No human consciousness had ever conceived such a state of mind as this. No opening up of a volcanic crater is comparable to the eruption of a hypocrite.
Clubin was delighted that there was no one there, but he would not have been sorry if there had been someone. He would have liked to appear abominable in presence of a witness. He would have been happy to tell the human species to its face: "You are all fools!"
The absence of any other human being ensured his triumph, but at the same time diminished it. The only spectator of his glory was himself.
To wear the iron collar of a galley-slave has a charm of its own. It advertises to all the world that you are vile.
To compel the crowd to look at you is a manifestation of power. A galley slave standing on a trestle at a street corner with his iron collar around his neck is a despot controlling all the glances that he compels to turn toward him. The scaffolding on which he stands is a kind of pedestal. What finer triumph is there than to be the point on which all eyes converge? To compel the public to look at you is one form of supremacy. For those who see evil as their ideal, opprobrium is a halo. It is a position of dominance. They are on a summit on which they can luxuriate in their sovereignty. A pillory exposed to universal view has some likeness to a throne.
To be exposed is to be looked at.
An evil reign, too, offers the same pleasures as the pillory. Nero setting fire to Rome, Louis XIV treacherously occupying the Palatinate, the Prince Regent condemning Napoleon to a slow death, Tsar Nicholas destroying Poland under the eyes of the civilized world must have enjoyed something of the same voluptuous pleasure as Clubin was luxuriating in. The immensity of the world's contempt seems to the object of that contempt to confer greatness on him.
To be unmasked is a defeat, but to unmask oneself is a victory. It is an intoxication, an insolent and self-satisfied act of imprudence, a reckless display of nakedness calculated to insult all who behold it. It is supreme happiness.
These ideas in a hypocrite seem a contradiction, but are not so. All infamy is consistent.
Honey is gall. Escobar is close to the Marquis de Sade. The proof? Leotade.148 The hypocrite is the complete figure of wickedness, combining within himself both extremes of perversity: he is both priest and courtesan. He is a demon of double sex, the abominable hermaphrodite of evil. He fertilizes himself; he engenders himself and transforms himself. Seen from one side, he is charming; seen from the other, he is horrible.
Clubin had within him all this dark turmoil of confused ideas. He did not perceive them very clearly, but he gloried in them. The thoughts passing through his soul were like a shower of sparks from Hell flashing in the night.
He remained for some time deep in thought, looking back on his past honesty as a snake looks at the skin it has sloughed off. Everyone had believed in his honesty, and even he had come to believe in it a little. Again he burst into laughter.
People were going to think he was dead, and he was rich. They were going to think him lost, and he was saved. What a trick to play on the universal stupidity of mankind!
And included in this universal stupidity was Rantaine. Clubin thought of Rantaine with limitless disdain: the disdain of the weasel for the tiger. Rantaine had bungled his escape; he had succeeded in his. Rantaine had departed sheepishly; he was disappearing triumphant. He had taken Rantaine's place in his criminal act, and it was he who had won the spoils.
As for the future, he had no definite plan. In the iron box concealed in his belt he had his three banknotes, and this certainty was sufficient for the moment. He would change his name. There are countries where sixty thousand francs are worth six hundred thousand. It would not be a bad idea to go to one of them and live honestly with the money taken from that robber Rantaine. To speculate, to go into big business, to increase his capital, to become a millionaire in earnest: these were also worth thinking about. In Costa Rica, for example, where coffee was becoming big business, there were tons of gold to be won. That was a possibility.
