THE
WOOLLEN DRESS
BY
HENRY BORDEAUX
AUTHOR OF “THE PARTING OF THE WAYS”
TRANSLATED BY
RUTH HELEN DAVIS
NEW YORK DUFFIELD & COMPANY 1912
Copyright, 1911, by PLON-NOURRIT & CO.
Copyright, 1912, by DUFFIELD & COMPANY
TO PIERRE LOTI
In dedicating to you this story of “The Woollen Dress,” I discharge a
very old debt, a debt of my youth, when enthusiasm for your works--your
poems, I ought rather to call them--flushed and exalted me as the first
misty moments of the dawn suffuse the surface of the earth.
With what magic did you not gild our adolescent years! We were at the
spoiled age of twenty, at the threshold of life’s work, when one arms
one’s self against love, and indulges in yearnings for universal things
which only later, alike with him who has lived too much and him who has
not lived at all, accept their limitations and disenchantments;--we
were twenty, and we found in you that melancholy which at twenty it is
so sweet to breathe.
This book is the story of a quite simple young girl crushed by the
cruelties of our modern life. When I hear children singing that old
round, which I am sure you loved as well as I,
“We were ten girls in a field
All waiting to be married,”
I picture Claudine, Suzanne, Dumaine and their companions as a graceful
chorus in which the voices of old France still sound. I call them
by name and they come to me from all the provinces,--Sylvia from
Valois and Marie from Brittany, the little Fadette from Berry, humble
Genevieve from Dauphiné, and from Aunis that little Madeleine, whose
feet tread the same crooked path where later Dominique must pass, drawn
back by sorrow to his native land, “like an animal wounded and bleeding
who yet knows his way home.” Here, too, are Mireille and Nerte, glowing
with the sun of Provence, Gracieuse from Basque, and Colette from Metz.
In the field they were only ten. Can they not take by the hand a little
sister who has such need of their protection, this Raymonde, that I
have gathered from Savoy, who would like so much to join their game if
she could do so without intrusion?
H. B.
CHALET DU MAUPAS, September 20, 1910.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I THE SLEEPING WOODS
II AND EACH MAN KILLS THE THING HE
LOVES
III THE FACE OF THIS WORLD CHANGES
THE WOOLLEN DRESS
PART I
THE SLEEPING WOODS
AMAZED, enraptured, I gazed about me. This, surely, was the very forest
of the Sleeping Beauty in the Woods. Suddenly, at a turn of the road,
her castle loomed up among the trees, huge and mysterious.
I had been pushing my bicycle, despite its various gears, up a long
heavy slope. Once again in the saddle, I had penetrated into a wild
valley, a mere gorge at first, then broadening into field and forest,
with a pool in the lower distance. The brilliant bouquet that autumn
can make if it pleases, of water and trees and bushes massed upon a
mountain side, was before me--autumn, the flower time of the woods,
when the heaviest burdens have fallen and the spring of trunk and
branch and airy foliage show all the indescribable hues of light.
Golden lindens, pale elms, ruddy chestnuts, copper horse-chestnuts,
rusty oaks, purplish fruit trees, poplars like golden candle-sticks,
form under the level rays of sunlight, a fairy train: it is a gay
parade that would cause a thrill of joyful amazement, did not the
lightest whispering breeze threaten the loss of all the marvellous
attire. Dread and pleasure meet in October walks, dread that comes with
the pleasure that is fleeting.
It was Sunday, and I had met no one. A village through which I had
passed was as if dead. The women were no doubt at church, the men in
the wine-shop. From the whole valley, as from a vast deserted garden,
arose a perfume of old legend, which I inhaled with rapture. The
country here had the look of some deserted park, and I was keen to
discover some abandoned habitation in it. Any usual modern villa would
have dishonoured this ageless landscape. Nothing would answer my mood
but a confusion of ancient stones and wild vines, or at least real
ruins, authentic and crumbling.
To tell the truth, it was not ruins that I had perceived on the
hillside at the end of the avenue of more than century-old oaks. The
avenue led up to a terrace ornamented by urns and stretching all along
the front of the house. The urns were empty and no one had thought
to mow the grass. The chateau was a large building, with mullioned
windows, and a sort of cloister running its entire length, and but for
these ivy wreathed arcades would have appeared almost commonplace. The
dark tone of its walls gave it an aspect of venerable age, with all
the added solitude of silence and the melancholy of the season and the
surrounding forest. There it stood, in its own well-sheltered place,
presenting its front, as an old man his face, to the warmth of the sun,
letting the days flow by. A clump of yellow chrysanthemums and a few
climbing roses gave it the look of a faint smile.
I dismounted to enter into communion with this old place. The gate was
open; indeed the hinges, being sprung, would not allow it to be shut.
A lodge at the entrance was almost hidden among the trees, overwhelmed
as with a flood of greenery by their luxuriant growth. As I drew nearer
I observed that several oaks had been replaced by horse-chestnuts, the
rapid growth of which had speedily filled the gaps that time had made
in the avenue.
A peasant was raking up the nuts, though they seemed to me to be
uneatable.
“They are for my beasts,” he explained.
I at once proceeded to question him.
“What is the name of this chateau?”
“The chateau of the Sleeping Beauty, that is, of the Sleeping Woods.”
I could hardly have imagined a name more perfectly responding to the
enchantment which had taken possession of me since my entrance into the
valley.
“Was it not an ancient nunnery?”
“Perhaps--once upon a time, long ago. No one knows how long.”
“Before the Revolution?”
“Long before that. At the Revolution it belonged to the Count.”
“What Count?”
“Count d’Alligny. The same whose grandson sold it.”
“Sold it to whom?”
“To M. Cernay, the present owner.”
The name Cernay is known to every one nowadays as that borne by
the millionaire aviator who has devoted himself to perfecting the
aeroplane, and in the train of Bleriot, Latham, the Wrights, has
experimented in the conquest of the air. I knew Raymond Cernay
personally, having met him in society a few years ago, before he became
interested in aviation, and I was proud of the acquaintance. He gave
me the impression of a man richly endowed mentally, though perhaps too
versatile, one who would find it difficult to fix upon any interest,
likely to abandon every attempt if the outcome of it were within easy
reach. He had begun to succeed in many things, giving them up, each
one, at the first smile of success, as if a mere forecast of glory
was all he sought. A few rough-hewn sculptures, the narrative of a
journey in the Indies, daring century motor rides, brief scientific
investigations had sufficed at that time to win for him a sort of
reputation in society for originality. The reputation was fostered by
constant change, and appeared to satisfy him, for above all things he
valued the celebrity of the drawing room. During the last few years he
had disappeared from Paris, doubtless to devote himself all the more
fervently to the new passion of aviation.
I at once spread out my arms in imitation of a bird.
“Cernay--the one who flies?”
The man gazed at my pantomime with astonishment. He did not understand.
Fame is short-lived. But there might be other Cernays. Pointing to the
building I asked:
“Does he live here?”
“Not much, since his lady died.”
“His _lady_ is dead? How long ago?”
“The grain has been reaped three times.”
Then, memory awakening within him, he added:
“I who tell you, I carried her to the grave. She was not very heavy,
poor thing! But to know she was dead--that took the strength out of
your arms and legs. All the villagers came.”
By the dates it might be Madame Cernay of whom he spoke. But she had
passed away almost unnoticed. Her death, too early though it was, had
not awakened such regret in Paris. It had occurred at a distance, in
the country, unobtrusively. Raymond Cernay himself had not reappeared
after it until the notable week of Rheims, when he had won the prize
for altitude by an ascension in regular spirals, like the circles
described by some gigantic bird of prey, and amid the applause of a
delirious crowd, became in a moment the popular hero.
