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,