But he did not need to make his mind up yet: he had plenty of time to think about it. The most difficult part was over. The main thing had been to strip Rantaine of his money and disappear with the Durande, and that had been accomplished. The rest was simple. No obstacles now lay ahead; there was nothing to fear; nothing could go wrong. He would swim to the coast, arrive at Pleinmont after dark, climb the cliff, and make straight for the haunted house. He would have no difficulty in getting into the house with the help of the knotted rope that he had hidden in a crevice in the rock, and would find there his traveling bag containing dry clothes and provisions. He could wait there in comfort, knowing that within a week Spanish smugglers--probably Blasquito--would put in at Pleinmont, and at the cost of a few guineas he would be conveyed, not to Torbay, as he had said to Blasco to conceal his real intention, but to Pasajes or Bilbao. From there he would go on to Vera Cruz or New Orleans. But now it was time to take to the water: the longboat was far away, an hour's swim was nothing to him, and here, on the Hanois, he was only a mile from the mainland. At this point in Clubin's reflections a gap opened up in the fog, and he saw the dreaded Douvres reef.
VII
AN UNEXPECTED TURN OF FATE
Clubin gazed wildly at the reef. It was indeed these terrible isolated rocks.
It was impossible to mistake their misshapen outline. The twin Douvres reared up in all their hideousness, with the passage between them like a trap, a sinister back alley of the ocean. They were quite close. They had been concealed by their accomplice, the fog.
In the fog Clubin had been on the wrong course. In spite of all his care he had suffered the same fate as two great navigators--Gonzalez, who discovered Cape Blanco, and Fernandez, who discovered Cape Verde. The fog had led him astray. It had seemed to serve him well in the execution of his project, but it had its dangers. He had changed course toward the west, but this had been a mistake. The passenger from Guernsey, claiming that he had recognized the Hanois, had led Clubin to change direction, in the belief that he was heading for the Hanois.
The Durande, wrecked on a sunken reef near the main rock, was only a few cable-lengths from the two Douvres.
Some two hundred fathoms farther away was a massive cube of granite. On the steep rock faces could be seen grooves and projections that would make it possible to climb to the top. The straight, right-angled corners of these rugged walls suggested that there might be a level area on the summit.
This was the Homme, which was still higher than the Douvres. The platform on the top overlooked their inaccessible twin peaks. This platform, crumbling at the edges, had a tablelike surface and a kind of sculptural regularity. It was a place of the utmost desolation and menace. The waves coming in from the open sea lapped placidly against the square sides of this huge black block of stone, which seemed a kind of pedestal for the huge specters of the sea and the night.
There was a great stillness: scarcely a breath of wind, scarcely a ripple on the sea. Under the silent surface of the water could be sensed the teeming life in its hidden depths.
Clubin had frequently seen the Douvres from a distance, and he was sure that that was where he was. There was no room for doubt.
It was sharp and devastating change of fortune. The Douvres instead of the Hanois; instead of a mile from land, five leagues. Five leagues of sea was an impossible distance for a swimmer. For a man shipwrecked and alone the Douvres are the visible and palpable presence of his last hour. From here there is no way to reach land.
Clubin shuddered. He had, by his own act, brought himself into the very maw of darkness.
There would probably be a storm in the course of the night, and the boat from the Durande, overloaded as it was, would founder. No news of the wreck would reach the mainland. No one would even know that Clubin had been left on the Douvres. There was nothing before him but death from cold and hunger. His seventy-five thousand francs would not bring him a mouthful of bread. All his carefully contrived plans had ended in this disaster.
He had labored to bring about his own catastrophe. There was no way out, no hope of salvation.
His triumph had become a precipice. In place of deliverance, capture. In place of a long and prosperous future, he was faced with death. In a moment, in a lightning's flash, the whole structure he had built up had collapsed. The paradise that this fiend had dreamed of had taken on its true aspect: it was a tomb.
Meanwhile the wind had risen. The fog, driven before it and torn to pieces, was rapidly disappearing over the horizon in great shapeless masses. The whole expanse of the sea could now be seen again.
The cattle in the hold, with water flowing in ever faster, were continuing to bellow.
Night was approaching, and probably also a storm.
The Durande, lifted by the rising tide, was swinging from right to left and then from left to right and was beginning to turn on the reef as if on a pivot. It could not be long before a wave swept it off the rock and cast it adrift.