We are always ready to consider reserved persons, who ward off our
confidences or fail to accord to our remarks all the importance we
ourselves attach to them, as insignificant. This was the epithet with
which she who was dead had been characterised in my hearing. My memory
could at first revive her only as a colourless, washed out, vanishing
figure. Then I vaguely recalled her hair, of many tinted blond, and her
limpid eyes, so bright that one might suppose no shadow should ever
have dimmed them. She was so reserved or so indifferent that people
talked little with her. Once, chance having placed me beside her at a
charity concert, I had been struck by an ecstatic expression on her
usually pale countenance. Her face was suffused with colour, while on
the stage a singer was interpreting, with an orchestral accompaniment,
the air in Lulli’s Amadis:
O faithful wood, redouble now your shades,
You can not be too sombre--nothing fades
Too pale before my own too luckless love.
It is an entreaty and supplication to the familiar forest that Lulli
develops with a classic regularity, which far from weakening the
energy of its musical expression, is in fact strengthened by it. Not a
single one of those crude imitations of nature sounds superficial and
meaningless, such as the well-known “Murmurs” in Siegfried, marred the
air, in which passion is restrained by purity, and by consciousness
of its own danger; but its ardour is none the less felt for not being
expressed in outcry and convulsive rhythm. Mme. Cernay at my side was
veritably living again the sentiments of the great poem. The episode
gave me an intuitive conviction that the imputation of insignificance
put upon her by society to justify its neglect of her, was false. I
recalled it now. Still she had either little conversational power,
or cared little to use it; she never sought the slightest display of
culture. She kept her impressions to herself. Certainly no one ever saw
her posing, nor ever practising the slightest deception, as other women
in society do, putting on knowledge of art like a new headdress.
I don’t know whether it was due to some dim conviction, or to curiosity
now, that I asked the good man who had thus far been my informant:
“Where is the graveyard?”
The avenue crossed the country road by which I had come, and no doubt
ended in a terrace, for at its extremity I could perceive nothing more
of the near landscape, but only the slope of the distant mountain on
the border of the valley. The road crossed the Cernay property, one of
those expropriations, no doubt, which make no account of the decorative
value of private estates. The peasant indicated the direction by a
gesture.
“Over there.”
At the entrance of this part of the avenue were two granite columns,
once evidently intended as supports for an iron chain, which, rusty and
disused, was lying on the ground between them. I remounted my machine
and urged it on over the rustling leaves. There were so many that I
sank among them, and needed to take care not to be tripped up. Beyond
the last two oaks I found, as I had expected, a terrace, from which, as
from a balcony, one overlooked the deep valley. A pool in the hollow
reflected the light of day, doubling the glory of the landscape, its
banks of serried reeds, so close as to conceal their separate pliancy,
forming a long golden barrier.
This was what I saw at first, as from a window one first sees the
opposite distance and later takes in the nearer features of the scene.
When I looked closer I perceived beside me on the right a chapel, and
on the left, against a hillock, the little graveyard for which I was
looking.
What a charming, sunny little graveyard it was! Girdled with a newly
whitewashed wall, overrun with wild plants, it had the look rather of
a deserted garden patch than of a cemetery. Here and there a cross
pierced the thick green, making itself the trellis for some shrub. The
lovely coral clusters hanging from one or two roan trees achieved an
aspect almost of gaiety for the little enclosure. Sloping gently and
with a fine exposure it seemed quite literally a tiny garden plot. It
invited to terrestrial rest, not the eternal repose of death. No idea
of the end of things was in this place.
I wanted to sun myself on the wall there like a lizard, and had
to resist the temptation. I entered, and before I realised it was
searching for the grave of some one I hardly knew. The monument of
the Allignys, crenelated like a fortress and crowned with a truncated
pillar, first caught my eye. Happily the passing of this ancient
family had given nature and the audacious weeds an opportunity to
make successful headway against man’s domination. No other monument
looked down upon these flower beds. Was the millionaire Cernay, noted
for his love of pomp, so neglectful of his wife’s memory? No--at last
a very simple tombstone, hardly higher than the weeds, showed me an
inscription, though I could read it only by raising the ivy beneath
which it lay half hidden:
RAYMONDE CERNAT
BORN MAIRIEUX
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD.
How potent is the idea of youth! The mere reminder of her years upon
this tombstone gave at once to the neglected plot its touch of glory
and majesty. With an involuntary gesture I removed my hat. Not less
mechanically I turned to go. If the forest had flung down the last of
its beautiful flower-tinted leaves dead upon the ground in the meantime
I should not have been surprised. I had felt too keenly my experiences
of the morning: it was as if now, in a gust of wind, I felt the passing
by of death.
On my return, as my old man was still raking up his chestnuts, I
resumed my questions:
“Can one visit the chateau?”
“Ask the steward.”
“Where is he?”
In reply he simply pointed to the lodge.
The land steward received me in a glass-enclosed dining room which
resembled a conservatory. It opened upon the woods, though the trees
were not near enough to shut out the air. An invitation to rest there
could not but be most agreeable. I was at once politely invited to
drink and smoke, for my host was at the moment filling his pipe, with
an open bottle of white wine at his elbow. The sun shone upon his
half-filled glass in sparkles of dull gold.
“You see,” he explained, “I have already made my rounds on horseback
this morning.”
I too had been in the saddle all the morning, and so I accepted his
invitation to fellowship. He was a man of some sixty years, holding
himself a little too upright, as if to resist a tendency to stoop. He
had the ruddy skin of those who live much in the open air, a colour
emphasised by his white hair. One would have taken him, at a first
glance, for an old cavalry officer worn out in the service. But he
showed nothing of that apparent assurance acquired by the habit of
command. His blue eyes had a confiding expression such as one used to
see in those of young girls. I was prepared, from our first libation in
common, to find a certain familiarity, but not the air of distinction
and total absence of pose, the nobility of manner, unobtrusive and
innate, that shrouded his simplicity as a tower in ivy. He bore the
true hallmark of ancient lineage. In neither his person nor his speech
was there anything superficial.
At first he met my request with a refusal. To begin with there was
nothing to see in the chateau. But he had hardly made the statement
when, as if from an instinctive horror of falsehood, he corrected
himself with an exception: perhaps a few old tapestries and pieces
of furniture, and a small Italian painting, no bigger than that,
representing an Annunciation. At once, I knew not why, perhaps because
of his very reserve, a strong desire to see the interior of the
chateau took possession of me, and I repeated my request, pleading my
acquaintance with M. Cernay.
“That is another thing. I will take you,” he said.
In the avenue I expressed regret that I should not see the owner,
adding:
“But he seldom comes here.”
“Oh, no,” said my friend. “He will be here in a few days. He always
spends the month of November here. He comes before All Saints’ Day, on
account of my daughter.”
“Of your daughter?”
The steward looked at me in some surprise.
“Did you not know that he married my daughter, and that we have lost
her?”
There was no ostentation in the reminder, only a deep sadness. I told
him of my visit to the graveyard.
“Could you find her grave? It is hidden among the others.”
“Yes, only an ivy covered stone. But there is so much of youth in the
inscription that it goes to the heart.”
“My wife would have liked a different monument. But it is enough.”
The cloister surrounding the chateau, with the purity of its arches,
over which vines and clematis clambered at will, was a joy to see.
“It is all that remains of the ancient nunnery,” my guide explained.
“The nunnery was abandoned in the seventeenth century for another
religious house, larger and more severe, that of Saint Hugo, and the
family of the Count d’Alligny took possession. The present Count sold
the estate to M. Cernay. I had been steward in his day. He lost all his
money at the gaming table; he cared for nothing so much as play. He was
an excellent man.”
“What has become of him?”
“He is in command of the four soldiers of the Prince of Monaco, and
having not a sou to lose he looks on while other men ruin themselves.
The occupation diverts him. And yet I had administered his estate well.
But he cared nothing for the land. No one cares for the land any more.”
“Not you?”
“Oh, I! I have walked these woods so long that I know every tree of
them. I used to walk here so much with my daughter when she was a
little girl.”
