THE TERRIBLE REVELATION
This confession threw him into a state of confusion and agitation, for if
it did not go beyond what he feared, yet it revealed a terrible
situation.
Clearly, as in an open book, he read her; if she did not know all, she
was but one step from the truth, and if she had not taken this step, it
was because her love restrained her. If her love had been less strong,
less powerful, she certainly would not have withstood the proofs that
pressed on her from all sides.
But because she had held back so long, he must not conclude that the
struggle would be continued in this way, and that a more violent blow,
a stronger proof than the others, would not open her eyes in spite of
herself.
It only needed an imprudence, a carelessness on his part, and unluckily
he could no longer be relied on.
From what he had just learned it would be easy to watch himself closely,
and to avoid dangerous subjects, those that she described to him; but if
he could guard his words and looks during the day, neither saying nor
letting anything appear that was an accusation, not confirming the
suspicions against which she struggled, he could not do it at night.
He had not talked, and when she answered negatively to his question, she
lifted a terribly heavy weight from his heart. But he had groaned and
moaned, he had pronounced broken words without sense and unintelligible,
and there was the danger.
What was necessary to make these sighs, these groans, these broken and
unintelligible words become distinct and take a meaning? A nothing, an
accident, since his real cerebral tendency placed him up to a certain
point in a somnambulistic state. Was this tendency congenital with him
or acquired? He did not know. Before the agitated nights after Madame
Dammauville's death and Florentin's condemnation, the idea had never
occurred to him that he might talk in his sleep. But now he had the
proof that the vague fears which had tormented him on this subject were
only too well founded; he had talked, and if the words that escaped were
not now comprehensible, they might become so.
Without having made a special study of sleep, natural or induced, he knew
that in the case of natural somnambulists a hypnotic sleep is easily
produced, and that while holding a conversation with a subject who talks
in his sleep one may readily hypnotize him. Without doubt he need not
fear this from Phillis; but it was possible that some night when
incoherent words escaped him she would not be able to resist the
temptation to enter into a conversation with him, and to lead him to
confess what she wished to know--what the love that she felt for her
brother would drive her to wish to learn.
If this opportunity presented itself, would the love for her brother or
for her husband carry her away? If she questioned him, what would he not
say?
For the first time he asked himself if he had done right to marry, and
if, on the contrary, he had not committed a mad imprudence in introducing
a woman into a life so tormented as his. He had asked calmness from this
woman, and now she brought him terror.
To tell the truth, she was dangerous only at night; and if he found a way
to occupy another room he would have nothing to fear from her during the
day, on condition that he held himself rigorously on the defensive.
Loving him as she did, she would resist the curiosity that drew her; if
uneasiness drove her, her love would restrain her, as she herself had
said; little by little this uneasiness and curiosity, being no longer
excited, would die out, and they would again enjoy the sweet days that
followed their marriage.
But in the present circumstances this way was difficult to find, for to
propose another room to Phillis would be equal to telling her that he was
afraid of her, and consequently it would give her a new mystery to study.
He reflected, and starting with the idea that the proposition of two
rooms must come from Phillis, he arranged a plan which, it seemed to him,
would accomplish what he wished.
Ignorant of the fact that she had been hypnotized, and not remembering
that she had talked, without doubt Phillis still feared that he would
hypnotize her; he would threaten it again, and surely she would find a
way to defend herself and escape from him.
This is what happened. The next day, when he told her decidedly that he
wished to put her to sleep in order that he might learn what troubled
her, she showed the same fright as on the first time.
"All that you have asked of me, everything that you have desired, I have
wished as you and with you; but I will never consent to this."
"Your resistance is absurd; I will not yield to it."
"You shall not put me to sleep against my will."
"Easily."
"It is not possible."
Without replying, he took a book from the library, and turning over the
leaves, he read: "Is it possible to make a sleeping person, without
awaking him, pass from the natural to the hypnotic sleep? The thing is
possible, at least with certain subjects."
Then handing her the book:
"You see that to put you to sleep artificially I need only the
opportunity of finding you sleeping naturally. It is very simple."
"That would be odious."
"Those are merely words."
He threw her into such a state of terror that she kept awake all night,
and as he would not sleep for fear of talking, he felt that she exerted
every faculty to keep awake. But had he not gone too far? And by this
threat would he not drive her to some desperate act? If she should
escape, if she deserted him--what would become of him without her? Was
she not his whole life? But he reassured himself by saying that she
loved him too much ever to consent to a separation. Without doubt, she
herself would come to think as he wished her to think.
And yet when he returned home in the evening she told him that her mother
was not well, and begged him to examine her. This examination proved
that Madame Cormier was in her usual health; but she complained that her
breath failed her--during the day she had feared syncope.
"If you are willing," Phillis said, "I will sleep near mamma. I am
afraid of not hearing her at night, and she is suffering."
He began by refusing, then he consented to this arrangement; and to thank
him for it she stayed with him in his office, affectionate, full of
tenderness and caresses, until he went to his room.