It was now not so dark as when the vessel had struck the rock. Although it was later in the day, the air was clearer. The fog in its retreat had carried off some of the darkness. There was not a cloud in the sky to the west. Twilight brings with it a vast white sky, and this was now lighting up the sea.
The Durande had run aground sloping downward toward the bow. Clubin went up to the stern, which was almost clear of the water, and stared fixedly at the horizon.
It is characteristic of hypocrisy that it clings persistently to hope. The hypocrite is always waiting for something to turn up. Hypocrisy is a vile form of hope, and the falseness of the hypocrite is based on that virtue, which in him has become a vice.
Strangely, there is a certain confidence in hypocrisy. The hypocrite trusts in some obscure element in the unknown that permits evil.
Clubin looked out on the expanse of sea. The situation was desperate, but this sinister being was not. He said to himself that after the long period of fog, vessels that had been lying to or at anchor would be resuming their course and that one of them might pass within sight of the rock.
And a sail did appear on the horizon, traveling from east to west. As the boat drew nearer Clubin could make out its rig. It had only one mast and was schooner-rigged. The bowsprit was almost horizontal. It was a cutter.
In half an hour it would be passing close to the Douvres. Clubin said to himself: "I am saved!"
At a moment such as Clubin was experiencing a man at first thinks only of the prospect of life.
The cutter was perhaps a foreigner. Might it not be a smuggler's boat heading for Pleinmont? Might it even be Blasquito himself? In that case not only would his life be saved but his fortune as well; and his stranding on the Douvres, by bringing a quicker end to his predicament, by cutting out the period of waiting in the haunted house and by concluding his adventure out at sea, would turn out to have been a stroke of luck.
All Clubin's former certainty of success returned. It is curious how ready villains are to believe that success in their enterprises is no more than their due.
There was only one thing to be done. The Durande, aground amid the rocks, mingled her outlines with theirs and was difficult to distinguish from them. In the little daylight that remained she might not be visible to the vessel that was approaching. But a human figure on the summit of the Homme, standing out in black against the wan twilight and making distress signals, would certainly be seen, and a boat would be sent out to pick up the shipwrecked mariner.
The Homme was only two hundred fathoms away. It was an easy swim, and the rock was not difficult to climb.
There was not a moment to be lost.
Since the bow of the Durande was caught in the rock, it was from the stern, where Clubin was standing, that he would have to dive into the sea. He took soundings, and found that there was plenty of depth under the stern. The microscopic shells of foraminifera and polycystinea picked up by the tallow on the sound were intact, indicating that there were underwater caverns in which the water was always calm, however rough the sea might be on the surface.
He undressed, leaving his clothes on the deck. He would be able to get something to wear on the cutter. He kept only his leather belt.
When he had stripped he took hold of the belt, buckled it on again, checked that the iron box was still there, took a quick glance at the direction he would have to take through the rocks and the breakers to reach the Homme, and dived head first into the sea.
As he was diving from a height, he went deep, touched bottom, briefly skirted the underwater rocks, and then kicked off to return to the surface.
At that moment he felt something catching hold of his foot.
BOOK VII
THE UNWISDOM OF ASKING QUESTIONS OF A BOOK
I
THE PEARL AT THE FOOT OF THE PRECIPICE
A few minutes after his brief conversation with Sieur Landoys, Gilliatt was in St. Sampson.
He was troubled and anxious. What could have happened?
St. Sampson was buzzing with talk like a hive of bees that had been disturbed. The whole population was at the doors of their houses. Women were talking excitedly. Some people seemed to be relating some event, with much gesticulation, to groups of listeners. The words "What a misfortune!" could be heard. On some faces there were smiles.
Gilliatt did not ask anyone what was the matter. It was not in his nature to ask questions; and in any case he was too upset to speak to strangers. He mistrusted secondhand accounts, preferring to know the whole story at once. He made straight, therefore, for Les Bravees.