The memory of his daughter visibly obsessed him. Was it that he wished
to remind me of her brilliant marriage? Hardly: because he seemed, as I
have said, so utterly free from snobbery.
We found ourselves in the dwelling rooms, and he pointed to a portrait.
“When she used to run the country with me she was not so pale and thin.”
I recognised her pallor, a bloodlessness which the artist’s palette had
not flattered. In the sumptuous ball dress in which she was tricked out
her bare arms and shoulders seemed to embarrass her. One felt that they
were cold, and almost looked to see the goose flesh. To this impression
of discomfort the eyes added an impression of timidity, almost of fear.
For a moment I thought that it was a sort of ecstasy which held her
thus rigid--had I indeed not seen her almost shivering, listening to
the air from Amadis? Examining the portrait more closely I attributed
the expression to fear--excessive modesty or secret wretchedness, a
mystery now unfathomable, one which the artist had either penetrated or
unconsciously revealed. She reminded one of those portraits of Spanish
Infantas whose youth seems stifled by etiquette and tight lacing.
Presently I discovered another resemblance.
By way of showing some degree of sympathy, I asked:
“You lost her so early: of what malady did she die?”
“No one knows.”
The tone of the reply was so full of pain that I involuntarily coupled
his enigma with that of the portrait.
Just then I discovered the small Italian picture which the steward had
mentioned, and hastened to ask for a better light upon it. It was an
Annunciation, somewhat dark in tone, but surprisingly delicate, and
easily to be attributed to the school of da Vinci. The subject was
treated in the manner of that Ufizzi Annunciation in Florence in which
people have found the special mark and stamp of the master’s style. The
angel has just delivered his message: he has spoken, and now he bends
the knee before the future mother of God. How touching she is in her
surprise, her modesty and embarrassment! She crosses her hands upon her
breast, as if to hold in check a heart that would leap from its resting
place. She cannot refuse so high an honour, yet she feels herself
unworthy; she is happy; and yielding under the burden of divine love
she offers to God her readiness to endure the suffering that is to come.
I stood long before this picture, deeply moved by it: it was so
perfect, so full of grace. Then a resemblance began to force itself
upon me. The countenance of Mme. Cernay incontestably recalled that
emotion, that modest embarrassment. She might have posed long ago for
that portrait of the Virgin. There was the same tender grace, the same
elongation of the throat, the same slimness and even the same light in
the startled eyes. I remarked the fact aloud.
“My son-in-law bought this canvas because of the resemblance of which
you speak,” said M. Mairieux.
“It is striking.”
“No doubt.”
And the steward turned his head towards his trees, as if under the
influence of a sadness which he would fain hide from me, and which it
was not for me to fathom.
By a refined delicacy, and as if anticipating probable comments, he
took pains as we descended the stairs to dwell upon the generosity of
his son-in-law, which I might have questioned on seeing that he himself
retained his subordinate functions.
“We do not live in the chateau, my wife and I, though M. Cernay has
begged us to do so. Why should we change our way of life? In this great
building I should not feel at ease as in our lodge: we should need
too large a household. And he won’t let me render the accounts of the
estate to him; he pretends that the revenues are so small and hard to
collect. He gave me my horse Zeno, which is of Farbeo pedigree, strong
and sturdy as I like a horse to be. Did you not see him as I came in
from my ride?”
“You had come in before my arrival.”
“Would you like to see him in his box?”
Condescendingly I accompanied him to the stable and admired the hind
quarters of an ill-tempered brown beast which seemed more than willing
to kick me. His owner calmed him with cajoling words, as a personage
accustomed to flattery.
“There is not a gentler animal,” he assured me. “When I am on Zeno’s
back, and in the Maiden’s Wood, I let myself live in my memories.”
In friendly wise he detailed his present pleasures. No doubt his
country instincts would have found satisfaction in the monotonous
administration of the estate, but for the tragedy caused in his
peaceful existence by the untimely death of his daughter. A question
came to my lips.
“Madame Cernay left no child?”
“Yes, indeed, a daughter, Dilette,” he answered. “Our little Dilette.
My son-in-law entrusts her to us in the summer. In winter she needs
more sunshine than we can give her here, on account of the trees. She
will soon go away with her father. It is not a cheerful thought. See!
There she is!”
A child of six or seven years, with long hair flying, was at the moment
crossing the greensward. Lightly she skipped along, her feet hardly
touching the ground, like a bird learning to fly. The moment she saw me
she ran away. My host smiled, approving and disapproving at once.
“She is shy,” he said, “as her mother was.”
I was about to take my leave, when he earnestly begged me to come into
the house.
“Madame Mairieux would be charmed to receive you,” he said.
I excused myself to the best of my ability, pleading the early hour,
my bicycle costume. He would not let me off, and I perceived from his
kindly pertinacity that a scolding would be his lot should he permit
his wife to be defrauded of a visit--a rare event in these parts, no
doubt. I was therefore admitted to the presence of Mme. Mairieux, who,
I assumed, had been watching me, not without some ill-humour, from
the window, since we found her at that early hour all tricked out in
silk and lace; unless, indeed it might be her Sunday garb she had
on. She was certainly endowed with charm and Conversational ability,
though the charm was a bit affected and the conversation that of the
fashion papers and the women’s magazines. I at once made a distinction
in favour of her husband, though he kept silence and appeared to be
dominated by her. She talked intimately of “Raymond,” and, not without
a certain satisfaction, of the chateau in which they might live
whenever it pleased them so to do.
“But M. Mairieux detests luxury and even comfort. And M. Mairieux must
be heard too, for he will hear no one.”
I turned toward M. Mairieux, who made no protest. Possibly he was
endowed with that gentleness possessed by obstinate folk, who quietly
escape from everything that does not accord with their pleasure. The
want of harmony between the pair was patent, but, contrary to first
appearances, the reins of government were in the husband’s hands.
Mme. Mairieux confirmed the report of M. Cernay’s approaching arrival.
“He always comes for All Saints’ Day,” she said.
And when for the second time I spoke of my visit to the graveyard she
asked me if I did not deem her daughter’s tombstone very mean. She
would have desired a larger monument, a colonade, a broken vase, a
weeping angel; at least something that might be seen from a distance
and would speak of grief.
“No, no,” interposed M. Mairieux, “a stone is enough.”
My leave-taking was quite a ceremony. I was about to occupy quarters
in the neighbourhood, at the hunting lodge of Sylve-Benite, where I
was to find my baggage. I promised to return and renew my acquaintance
with M. Cernay, who was to be duly informed of my proximity. Just as I
was bestriding my machine, little Dilette again crossed the court on
the run, her long hair floating upon the breeze like wings. With this
vision before me I turned my back upon the chateau of the Maiden of the
Wood.
Was this in Savoy? In Dauphine? I have forgotten to say. But what does
it matter? I recall to mind a ballad with the recurring refrain:
Was it in Brittany? Was it in Ireland?
Perhaps in the land of the King of Thule.
If I am not more definite every one will think it was in Savoy!
One evening about five o’clock as I came in from the chase, a hare in
my game bag, a fine fatigue in my legs and my stomach empty down to my
heels, I found an urchin awaiting me at Sylve. He was the bearer of a
pressing letter from Mme. Mairieux, begging me to dine with her on the
sudden and unannounced arrival of her son-in-law. Between Sylve Benite
and the Maiden of the Wood there are two good leagues. In case of need
one can cover three-quarters of the distance on the bicycle by a bad
road, which shakes one to pieces, and I should greatly have preferred
to be spared such a night march, and remain peacefully in my lair,
where the soup was already simmering over the fire. But an inexplicable
impulse of curiosity or vanity urged me to visit Raymond Cernay--the
victor of Bethany.
“Very well, I will go,” said I to the small messenger. “Go on ahead. I
will change my clothes and overtake you with my machine.”