He was then free to sleep or not; whether he groaned or talked she could
not hear him, since there was no communicating door between his room and
that of his mother-in-law; his voice certainly would not penetrate the
partition.
Who could have told him on the night that he decided to marry, that he
would come to such a pass--to be afraid, to hide himself from her who
brought him the calmness of sleep; and that by his fault, by a chain of
imprudences and stupidities, as if it were written that in everything he
would owe his sufferings to himself, and that if he ever succumbed to the
whirlwind that swept him along, it would be by his own deed, by his own
hand? At last he had assured the tranquillity of his nights, and as a
further precaution, although he did not fear that Phillis would enter his
room while he slept, to surprise him--she who dared not look in the face
what suspicion showed her--he locked his door. Naturally, Phillis could
not always sleep with her mother; but he would find a way to suggest
frankly their sleeping apart, and surely he could find one in the
storehouse of medicine.
These cares and similar fears were not of a nature to dispose him to
sleep, and besides for a long time he had suffered from an exasperating
nervous insomnia. As the night was warm he thought a little fresh air
would calm him, and he opened the window; if this freshness did not calm
him, at least it would make him sleep.
Obliged to improvise a bed in her mother's room, Phillis placed it
against the partition that separated her from her husband, but without
preconcerted intention, simply by accident, because it was the only place
where she could put the bed. A little after midnight an unusual noise
awoke her; she sat up to listen and to recover herself. It seemed as if
this noise came from her husband's room. Alarmed, she placed her ear
against the partition. She was not deceived; they were stifled groans,
moans that were repeated at short intervals.
Carefully yet quickly she left her bed, and as the dawn was already
shining in the windows, she was able to leave the room without making any
noise. Reaching the door of her husband's room she listened; she was not
deceived; they were indeed groans, but louder and sadder than those she
had so often heard during the night. She tried the door, but it was
evidently locked on the inside. What was the matter with him? She must
know, must go to him, and give him relief. She thought of knocking, of
shaking the door; but as he did not reply when she tried to open it, it
was because he did not hear or did not wish to hear. Then she thought of
the terrace; from there she could see what happened, and if it were
necessary she would break a pane to enter.
She found the window open and saw her husband on the bed, sleeping, his
head turned toward her; she stopped and asked herself if she should cross
the threshold and wake him.
At this moment, with closed lips, he pronounced several words more
distinctly than those that had so many times escaped him: "Phillis--
forgive."
He dreamed of her. Poor, dear Victor! for what did he wish her to
pardon him? Doubtless for having threatened to hypnotize her:
Overcome by this proof of love she put her head through the opening of
the window to give him a look before returning to her mother, but on
seeing his face in the full white light of the morning, she was
frightened; it expressed the most violent sorrow, the features convulsed
with anguish and horror at the same time. Surely he was ill. She must
wake him. just as she took a step toward him he began to speak: "Your
brother--or me?"
She stopped as if thunderstruck, then instinctively she drew back and
clung to the window in the vestibule to keep herself from falling,
repeating those two words that she had just heard, not understanding, not
wishing to understand.
Instead of returning to her mother, trembling and holding on to the wall
she entered the parlor and let herself fall into a chair, prostrated,
crushed.
"Your brother--or me?"
This was, then, the truth, the frightful truth that she had never wished
to see.
She stayed there until the noises in the street warned her that it was
getting late, and she might be surprised. Then she returned to her
mother.
"I am going out," she said; "I will return at half-past eight or nine
o'clock."
"But your husband will not see you before going to the hospital."
"You will tell him that I have gone out."
She returned at half-past nine. Madame Cormier had finished dressing.
"At last you have come," she said.
But at sight of her daughter's face she saw that something had happened.
"My God! What is the matter?" she asked, trembling.
"Something serious--very serious, but unfortunately it is irreparable.
We must leave here, never to return."
"Your husband--"
"You must never speak to me of him. This the only thing I ask of you."
"Alas! I understand. It is what I foresaw, what I said would happen.
You cannot bear the contempt that he shows us on account of your
brother."
"We must hereafter be strangers to each other, and this is why we leave
this house."
"My God! At my age, to drag my bones--"
"I have engaged a lodging at the Ternes; a wagon will come to take the
furniture that belongs to us, what we brought here, only that. We will
tell the concierge that we are going to the country. As for Josephine,
you need not fear indiscreet questions, for I have given her a day off."
"But the money?"
"I have two hundred francs from the sale of my last picture; that is
enough for the present. Before they are gone I shall have painted and
sold another; do not worry, we shall have all we need."
All this was said in a hard but resolute tone.
A ring of the bell interrupted them. It was the express wagon.
"See that they do not take what does not belong to us," Phillis said.
"While they fill their wagon I will write in the parlor."
At the end of an hour the wagon was ready. Madame Cormier entered the
parlor to tell her daughter.
"I have finished," Phillis said.
Having placed her letter in an envelope, she laid it in full view on
Saniel's desk.
"Now let us go," she said.
And as her mother sighed, while walking with difficulty
"Lean on me, dear mamma, you know I am strong."