block the spectators’ view along a circular track of several miles.

And yet, if Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans had not been preoccupied with their dispute, if they had looked around with any attention, they would not have found the clearing looking as it usually did. Had a flour mill been built there since the previous evening? It really did look like a flour mill, with a whole set of windmills, their sails now immobile, grimacing in the half-darkness.

But neither the president nor the secretary of the Weldon Institute noticed that strange alteration to the landscape of Fairmont Park. Frycollin saw nothing of it either. It seemed to him that the prowlers were approaching, closing in, as if about to do some evil deed. He was convulsed by fear, his limbs paralyzed, his follicle system bristling—in short, in the most extreme state of terror.

In any case, while his legs collapsed into a kneel, he still had the energy to cry out one last time:

“Master Uncle! … Master Uncle!”

“Eh! what is it then?” replied Uncle Prudent.

Perhaps he and Phil Evans would have been glad to relieve their anger by giving the poor valet a sound thrashing. But they did not have the time, any more than the valet had time to reply to them.

A whistle had just pierced through the woods. At the same instant, a sort of electric star lit up in the middle of the clearing.

The three were in the center of a tall thicket of trees.

A signal, no doubt; and, in this case, a signal that the moment had come for some act of violence.

In less time than it takes to imagine it, six men bounded out of the thicket, two upon Uncle Prudent, two upon Phil Evans, two upon the valet Frycollin—these last two unnecessary, of course, for the Negro was incapable of defending himself.

The president and the secretary of the Weldon Institute, surprised though they were by the attack, tried to resist. They had neither the time nor the force. In a few seconds’ time, they were silenced by gags, blinded by blindfolds, overpowered, bound up, and carried swiftly across the clearing. What could they have thought, other than that they had run into some of those unscrupulous people who attack late-night strollers in the thick of a forest and strip them of their belongings? Nothing of that sort occurred, however. They were not even frisked, although Uncle Prudent still carried on his person, as was his habit, several thousand paper dollars.

In short, one minute after the aggression, without a single word exchanged between the aggressors, Uncle Prudent, Phil Evans, and Frycollin felt themselves being placed gently, not on the grass of the clearing, but on a sort of flooring that creaked under their weight. There they were stacked against each other. A door closed on them. And then, the grinding of a bolt in a lock informed them that they were prisoners.

Then they heard a continuous hum, something like a tremor, a frrrr with the rrr prolonged to infinity; and no other noise was perceptible in the midst of that calm night.

What a sensation the next day in Philadelphia! From the first hours, people knew what had happened the previous night at the Weldon Institute meeting: the appearance of a mysterious personage, a certain engineer called Robur—Robur the Conqueror!—the fight he seemed bent on waging against the balloonians, and then his inexplicable disappearance.

But it was quite another matter when the whole city learned that the president and secretary of the club had also disappeared, in their turn, on the night of June 12.

How thoroughly people searched all through the city and its surroundings! Uselessly, besides. The Philadelphia papers, and then the journals all over Pennsylvania, and then those all over America, took the fact and explained it in a hundred different ways, none of which happened to be the true one. Considerable sums were promised in proclamations and posters—not only to those who could retrieve the disappeared worthies, but to anyone who could produce some clue that could set a search party on their track. Nothing came of it. If the earth had opened up to swallow them whole, the president and secretary of the Weldon Institute could not have been any more absent from the surface of the globe.

They were carried swiftly across the clearing.

On this subject, the government journals demanded that the numbers of the police be heavily augmented, since such attacks might occur against the best citizens in the United States—and perhaps they were right …

True, the journals of the opposition demanded that these police be dismissed as useless, since such attacks might occur, without any possibility of retrieving the malefactors—and perhaps they were not wrong.

In sum, the police remained what it had been, what it will always be in the best of possible worlds that is not perfect and does not know how to become so.