He smiled with a knowing air, for he was riding an old nag which it
might not be easy to distance. In fact, I did not see him again. When
I descended the avenue the chateau with its cloister was half buried
in obscurity, lighted at but a single window. I rang at the lodge:
which on the other hand was resplendent with light. I had put on my
most elegant hunting suit, but I regretted the lack of formality when
I saw Mme. Mairieux in great pomp of toilette and her husband ill at
ease in a frock coat which he must have exhumed with difficulty from
the wardrobe in which it had been buried. I was beginning to dread M.
Cernay’s dinner coat, when I was informed with no little embarrassment
that he would not be of the party.
“He begs you to excuse him,” explained Mme. Mairieux. “An indisposition.
The long journey--”
The steward, more sincere, came out with the truth:
“He desires to be alone. He always shuts himself up thus the first few
days. I told my wife how it would be.”
“And your granddaughter,” I asked. “Will she hide again?”
“Dilette? She was here just now. She ran away when she saw you. She was
afraid of you. Faces frighten her, but danger, never.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“In her usual place I’ll wager, perched upon the cloister wall, waiting
for some adventure to come to pass--an apparition of angels, or the
arrival of a knight on horseback. Wait a little: perhaps I can persuade
her to come.”
M. Mairieux returned with the fugitive, whom he had succeeded in
taming. The grandfather and grandchild had no doubt come to understand
one another by their walks in the forest together. I looked more
closely at the child, of whom I had barely caught a glimpse on my first
visit. Her hair, golden at the ends of the curls, paler blond on her
head, fell unconfined far down her back. She was small and slight with
legs and arms of no size at all, and yet her slightest motion revealed
the easy play, the facile grace of the swift runner. Her dark eyes, at
once limpid and deep, like still water pools, encircled by shade, the
transparency of which serves no purpose, were wide open, and far too
shy for the eyes of a child. Had her mother transmitted to her some of
that mysterious fear that haunted her?
I paid systematic court to this little girl of six and a half years.
At coffee she handed me sugar, remembered to remove my empty cup, and
shortly after she was perched upon my knee. Proud indeed I was of the
conquest.
“It is surprising,” remarked Mme. Mairieux, somewhat disconcerted by
the importance which I attached to the incident.
But her husband was unreservedly delighted with my attentions to
Dilette. As for Dilette, she would not go to bed. Only a scolding could
detach her from the place to which I had enchained her with stories.
“You’ll tell me some more, won’t you, Sir?”
“Surely.”
“Stories with afraid in them?”
We parted the best friends in the world.
* * *
Two days later, passing that way, gun on shoulder, I perceived her slim
little figure in the part of the avenue that leads to the graveyard.
It stood out sharply against the sunlit arch. She was kicking her feet
through the dead leaves, which rose as it were in a wave before her.
All the golden autumn was pouring itself in light upon the child, and
all unknowingly she adapted herself to it, miraculously. When she saw
me she darted to one side and would have hidden behind the oaks. I
called to her, reassuringly:
“Dilette, don’t you know me?”
She stopped at the sound of my voice: in two or three leaps, like a
young greyhound, she was beside me.
“Have you run away, Dilette?”
“No, papa is over there with flowers.”
“With flowers?”
“Yes, that he is taking to mamma.”
“And you?”
“I got tired of it. So he told me to go back.”
“All alone?”
“This is our place, and I know it all.”
She gravely led me toward the chateau when it appeared that I was
minded to join Cernay.
“We mustn’t disturb papa. He doesn’t like any one to talk to him when
he is there.”
“Very well, let us go.”
We installed ourselves upon the low cloister wall, Dilette with her
legs swinging, I leaning against a pillar under the pendant sprays of
the wild vines whose reddening leaves clambered over the arches.
“Now,” she said, “a story, quick!”
Rapidly I reviewed in mind my repertory of myths and legends, choosing
from it a touching version by Tennyson of an ancient ballad. Do you
know it perhaps? If not I must tell it to you too. Try to imitate
Dilette and listen very quietly, for it is necessary to follow this
story if you would understand what is to come in my book.
* * *
THE STORY
The eyes of the little shepherdess were fastened upon the picture which
the poor painter who had lately come to the village was making at the
edge of the forest. Upon a square of canvas no bigger than _that_ he
had put everything one could see,--or almost everything. How could he
do it? It was wonderful!
He gave the last stroke of the brush, then turned and looked into
her face as if he would like to carry it away with him. She was the
prettiest and best girl in all the country-side.
“You are beautiful,” he said; “did you know it?”
She laughed gaily as if pleased.
“The fountain told me so,” she said.
“Did it tell you something else?”
“What else?”
“That you please me?”
And he added, softly: “Will you be my wife?”
She turned her face away, trembling with happiness, for she loved him
secretly.
“Yes,” she murmured.
They were married in the village church. But before leading her to
their home, a little thatched cottage on the edge of the wood, he
turned toward the fields:
“Let us take a walk, while the sun shines,” he said; “we can go home
when evening comes. Shall we go to the great castle, away over there? I
have heard wonderful things about it. You have never seen it, have you?”
She smiled disdainfully.
“I would not exchange our little home for it,” she said.
But he asked again: “Don’t you want to see the castle?”
“I want whatever you want,” she said.
They went beyond the end of the parish and through the gate of a park
into a long shady avenue of ancient oaks. Far away at the end of the
avenue they could see the castle. Evening was coming on; the branches
of the trees leaned kindly over them. The birds were singing, but they
heard only their own hearts.
As they drew near the castle, the dogs came running out.
“I am afraid,” she said.
“With me?”
But the dogs barked joyfully and licked the young man’s hands.
“Why, they know you!” she said.
“I have been here sometimes,” he answered.
They went up the steps of rose-coloured marble.
“We may go in,” he said. “Visitors are allowed.”
They went in, and he showed her all the glories of the palace. While
he was pointing out the beauty of the pictures and furniture, the
convenience and luxury of the rooms, she was all the time thinking of
the little white cottage among the trees. They would be going there
soon. He had showed it to her the evening before, saying: “Here is the
fireside where we shall warm ourselves when winter comes. It is small
and mean, but love is enough for us, is it not?” Yes, love was enough.
She would love him so tenderly that he would never think again of this
fine castle, to which he had no right to bring her.
He saw that she was not noticing what he showed her.
“What are you thinking of?” he asked.
“Of you,” she said, simply.
They had reached the great drawing room, where there were windows upon
all sides through which one could see the trees and fountains of the
park. The sun was setting, and the mirrors reflected its last rays.
“It is getting late,” she whispered. “Shall we go home?”
He bowed low before her, smiling.
“This castle is yours, Madame.”
The vast room echoed with the young wife’s merry laugh.
“Mine!”
He replied gravely:
“Yes, yours. I am the Lord of Burleigh. All that I have is yours, with
my heart.”
She turned pale and was obliged to lean against the wall, near the
window. The view from it, at that sunset hour, was full of peaceful
beauty. Far away, the little white cottage reflected the sunlight.
“Alas!” she murmured softly, as if her happiness was gone.
“I chose you before all others,” he went on, “because you are beautiful
and good. And I wanted to win your love apart from my rank and fortune.”
Until then he had always said “thou” to her, as the country people did,
but now he was saying “you.”
“Why did he so suddenly stop saying ‘thou,’” she whispered to herself.
But not wishing to disappoint him, she smiled upon him sweetly, though
with sadness.
She soon became mistress of herself, and acted as I was fitting in
her new estate. But every evening when she was alone, she would stand
weeping, at the window from which she could see the little white
cottage among the trees.
“Ah,” she would think, “if only he were still the poor, proud artist
who could put all the country-side upon a square of canvas, and bounded
our horizon with his love of me!”
Soon she began to pine away. Not doctors, nor journeys to new places,
nor amusements, nor all the attention and comforts that money could
buy were to make her strong again. One summer evening, like that on
which she had first come to the castle, she leaned her head against the
window casing and closed her lovely eyes for ever.
“We cannot tell of what disease she died,” said the doctors.
