He stopped, and pointed to the great gorilla shot years ago in German West Africa by Berselius. "That was a being at least sincere. Whatever brutalities he committed in his life, he did not talk sentiment and religion and humanitarianism as he pulled his victims to pieces, and he did not pull his victims to pieces for the sake of gold. He was an honest devil, a far higher thing than a dishonest man."
Again Berselius held up his hand.
"What would you do?"
"Do? I"d break that infernal machine which calls itself a State, and I"d guillotine the ruffian that invented it. I cannot do that, but I can at least protest."
Berselius, who had helped to make the machine, and who knew better than most men its strength, shook his head sadly.
"Do what you will," said he. "If you need money my funds are at your disposal, but you cannot destroy the past."
Adams, who knew nothing of Berselius"s dream-obsession, could not understand the full meaning of these words.
But he had received permission to act, and the promise of that financial support without which individual action would be of no avail.
He determined to act; he determined to spare neither Berselius"s money nor his own time.
But the determination of man is limited by circ.u.mstance, and circ.u.mstance was at that moment preparing and rehearsing the last act of the drama of Berselius.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII
BERSELIUS BEHOLDS HIS OTHER SELF
On the morning after Berselius"s conversation with Adams, Berselius left the Avenue Malakoff, taking his way to the Avenue des Champs Elysees on foot.
The change in the man was apparent even in his walk. In the old days he was rapid in his movements, erect of head, keen of eye. The weight of fifteen years seemed to have suddenly fallen on his shoulders, bowing them and slowing his step. He was in reality carrying the most terrible burden that a man can carry--himself.
A self that was dead, yet with which he had to live. A past which broke continually up through his dreams.
He was filled with profound unrest, irritation and revolt; everything connected with that other one, even the money he had made and the house he had built for himself and the pursuits he had followed, increased this irritation and revolt. He had already formed plans for taking a new house in Paris, but to-day, as he walked along the streets, he recognized that Paris itself was a house, every corner of which belonged to that other one"s past.
In the Avenue Champs Elysees, he hailed a _fiacre_ and drove to the house of his lawyer, M. Cambon, which was situated in the Rue d"Artiles.
Cambon had practically retired from his business, which was carried on now by his son. But for a few old and powerful clients, such as Berselius, he still acted personally.
He was at home, and Berselius was shown into a drawing room, furnished heavily after the heart of the prosperous French _bourgeois_.
He had not to wait long for the appearance of the lawyer, a fat, pale-faced gentleman, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles, tightly b.u.t.toned up in a frock-coat, the b.u.t.tonhole of which was adorned with the red rosette of the Legion of Honour.
Cambon had known Berselius for years. The two men were friends, and even more, for Cambon was the depository of Berselius"s most confidential affairs.
"Well," said the lawyer, "you have returned. I saw a notice of your return in the _Echo de Paris_, and indeed, this very day I had promised myself the pleasure of calling on you. And how is Madame Berselius?"
"She is at Trouville."
"I had it in my mind that you proposed to remain away twelve months."
"Yes, but our expedition came to an end."
Berselius, in a few words, told how the camp had been broken up, without referring, however, to his accident; and the fat and placid Cambon listened, pleased as a child with the tale. He had never seen an elephant except at the Jardin d"Acclimatation. He would have run from a milch-cow.
Terrible in the law courts, in life he was the mildest of creatures, and the tale had all the attraction that the strong has for the weak and the ferocious for the mild.
But even as he listened, sitting there in his armchair, he was examining his visitor with minute attention, trying to discover some clue to the meaning of the change in him.
"And now," said Berselius, when he had finished, "to business."
He had several matters to consult the lawyer about, and the most important was the shifting of his money from the securities in which they were placed.
Cambon, who was a large holder of rubber industries, grew pale beneath his natural pallor when he discovered that Berselius was about to place his entire fortune elsewhere.
Instantly he put two and two together. Berselius"s quick return, his changed appearance, the fact that suddenly and at one sweep he was selling his stock. All these pointed to one fact--disaster.
The elephant story was all a lie, so resolved Cambon, and, no sooner had he bowed his visitor out, than he rushed to the telephone, rang up his broker, and ordered him to sell out his rubber stock at any price.
Berselius, when he left the lawyer"s house, drove to his club. The selling of his rubber industry shares had been prompted by no feeling of compunction; it was an act entirely dictated by the profound irritation he felt against the other one who had made his fortune out of those same rubber industries.
He wished to break every bond between himself and the infernal ent.i.ty that dominated him by night. Surely it was enough to be that other one at night, without being perpetually haunted by that other one"s traces by day.
In the Place de L"Opera, his _fiacre_ paused in a crowd of vehicles.
Berselius heard himself hailed. He turned his head. In a barouche drawn up beside his carriage, was seated a young and pretty woman. It was Sophia Melmotte, a flame from his past life, burning now for a s.p.a.ce in the life of a Russian prince.
"_Ma foi_," said Sophia, as her carriage pushed up till it was quite level with Berselius. "So you are back from--where was it you went to? And how are the tigers? Why, heavens, how you are changed! How gloomy you look.
One would think you had swallowed a hea.r.s.e and had not digested the trappings----"
To all of which Berselius bowed.
"_You_ are just the same as ever," said he.
The woman flushed under her rouge, for there was something in Berselius"s tone that made the simple words an insult. Before she could reply, however, the block in the traffic ceased, and as the carriage drove on Berselius bowed again to her coldly, and as though she were a stranger with whom he had spoken for a moment, and whom he had never seen before.
At the club in the smoking room, where he went for an absinthe before luncheon, he met Colonel Tirard, the very man who had presided at the banquet given to him on the day of his leaving for Africa. This man, who had been his friend, this man, in whose society he had always felt pleasure, was now obnoxious to him. And after a while the weird fact was borne in on the mind of Berselius that Tirard was not talking to him.
Tirard was talking to the man who was dead--the other Berselius. The new rifle for the army, which filled Tirard"s conversation, would have been an interesting subject to the old Berselius; it was absolutely distasteful to the new.
Now, for the first time, he quite clearly recognized that all the friends, pursuits, and interests that had filled his life till this, were useless to him and dead as the cast-off self that had once dominated his being.
Not only useless and dead, but distasteful in a high degree. He would have to re-create a world of interests for himself out of new media. He was living in a world where all the fruit and foliage and crops had been blighted by some wizard"s wand; he would have to re-plant it over anew, and at the present moment he did not know where to cast about him for a single seed.
Yet he did not give in all at once. Like a person persisting in some disagreeable medicine, hoping to become accustomed to it, he continued his conversation with Tirard.
After luncheon, he sat down to a game of ecarte in the card-room with an old acquaintance, but after half an hour"s play he left the table on the plea of indisposition and left the club, taking his way homeward on foot.
Near the Madeleine occurred one of those incidents which, in tragic lives, appear less incidents than occurrences prepared by Fate, as though she would say, "Look and deny me if you dare."
Toward Berselius was approaching a victoria drawn by two magnificent horses, and in the victoria lolled a man. An old man with a gray beard, who lolled on the cushions of the carriage, and looked about him with the languid indifference of a king and the arrogance of a megalomaniac.