The Pools of Silence Part 32

He found himself face to face with Adams. He knew him by his size, but he would scarcely have recognized him by his face, so brown, so thin and so different in expression was it from the face of the man with whom he had parted but a few months ago.

"Good day," said Adams. "I have come to pay you for that gun."

"Ah, yes, the gun," said Schaunard with a little laugh, "this is a pleasant surprise. I had entered it amidst my bad debts. Come in, monsieur, come into my office, it is cooler there, and we can talk. The gun, ah, yes. I had entered that transaction in Ledger D. Come in, come in. There, take that armchair, I keep it for visitors. Well, and how did the expedition go off?"

"Badly," said Adams. "We are only back a week. You remember what you said to me when we parted? You said, 'Don't go.' I wish I had taken your advice."

"Why, since you are back sound and whole, it seems to me you have not done so badly--but perhaps you have got malaria?"

The old man's sharp eyes were investigating the face of the other.

Schaunard's eyes had this peculiarity, that they were at once friendly to one and cruel, they matched the eternal little laugh which was ever springing to his lips--the laugh of the eternal mocker.

Schaunard made observations as well as telescopic sights and wind-gauges--he had been making observation for sixty years--he took almost as much interest in individual human beings as in rifles, and much more interest in Humanity than in G.o.d.

He was afflicted with the malady of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--he did not believe in G.o.d, only instead of hiding his disease under a cloak of mechanical religion, or temporizing with it, he frankly declared himself to be what he was, an atheist.

This fact did not interfere with his trade--a G.o.dly gunmaker gets no more custom than an atheistical one; besides, Schaunard did not obtrude his religious opinions after the fashion of his cla.s.s, he was a good deal of a gentleman, and he was accustomed to converse familiarly with emperors and kings.

"No, it is not malaria," replied Adams, following the old man who was leading the way into the office. "I never felt better in my life. It is just the Congo. The place leaves an impression on one's mind, M.

Schaunard, a flavour that is not good."

He took the armchair which Schaunard kept for visitors. He was only a week back--all he had seen out there was fresh to him and very vivid, but he felt in Schaunard an antagonistic spirit, and he did not care to go deeper into his experiences.

Schaunard took down that grim joke, Ledger D, placed it on the table and opened it, but without turning the leaves.

"And how is Monsieur le Capitaine?" asked he.

"He has been very ill, but he is much better. I am staying with him in the Avenue Malakoff as his medical attendant. We only arrived at Ma.r.s.eilles a week ago."

"And Madame Berselius, how is she?"

"Madame Berselius is at Trouville."

"The best place this weather. _Ma foi_, you must find it warm here even after Africa--well, tell me how you found the gun to answer."

Adams laughed. "The gun went off--in the hands of a savage. All your beautiful guns, Monsieur Schaunard, are now matchwood and old iron, tents, everything went, smashed to pieces, pounded to pulp by elephants."

He told of the great herd they had pursued and how in the dark it had charged the camp. He told of how in the night, listening by the camp fire, he had heard the mysterious boom of its coming, and of the marvellous sight he had watched when Berselius, failing in his attempt to waken the Zappo Zap, had fronted the oncoming army of destruction.

Schaunard's eyes lit up as he listened.

"Ah," said he, "that is a man!"

The remark brought Adams to a halt.

He had become strangely bound up in Berselius; he had developed an affection for this man almost brotherly, and Schaunard's remark hit him and made him wince. For Schaunard employed the present tense.

"Yes," said Adams at last, "it was very grand." Then he went on to tell of Berselius's accident, but he said nothing of his brain injury, for a physician does not speak of his patient's condition to strangers, except in the vaguest and most general terms.

"And how did you like the Belgians?" asked the old man, when Adams had finished.

"The Belgians!" Adams, suddenly taken off his guard, exploded; he had said nothing as yet about the Congo to anyone. He could not help himself now; the horrors rushed to his mouth and escaped--the cry of the great mournful country--the cry that he had brought to Europe with him in his heart, found vent.

Schaunard sat amazed, not at the infamies pouring from Adams's mouth, for he was well acquainted with them, but at the man's vehemence and energy.

"I have come to Europe to expose him," finished Adams.

"Expose who?"

"Leopold, King of the Belgians."

"But, my dear Monsieur Adams, you have come to waste your time; he is already exposed. Expose Leopold, King of the Belgians! Say at once that you are going to expose the sun. He doesn't care. He exposes himself. His public and his private life are common property."

"You mean to say that everyone knows what I know?"

"Precisely, and perhaps even more, but everyone has not seen what you have seen, and that's all the difference."

"How so?"

"In this way, monsieur; let us suppose that you have just seen a child run over in the Rue de la Paix. You come in here and tell me of it; the horror of it is in your mind, but you cannot convey that horror to me, simply because I have not seen what you have seen. Still, you can convey a part of it, for I know the Rue de la Paix, it is close to me, outside my door, and I know French children.

"You come to me and tell me of hideous sights you have seen in Africa.

That does not move me a tenth so much, for Africa is very far away--it is, in fact, for me a geographical expression; the people are n.i.g.g.e.rs I have never seen, dwelling in a province I have never heard of. You come to seek sympathy for this people amongst the French public? Well, I tell you frankly you are like a man searching in a dark room for a black hat that is not there."

"Nevertheless I shall search."

"As monsieur wills, only don't knock yourself against the chairs and tables. Ah, monsieur, monsieur, you are young and a medical man. Remain so, and don't lose your years and your prospects fighting the impossible.

Now listen to me, for it is old Schaunard of the Rue de la Paix who is speaking to you. The man you would expose, as you term it, is a king to begin with; to go on with, he is far and away the cleverest king in Christendom. That man has brains enough to run what you in America call a department store. Every little detail of his estate out there, even to the cap guns and rifles of the troops, he looks after himself; that's why it pays. It is a bad-smelling business, but it doesn't poison the nose of Europe, because it is so far away. Still, smells are brought over in samples by missionaries and men like you, and people say 'Faugh!' Do you think he did not take that into his consideration when he planned the affair and laid down the factory? If you think so, you would be vastly mistaken. He has agents everywhere--I have met them, apologists everywhere--in the Press, in Society, in the Church. The Roman Catholic Church is entirely his; he is triple-ringed with politicians, priests, publicists, and financiers, all holding their noses to keep out the stench and all singing the _Laus Leopold_ at the top of their voices.

"Ah! you don't know Europe. I do, from the Ballplatz to Willhelmstra.s.se, from the Winter Palace to the Elysee, my trade has brought me everywhere, and if you could see with my eyes, you would see the great, smooth plain of ice you hope to warm with your poor breath in the name of Humanity."

"At all events I shall try," replied Adams, rising to go.

"Well, try, but don't get frozen in making the trial----"

"Oh, the gun--well, look here--you are starting on another hunting expedition, it seems to me, a more dangerous one, too, than the last, for there is no forest where one loses oneself more fatally than the forest of social reform--pay me when you come back."

"Very well," said Adams, laughing.

"Only if you are successful though."

"Very well."

"And, see here, in any event come and tell me the result. _Bon jour_, monsieur, and a word in your ear----"

The old man was opening the shop door.

"Yes?"