“But I know,” said the Lord of Burleigh, bowed down with grief.
Then he called to her attendants: “Put her in her wedding gown. The
simple woollen dress which she wore when she came Here, that she may
rest in peace.”
* * *
I realise that this was hardly a story for a little girl of six or
seven; a tale of disillusionment, rather; of use in discouraging
the ambitious,--if the ambitious trouble themselves about the
poets--teaching the beauty of a humble lot in an age when every one is
envious of his neighbour and eager to push himself into the foreground.
But a whole flood of questions and comments from Dilette explained
and embellished it. _What is an outskirt_? _A thatched cottage_? _An
horizon_? _A doctor who does not understand sickness_? _etc._--
I admit, too, that the ending is sad enough, and that when Dilette
demanded some changes, in particular a happier conclusion, I should
have been willing to revive my heroine, if the angry man who intervened
had given me time. I admit whatever you wish. But certainly all this
did not warrant the scolding I received from Raymond Cernay, who had
crept silently behind the cloister wall, and now sprang up so abruptly
that he both frightened and shocked us.
“Leave that child alone, if you please!”
I am telling the exact truth: he spoke to me thus rudely. In a second I
was on my feet, angry, and my face crimson. My first words challenged
him without regard for politeness.
Now I ask you whether any man has a right to behave in this way to a
person who is taking enough interest in his progeny to sit on top of
a wall and teach her English ballads. Dilette, herself, although she
did not dare say anything, suffered from the paternal injustice. Such
a lack of courtesy, she realised, was not likely to help our future
relations. Cernay turned to his daughter.
“Go find your grandfather and say good-night to this gentleman who has
been trying to entertain you.”
This pacified me somewhat, and still more the gracious good-night that
Dilette purposely emphasised. When the child had gone, Cernay appeared
to hesitate over his course; then he resolutely commenced a strange
catechism, to which, I confess, I submitted with a bad grace, for his
ridiculous injunction still rang in my ears.
“How do you know what happened?” he began.
“What do you mean?” I retorted.
“What happened in my home. Who told you?”
“I do not understand,” I answered.
“You understand very well--but the heroine of your story did not die as
you said. Her husband killed her. Her husband, do you understand? But
of course you know that--only you did not want to say so to my little
girl. You were very wise--I was there, I heard every word--and I should
not have allowed you to go on. One does not talk to a child about her
mother’s unhappiness.”
My anger left me. Cernay was evidently crazy. He had suddenly imagined
that he was Lord Burleigh. His experiments in aviation, which taxed
too heavily his daring and presence of mind, possibly also, his
disappointment and isolation, had unsettled his mind. In order not to
provoke him, I decided to humour him.
“Follow me,” he commanded imperiously.
The prospect was not very reassuring. Night was falling and I did
not care for a walk in the country with an individual who gave every
evidence of being demented.
He led me, however, directly to the garden-like grave of Madame Cernay,
whence the mingled fragrance of the flowers rose to us, though the
gathering dusk obscured their colours. There, my companion became lost
in his memories. Forgetting my presence and his own pride, he permitted
at intervals a kind of wail of agony to escape him. Yet I was not
greatly affected by this manifestation of despair, because, dreading
some more dangerous happening, I devoted my attention to a close watch
upon his movements. When he had grown calmer, he was to astonish me
still more. We were walking back up the avenue through the night, when
at last he decided to speak:
“I was at fault just now,” he said. “Forgive me. That story which you
were telling my daughter--I don’t know where you found it.”
“In Tennyson,” I hastened to reply, in order to clear myself of my
unknown offence.
“It caused me much pain.”
“You?” I asked.
“It is so much like my own,” he replied.
This, then, was the explanation of his distress. I had attributed it to
madness but it was really only the expression of a protracted agony,
of a secret that had been kept too long and was now perhaps ripe for
confidence. He continued to accuse himself in broken phrases.
“It was I who killed her, do you understand? Some murderers are less
cruel. They only strike once. They do not kill gradually, by a slow
fire. She forgave me. And I--instead of expiating my crime, I am
preparing to commit another. Oh, I hoped, I dared, to take up my life
again. Since my return here, the past has gripped me, possessed me
absolutely again, and I feel a savage pleasure in coming back to it--”
Without any farewell, he turned away, in what direction I could not
tell. Night enveloped us. I lost sight of him almost immediately, and
returned to my quarters at Sylve-Benite, surprised and dumbfounded by
such an unexpected revelation, a revelation which the future was so
strangely to fulfil.
* * *
After a farewell day of fairly good shooting I prepared to leave
Sylve-Benite, despite the peace and quiet that I had enjoyed there,
and I was collecting my luggage when Raymond Cernay called upon me.
He charged up at a full gallop, on M. Mairieux’s horse, and the hardy
animal must have been pushed beyond reason for he was badly blown. It
was five or six days after our singular meeting. Cernay noticed my
preparations and demanded abruptly:
“You are leaving.”
“As you see,” said I.
“Where are you going?”
“I am going home.”
“Is it necessary?”
“We must always go home in the end.”
“But nobody is waiting for you?”
“No, nobody.”
“Very well, then, I will take you with me.”
“Where?”
“To the chateau. You can stay there several days, as long as you wish.
Your luggage is ready. Come.”
I was so far from expecting this invitation that I had myself thrown
away all pretexts for declining. Nevertheless I was determined to
refuse it, the more so on account of the peremptory way in which it
was given, much as a millionaire with money to spare might throw down
a little cash. “Come, now,” he seemed to say, “strap up your valise,
you are wanted.” Without troubling my conscience, therefore, I invented
some pressing obligations.
“But just now you did not mention any of those things,” he said.
“I had not thought, then,” I replied.
Raymond Cernay made an angry movement. Apparently he did not admit the
possibility of the least opposition from any one, or possibly he was in
a highly nervous condition.
“No, no, no,” he repeated, “you will come.”
“I am exceedingly sorry.”
“I wish it.”
I could not keep from smiling as I listened to him storming, ordering
and commanding. He was ashamed of making an exhibition of his temper,
and he changed his tone with a promptitude that amazed and touched me.
“Yes,” he said. “I am not yet chastened. Shall I ever be? It is not
easy when one has taken the wrong turn from childhood. I always knew
that I could satisfy every one of my whims, and so I could not endure
opposition. Even misfortune does not always succeed in humbling us. You
must excuse my brusqueness.”
Then he added, pleadingly:
“Won’t you come with me. They are waiting for you, M. and Mme.
Mairieux, and Dilette especially. Dilette wants you. She asks every
one for stories, stories like yours. I cannot tell them to her; I have
never learned them.”
“Ah, Dilette wants me.”
He dwelt upon his daughter’s wishes, until out of respect to my wild
little friend, whom I was proud to have conquered, I permitted myself
to be convinced, or rather to be carried off, for we left without
delay, he on Zeno and I on my bicycle. My luggage would be sent for.
That evening I was installed in the chateau.
* * *
I sincerely believe that my arrival there was a pleasure to every one.
The atmosphere pervading the chateau was troubled with mists which the
presence of a stranger might perhaps succeed in dissipating. I am not
speaking only of Dilette, who bounded to welcome me like a dog wild
with joy, but also of M. and Mme. Mairieux, who despite their long life
together had neither feelings nor opinions in common, and above all of
Raymond Cernay, who, to all appearances was not in a state of mental
equilibrium. He had urged his daughter as a pretext to secure me, when
in fact he sought assistance for himself.
For the first few days he monopolized me. The emptiness or the
bitterness of his life he lightened with fishing, shooting, riding, and
walking. He had long since retired from all intercourse with other men.