His anxiety was such that he was not even afraid to enter the house. In any case the door of the ground-floor room opening off the quay was wide open and there was a swarm of men and women on the threshold. Everyone was going into the house, and he went in with them.
Standing at the door was Sieur Landoys, who whispered to him:
"You know now what's up, I suppose?"
"No."
"I didn't want to shout the news to you on the road. You don't like to be like a bird of ill omen."
"What has happened?"
"The Durande is lost."
There was a crowd in the room, with knots of people speaking in low voices as if they were in a sickroom.
All these people--neighbors, passersby, busybodies, anyone and everyone--were huddled near the door, as if afraid to go any farther, leaving clear the far side of the room, where Deruchette was sitting in tears, with Mess Lethierry standing beside her.
He had his back to the rear wall. His seaman's cap came down over his eyebrows. A lock of gray hair fell on his cheek. He was silent. His arms hung motionless by his sides; his mouth seemed to have no breath left. He looked like some inanimate object that had been set against the wall.
He had the air of a man within whom life had collapsed. With the loss of the Durande he had no longer any reason for his existence. His soul lived at sea, and now that soul had foundered. What was left to him now? To get up every morning and go to bed every night.
He would no longer be able to watch for the Durande, no longer see her leaving the harbor, no longer see her returning. What would the rest of his life be worth without an object? He could eat and drink; but beyond that, nothing. This man had crowned his life's work with a masterpiece, and his efforts had brought about progress. Now this progress had been destroyed, and the masterpiece was dead. What was the use of living on for a few more empty years? There was nothing left for him to do. At his age a man cannot start life again; and now, too, he was ruined. Poor old fellow!
Deruchette, sitting weeping on a chair beside him, held one of his hands between her two hands. Her hands were joined; his fist was clenched. It was an expression of their different sorrows. In joined hands there is hope; in a clenched fist, none.
Mess Lethierry had abandoned his arm to her to do as she pleased with it. He was completely passive. He had only the small quantity of life that might be left to a man struck by a thunderbolt.
There are certain descents into the
abyss that withdraw you from the world of the living. The people coming and going in your room are confused and indistinct; they are close to you but make no contact with you. To them you are unapproachable; to you they are inaccessible. Happiness and despair do not breathe the same air. A man in despair participates in the life of others from a great distance; he is almost unaware of their presence; he has lost any consciousness of his own existence; he is a thing of flesh and blood but feels that he is no longer real; he sees himself only as a dream.
Mess Lethierry had the look of such a man.
The people in the room were whispering among themselves, exchanging such information as they had about the catastrophe. This was the substance of the story:
The Durande had been wrecked on the Douvres in the fog on the previous day, about an hour before sunset. All those on board with the exception of the captain, who had refused to leave his ship, had escaped in the ship's boat. A southwesterly squall that blew up after the fog lifted had almost brought them to shipwreck a second time and had driven them out to sea beyond Guernsey. During the night they had had the good fortune to encounter the Cashmere, which had picked them up and brought them to St. Peter Port. It was all the fault of the helmsman, Tangrouille, who was now in prison. Clubin had behaved nobly.
The pilots, of whom there were many among the groups of people, had a particular way of pronouncing the name of the Douvres. "A bad port of call," said one of them.
On the table were a compass and a bundle of papers--no doubt the compass and the ship's papers that Clubin had handed to Imbrancam and Tangrouille when the ship's boat left the wreck. They were evidence of the magnificent self-denial of a man who thought of saving even these bits of paper at a time when he was remaining on the wreck to die--a small detail showing greatness of mind and sublime forgetfulness of self.
All those present were unanimous in admiring Clubin, and unanimous also in believing that he might yet be safe. The cutter Shealtiel had arrived a few hours after the Cashmere, bringing the latest intelligence. She had just spent twenty-four hours in the same waters as the Durande; she had lain to in the fog and tacked about during the storm. The skipper of the Shealtiel was among those present.