Hitherto his unhappiness, his mechanical studies, his experiments and
his flights had sufficed to interest him. Now, however, yielding to his
old taste for society, or perhaps simply to the thousand and one charms
and attractions of everyday life, which does not long permit us to
defy it, he felt the need of a companion and sought one. His daughter
he surrounded with an almost passionate affection, yet he did not know
how to talk with her as one talks with a child. He recognised this and
left her, not without sorrow, to M. Mairieux, who understood both the
child’s bursts of confidence and her reserve. I noticed, not without
surprise, the respect that Cernay showed his father-in-law, though he
exhibited too such embarrassment in the older man’s presence that of
his own accord he kept out of his way.
I soon believed that I had found the explanation of his character.
Out of conjugal loyalty he imposed upon himself each year one month
of solitude in this dwelling in the heart of the woods, and little by
little the solitude became intolerable to him. Boredom preyed upon him,
he turned about in his prison like a tiger in a cage. I supplied him
with a diversion. He was faithful to the grief in his heart, to his
abiding love. But, then, what can one expect? He did not know how to
feast upon his sorrow, how to satiate himself with it. Few people do.
Introspection had played but a small part in his life. His days had
been consumed by the need of physical activity. Within him a similar
fever had devoured that tender affection which was most dear to him,
and he was grief-stricken at his helplessness to fan its ashes into
flame.
Thus I analysed his restlessness. I deceived myself thoroughly, it
afterwards appeared; but how could I then have perceived its complex
causes?
* * *
In the course of our walks I noticed the minute and prolonged study
that he invariably bestowed upon the sky before we started. He was
skilled in interpreting the form and movements of the clouds; those
cumuli, lying on the horizon like snow hills, would dissolve in rain;
these parasites hanging upon the summits of the mountains heralded
a storm. I saw him sniff the air, examining it, one might say, as a
hunter studies the depths of the woods and inhales their odour, or a
fisherman scrutinises the mysteries of the water.
“It is the enemy,” he confided to me one day. “It is invisible and
formidable. Before attacking it, we must try to understand it.”
I knew that he was thinking of his flying machines, and while we walked
on to a neighbouring pond, I questioned him about the origin of his
sudden interest in aviation.
“It is no sudden interest,” he explained. “I have always loved the
conquest of space. The same motor drives the automobile and the
aeroplane. Is not the rudder for the air much like that which steers
a sailboat at sea? One grows out of the other. But what does the
sensation of speed amount to, compared with the satisfaction of
springing free from the soil and attaining true liberty at last? And
the field is infinite.”
I listened without interrupting him, knowing that he was interested
only in his own visions.
“_She_ did not dissuade me when I thought of it before.” (He did not
mention his wife more directly.) “To her, work was the glory of man. ‘I
am afraid,’ she said to me, ‘but I will pray. A woman can afford to be
afraid.’ _The other_, at Rheims, always cried to me to go higher.”
What other? I abandoned any attempt to understand this unexplained
allusion. On several previous occasions I had questioned his incoherent
remarks. This time it was better not to interrupt him.
“After I lost her, I endured days of agony. I should have been glad to
punish myself, to scourge myself.”
Again I found trembling on his lips the same confession of some
mysterious guilt which had come when he heard “The Lord of Burleigh.”
Here was the secret that tormented him. After a moment’s hesitation he
went on:
“Even in the greatest suffering, the desire for life keeps its power.
It seemed to me that danger would bring me nearer to her and at the
same time in danger there is an exaltation which carries you one does
not know where. Perhaps my vocation, as you call it, is due to that.
Some old investigations and scientific studies had prepared me for
it. I have perfected somewhat the work of others, but I have not yet
invented anything. My merit is unimportant. Do not exaggerate it. Only
good luck and a certain audacity have enabled me to attain interesting
results. Ah, if I could discover some automatic way to assure lateral
stability, that would be another story.”
Our path ended in the reeds along the bank of the pond. He cast loose
the boat that was moored there, and I took the oars, while he steered.
After we had pushed off, he continued:
“The monoplane which I use I have named for her, but nobody knows it.
Very soon I shall not have the right to do so.”
Why would he not have the right?
I inquired about his experiments in altitude.
“I must fly high,” he replied. “It is an irresistible fascination,
a necessity. Above my two wings, I possess the infinite. The air
surrounds me, bathes me, caresses me, as this water does our boat. I
forget the noise of the motor, the buzzing of the propeller. Energy
clamours within me. My wings shift about, like extended arms, to ensure
control. A horseman is no more one with his living mount than I am with
my machine. I experience a new calm, a peace like that of religion.
She is with me, she does not speak, she smiles. She is no longer a
victim of the fear that paralysed her on earth. It is just as if I
were carrying her to her heaven. I am quite sure that I shall never
again cause her any harm. As long as my flight lasts, I am scarcely a
separate being from her. Between my suspended life and her invisible
one, there is no longer anything but a thin veil.--But we fly too
seldom. The machines need incessant repairing.”
In the very act of describing his sensations to me, he had forgotten
me. It was to himself, rather than to me, that he continued:
“Some wood and linen, a little steel, and a few wires, and you have an
arrow with which to cleave the air. It is not complicated. And yet,
how much study, how much preparation and effort in order to fly a few
hours, a few hours without touching earth, while we do not take the
trouble to learn to know a soul which trusts itself to us, which would
carry us equally high in life, if we understood it.”
Expressed though it was in incoherent phrases, his exaltation won me,
and I begged him some day to take me with him. But he refused with
unexpected violence.
“Do not ask me that. I have never carried a single passenger. My
solitude is necessary to me, the comforting solitude of space. The
Rheims woman asked me to take her. She wished to drive away the
_other_. Ah, I used to think that some day I would break my wings
while in full flight. It would have been a good end, and so easy,
nothing but the cutting of a rope. Nobody would have suspected. But it
is impossible. It would mean betraying the machine, allowing a false
suspicion to rest upon it. It can play false: the man it carries--no.”
I laid down the oars. He had already abandoned the rudder, and we
drifted with the current. Seated in the back of the boat, he stared
down at our wake. Thoughts of death or madness accompanied us like
sombre birds. From that moment I began to alter my opinion of the
intensity of his memories, in which remorse for some crime showed
itself clearly.
We returned almost in silence. I had not dared to question him and he
was absorbed in himself.
* * *
The next day I waited in vain for him to take the walk which we had
planned. He did not leave his room until the luncheon bell rang, and at
table uttered nothing but a few insignificant remarks. Without Dilette,
with whom I talked and laughed, and M. and Mme. Mairieux, who took
their meals at the chateau while their son-in-law was there, we should
not have exchanged twenty sentences during the whole luncheon.
* * *
In the afternoon he again isolated himself, and on the succeeding days
I saw no more of him. Did he avoid me because he thought he had told me
too much, too much and not enough? At first I believed this to be the
case, and without making any explanations, I informed Mairieux that I
was about to leave. Of what use was it to remain?
“No,” he urged, “do not affront him that way.”
“He would not notice my absence,” I said.
“Listen,” replied M. Mairieux. “For one or two weeks last year he was
so depressed that he moved me to pity. Besides, your company will be
welcome to us. Wait, I beg of you.”
“But what does he do all day?” I asked.
We were talking in the carriage road. Raymond Cernay’s apartments
consisted of three adjoining rooms on the second story, a library, a
study, and a bedroom. The autumn days were so mild that the large bay
window of the study was open and we could see him seated at a table,
with his head between his hands. He was reading or studying. A ray of
light came to me--he disappeared in order to work the better on his
monoplanes.
“Calculations?” I asked M. Mairieux.
“I don’t think so.”
In spite of myself, the secret of this man’s life tormented, I was
about to say haunted, me. Why at our first meeting had he imagined
himself to be the Lord of Burleigh whose wife could not live outside
of her own environment? What was there connected with Mme. Cernay for
which he blamed himself? Why did he insist upon punishment for some
unknown crime or crimes which nobody but he suspected?
* * *
I fell into the habit of spending the end of each day at the pavilion
in order to escape from the morose atmosphere of the chateau. One
evening it happened that Mme. Mairieux began to speak freely of her
daughter and with deep emotion. Sympathising with her grief, I tried to
console her:
“At least she was happy,” I murmured.
“Was she not?” the good lady replied quickly. “Her husband gave
her such a beautiful life, Paris, society, luxury, entertainments,
everything that one cares for at her age. It is true that she was not
as fond of that sort of thing as most young women are. According to
my ideas, she was a little too quiet and serious. It was pleasure,
nevertheless, especially after this desert of The Sleeping Woods.”
“This _desert_ pleased her,” interrupted M. Mairieux, who did not like
this statement.
“Perhaps the change was too abrupt,” I suggested.
“Oh, no. She never complained of it, and surely she would have told me.
In whom would she confide, if not in her mother? I knew her so well,
the dear child.”
Her husband was obviously and unmistakably growing irritated. He tried
to change the subject, but she would have none of it.
“During her long illness Raymond was perfect to her,” she persisted.
“He came here with her, he gave up all his own affairs, he called in
the most celebrated physicians, and now, on top of it all, he accuses
himself of not having been a sufficiently devoted husband. To us, who
saw him at the time, it is simply madness.”
She had reached this point in her eulogy of her son-in-law, when M.
Mairieux left the room. I believed that I understood the meaning of his
departure: he was protesting silently against his wife’s praises.
* * *
Cernay’s seclusion led me to frequent the park with the steward and
Dilette. M. Mairieux, little by little, as he watched the child
skipping ahead and then running back to us like a young greyhound
travelling over the same road two or three times, fell into the habit
of conjuring up before me an earlier childhood, that of his daughter.
He never spoke to me of Mme. Cernay, but constantly of little Raymonde.
I learned every detail of her life up to the age of fourteen or
fifteen. Beyond that there was silence.
His memories kept time with Dilette’s actions. One morning, as she bent
over a colchicum, he asked:
“Why don’t you pick it?”
“It is better there in the grass, grandpa,” she said.
This reply seemed to me to affect him beyond measure.
“Raymonde,” he explained, “loved flowers in the same way, and never
plucked them. She thought them lovelier growing on their stems in the
fields. No one could ever get a bouquet from her. It is odd, don’t you
think?”
But the oddity brought tears to his eyes. At other times he spoke of
other characteristics.
“I had taken her into the forest at sunset,” he said once. “How old
was she? Probably Dilette’s age. The leaves were nearly all gone, it
was this time of year. In front of us the tree trunks partly blocked
our view of the sun’s red disc. She stretched her little arms towards
the disappearing orb and when it had completely vanished, I found her
dear face so sad that I began to apologise. ‘I can’t stop the sun, my
darling,’ I said. ‘It is a great pity, grandpa,’ she replied with a
sigh. Ah, it was a sigh that would break your heart! Would you believe
it? That evening I envied Joshua. As a matter of fact, I had as good
reason as he for working a miracle. The laughter of a little girl is
the dew which refreshes our years. A child who does not laugh seems to
be reproaching the one who gave it life.”
On this topic he was never silent; now, it was Raymonde’s inborn love
for all things, or again, of her running along the forest paths and her
abrupt halts, as if she saw some one coming, her charming combination
of trust and fear.
“She was so timid, so shy,” he said, “that we even determined to send
her to boarding school near by, in a convent in the city, in order that
contact with companions might accustom her to everyday life. You have
no idea of the ceremony that took place before she left. She wished to
say good-bye to all the rooms in the house as if they were persons of
flesh and blood, and to certain favoured trees and to Stop, the dog,
and my horse, and the whole farmyard. She was not absent long. At the
end of three days she ran away. She had to climb over a wall, topped
with iron spikes. A little of her dress stayed there. Moreover she
lost her hat and did not go back to look for it. In this condition she
passed through the city somewhat ashamed of her appearance; and ran off
at full speed from an old gentleman who began to question her. Once out
in the country she was reassured. The city faces did not trouble her
any more and those of the peasants gave her confidence, as though she
were on familiar ground. So she came back to us on foot, just before
nightfall. Have you noticed at the side of the gate a single birch,
planted there by chance? It was much smaller then. Raymonde’s first act
was to go to this friend and embrace it. From a distance I thought a
little pauper girl was coming up the avenue. Stop was already licking
her hands, and even her cheeks. And in this beggar I recognised my own
daughter.”
While he was narrating this memorable Odyssey, M. Mairieux straightened
up, he seemed to grow younger, and he smiled. He threw out his leg and
walked like a dancing master explaining a step. Then suddenly he fell
back into his former attitude, as though ashamed of his spirit. He was
recovering from the past a little of its lost happiness.
“And how lovely she was at fifteen! Like a ray of golden light, you
understand. Curls of changing shades, a fresh complexion of that
unsullied white that actually shines, and eyes which it did one good
to look at, because you would never imagine that there could be any
so pure. There was a little terror in my love for her. She seemed too
delicate, too sensitive, and yet I would not have wished her less so.
I felt that she would never be happy. I feared for her beforehand. Oh,
how right I was!”
The last reflection, which escaped involuntarily from his lips,
appeared to upset him completely. It coincided too well with the
painful allusions of Raymond Cernay not to strike me forcibly. M.
Mairieux did not agree with his wife about the conjugal felicity of
their daughter. There was a secret here, which a few days later I was
destined to learn under tragic circumstances.
* * *
Bad weather followed the last of the Autumn sunshine. We were prisoners
of the rain. A dense fog hid the forest from our sight, and the
atmosphere of the chateau became unbearable.
Raymond Cernay, buried in his study like an alchemist in his
laboratory, occasionally passed like a ghost through a corridor or sat
at the table without recognising us, his gaze lost in space. Dilette,
not daring to raise her eyes to him, implored my protection. M. and
Mme. Mairieux, being in accord on nothing, maintained protracted
silences. I determined to take refuge in flight, but the tragedy
anticipated me.
On the day of which I speak, we were together in the drawing-room after
luncheon, sitting almost in silence, like a family whose scattered
members have re-assembled in anticipation of a funeral and await the
coming of death. The child once more insisted on a story from me, and I
protested that I did not know any more. Cernay, who had not yet opened
his mouth, descended from his tower of ivory:
“And the Lord of Burleigh?”
“I have already told that.”
But Dilette clapped her hands, and insisted so long and so hard that
I began over again the story of the Lord of Burleigh. I attempted to
introduce a variation, generously permitting the heroine to recover,
but Cernay shocked his daughter by objecting. When I had finished, he
asked in a sarcastic voice:
“And what happened then to your Lord of Burleigh?”
What was the purpose of this embarrassing question?
“I don’t know,” I answered at random. “I suppose he went on living.”
“Yes,” he announced, in a tone of utter despair that I can still hear.
“Yes, one lives.”
He rose from his arm-chair at the corner of the hearth, where a fire
was sputtering--one of those fires of half-dried wood which char, cry,
and smoke. He paced the room two or three times, his pace growing
quicker and quicker. His irregular gait and the fixed expression on his
face impressed and worried us. Moreover we heard distinctly phrases not
intended for us but referring to my story.
“He lived--He forgot the evil he had done--Perhaps he married again.”
Then, with sudden decision, he rushed to the door and disappeared.
We looked at each other wearily. Some moments later we saw him rush
bare-headed through the rain and wind, down the avenue of oaks, and
disappear in the direction of the forest.
We found nothing more to say until Dilette went out to play. Then Mme.
Mairieux assumed an air of importance and favoured us with this news:
“Listen to me, I know something. He is really going to marry again. He
is already engaged.”
“How do you know,” demanded her husband.
“I read it in the society announcements two days ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did not want to give you pain. I was waiting for him to announce it.”
“Do you know the name of his fiancée?”
“Mlle. Simone de R--. A good family. It is quite right. He is still so
young, he is so rich, so prominent, so much sought after. During that
week at Rheims the papers did not talk of anybody but him.”
“It is not right,” replied M. Mairieux drily.
And we relapsed into silence in spite of the desire that possessed Mme.
Mairieux to excuse and to justify her son-in-law, to whom, whether from
indulgence or admiration, she conceded every privilege.
I had instantly connected this information with the obscure allusions
to “The Woman at Rheims” and “the other” which had escaped from Raymond
Cernay when he had been previously disturbed that day at the pond.
Nowadays even young girls are famous and the name of Mlle. Simone de
R-- was not unknown to me. I had met her two or three times, a tall
woman, the effect of height being increased by her way of carrying
herself, supple, muscular, possessed of the grace that strength gives,
devoted to sport, and a champion at tennis or perhaps polo--I no longer
remember exactly--which brought her the honour of having her picture
in the illustrated weeklies. She went steadily on her way without
coquetry but with the thirst for conquest which is the mark of the new
generation. I could easily imagine their introduction at Rheims, she
conquered by the boldness of the aviator, he attracted, despite the
past, to this beautiful and frank being, who breathed life and promised
victory.
Two or three hours passed before Raymond Cernay returned, exhausted and
drenched, but not calm. The insane look on his face terrified us, as he
passed by without noticing our presence.
When the bell rang for dinner he did not come down. Going up to his
apartment in search of him, I had great difficulty in securing his
attention. When I did obtain a reply, it was a flat refusal. Without
him the meal was lugubrious, and Mme. Mairieux was quick to withdraw
with little Dilette. When we were alone, M. Mairieux confided his fears
to me.
“I believe I understand him,” he said. “Since his return the past
has gripped him again. There are some memories one cannot betray. If
you only knew! ... Well, he has not made up his mind about this new
marriage. He is tormented, crushed. And it is right that he should be.”
Then, either through a deliberate effort at compassion or from an
inherent goodness that was stronger than all his bitterness, he added:
“His agitation to-night alarms me. You have seen his eyes. He must be
watched.”
We summoned his valet, Jean, and he admitted that the condition of his
master seemed so serious to him that he had not slept for three nights.
“M. Cernay,” he said, “was in the habit of immersing himself in his
reading or writing until a late hour, and it was not until the early
morning that he sought his bed. However, the library adjoined the study
and it would be possible to observe him from there without his knowing
anything about it.”
Preferring to retire late, I claimed the first watch and seated myself
silently in the library, close to the communicating door, with a book
in front of me to serve as a pretext in case I should be surprised.
Outside the closed windows the silence of the country soon grew so
marked that I could hear not only my own breathing, but the least
movement on the other side of the thin partition which separated us,
even the light touch of a sleeve against the arm of a chair. Without
doubt he was reading at his table. From time to time I fancied I could
catch the rustle of a page as he turned it over. Suddenly he pushed
back his chair and began to pace the room with his irregular step. None
of his actions escaped me--my ears took the place of my eyes. I was
certain that he would open the door, and how was I then to explain my
presence there? He stopped. I calculated that he must be in front of
the window. Then he appeared to turn the bolt and throw open the glass
wings. Only empty space was now in front of him. Anxiety paralysed me.
I did not dare interfere; what if my interference should determine him!
The few seconds of suspense were filled with agony. At last he left the
threshold of the window, but without shutting it, and seated himself
again at the table. I could not endure the situation any longer. I
preferred to talk to him, to attempt to distract him, anything rather
than abandon my reason to his unseen madness. With a great effort, for
my legs seemed too weak for their task, I rose and went to the door. I
knocked; he did not reply. A second time there was no response. Then I
walked in.
At first I saw nothing but his back. A portfolio of documents lay open
on the table, but he was not reading. Some white paper, covered with
geometrical figures, was littered about, but he was not writing. He
sat with his head erect, apparently absorbed in his thoughts. Then I
perceived in a mirror the reflection of his face. Occasionally, in
order to indicate that a sick man is doomed, we use the expression:
“he has death in his face.” But a young man in perfect health--how can
he bear this stamp? Nevertheless I perceived it clearly. There it was,
unmistakable, obvious, threatening, and time stopped for me.
I remained motionless behind him as though hypnotised. To shake off the
evil influence, I lowered my glance, and an object on the table, which
I had not at first noticed, attracted my attention. I was not mistaken.
He had a revolver within reach of his hand--and it seemed to me that
his arm was reaching toward it.
It was no time to hesitate longer. I stepped abruptly and silently
forward, and seized the weapon. Raymond Cernay shook his head like one
who has received a blow, and remarked with astonishing indifference, as
if he had just returned to life:
“What are you afraid of? That revolver is not loaded.”
Nevertheless I kept it in my hand, for I doubted him.
“If you don’t believe me,” he said again, “you can throw it out the
open window. I know what I wish to do, and nothing will hinder me from
doing it.”
Convinced then, I put the revolver back where I had taken it, and
apologised, a little ashamed of my interference and ready to retire.
But he stopped me.
“No, stay, I beg of you,” he said. “I have not yet decided. That can
happen any minute.”
So I had not deceived myself about his determination after all. He
continued in a manner that was both savage and enigmatic.
“What I do not want, what I will not have at any price, is to have
my inexperience or my machine blamed some day. I have already killed
that which I loved; I will not kill my work at the very moment I am
perfecting it.”
I should have regarded these words as merely incoherent if, by one
of those lucid intuitions which in exceptional circumstances guide
us like some mysterious instinct, I had not instantly connected them
with the less confused utterances of a few days before: “I used to
think that some day I would break my wings while in full flight. It
would have been a good end, and so easy. Nobody would suspect. But it
is impossible. It would mean betraying the machine, allowing a false
suspicion to rest upon it. It can play false; the man it carries--no.”
He was forearmed against death when its appeal would be most immediate,
most alluring, most caressing; the revolver was there to put an end to
the temptation if it should become irresistible. This reverence for a
sacred work, which I had not expected from Raymond Cernay, formerly so
fickle and so easily wearied, threw more light upon that which followed:
“A soldier goes on to the end.”
But the reason for it all still eluded me. Trembling under the
domination of the raging fire that he struggled to restrain within him,
he permitted himself fragmentary explanations, which the information
imparted by Mme. Mairieux prepared me to comprehend:
“I am tormented by an intolerable situation--and there is no way out. I
crush my victims under me as I go. I am about, you understand, to cause
another misfortune.”
Believing that I had divined his meaning, I challenged him brusquely to
greater frankness:
“Yes, you are divided between the old love and the new.”
He bent on me that madman’s look that no one faces willingly.
“No love will ever equal mine for Raymonde. No love will ever efface
her memory from my life.”
I ceased to understand him. After a silence which I did not disturb, he
continued:
“The week at Rheims was filled with shouts of applause, it was a
veritable triumphal progress. You were not there, you cannot imagine
it. The boldest hopes accompanied our flights. I had my share of glory.
The intoxication of success which I had formerly been so eager to taste
even in small measure, exaggerated and magnified now, went to my head
and for the moment made me forget. I was introduced to this young girl,
who shone with enthusiasm as the windows of an unknown city blaze in
the sun. When I came to myself I was her fiancé. Do you know that the
day of our marriage has been announced? It is set for next month. Since
my return here, I have recognised my mistake. The days have passed;
they are passing now, and I am still silent and they are waiting for
me. But understand me, it is impossible, it would be monstrous.”
He addressed me with increasing violence, and I endeavoured to reassure
him. Life holds us captive, I urged, in spite of ourselves. Youth has
an aptitude for happiness which may be nothing more than the faculty of
beginning over again. He stopped me.
“No, no, you don’t understand.”
Two manuscript portfolios were lying on the table, one open and the
other closed. With a movement that seemed almost inspired, he suddenly
picked them up and handed them to me.
“Here, read this,” he said. “You will understand then. You will learn
that there are silent dramas more tragic than the bloodiest crimes. Now
leave me. Good-bye till to-morrow. Oh, don’t fear for me. Your presence
this evening has dissipated bad ideas.”
It was his secret that I was about to learn.