THE FACE OF THE WORLD CHANGES
I HAD spent almost the entire night reading the two notebooks which
Raymond Cernay had entrusted to me. It was nearly dawn when I lay down
for a few hours. As soon as I had risen, I went to find my friend.
He was seated at his table, in the same place where I had surprised him
the previous night. But what a change had come over him! Instead of the
over-excitement and the melancholy tension which had been almost killing
him, instead of fatigue intensified by lack of sleep and mental strain,
he now exhibited such tranquillity and self-control that I stopped,
stupefied, in my offer of sympathy. I had left him in despair, and now
I found him smiling.
“Here,” I said to him, handing him his notebooks. “I understand you
now.”
Already, however, I was beginning not to understand him. By a new move,
the trend of which escaped me, he had re-established between us the
distance which his confidence had seemed to wipe out. I came to him,
disturbed by what I had read, and he received me with indifference!
I might have connected his attitude with the last sentence of his
journal, but not yet had I reached that state of composure which
enables us to rise above sorrow.
“It was so simple,” he declared, using Raymonde’s words. “There was
nothing to do but tell the truth.”
He pointed to the scattered sheets of a letter which he had not yet
sealed. He had been compelled to write to Mlle. Simone de R--, he told
me. Their engagement made at Rheims had been broken. He added:
“She too will understand, since it is the truth which I had no right
to conceal from her, and which will broaden her. Should she suffer a
little on my account, it is better so.”
His indifference, which for the moment shocked me, was after all like
that of a surgeon recognising the necessity of an operation.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
He looked at me, somewhat astonished by my question, and I discovered
at last on his face that transfiguration, by the like of which he
himself had been dazzled at his wife’s deathbed. A divine phenomenon
had taken place within him, a miracle of peace, a final choice: I can
think of nothing but a theological term to express my whole thought: a
state of grace. A monk who has taken eternal vows in the exaltation of
firm assurance must wear on his countenance a similar reflection of his
decision.
“Live,” he replied.
“Living” meant for him “accepting.”
A long silence followed, which he broke with these words, spoken more
for himself than for me:
“There is no horror in the death of those we love if it serves to make
us better. Do you not see that she was given to me for my improvement?
Oh, God! That I should have taken so long to see it! Since yesterday I
have drawn nearer to her; I am happy. She knew that nothing is finite,
especially a love like hers.”
The following day I left the Sleeping Woods. Raymond Cernay, henceforth
guided by unfailing memories, no longer needed my presence.
* * *
I read of his death one morning in the newspapers.
He had been found at nightfall the day before, in a field near the
seashore where he experimented with his aeroplane on his lonely
flights,--mangled, his shattered machine on top of him. No one, it was
at first supposed, had seen the accident, and consequently no details
could be learned.
I went to him at once. Admitted to the shed where his body had been
placed before the laying-out, I raised the sheet which covered him.
He was not disfigured. One could just make out above his right eye
a slight bruise. A fracture of the skull and a broken spine, only
natural, considering the weight of the motor, had caused his death. But
the face, spared by a curious chance, showed no sign of fear, and his
serenity was more impressive than any wounds.
On account of the mystery which surrounded his end, and recalling
that sorrowful evening when he had struggled against an impulse to
kill himself, I wondered if his fall had been voluntary. What he had
confided to me at the little lake, came back to me:
“One can not betray his machine, or allow false suspicion to fall upon
it. It may make a mistake, but the man that it carries--no--”
Looking for the last time on that countenance, where shone that same
peace he had achieved on that night of agony, I was ashamed of my
suspicions. Death had overtaken him in midair. It was not he that had
sought Death.
The tardy testimony of a little shepherd lad cast a feeble light ta
the catastrophe. The boy, seated every day on a rock, where he tended
his sheep, had been curiously watching Cernay fly. He had seen him
ascend in wide circles like a hawk, until he must have been quite high,
because the boy could not hear the buzzing of the screw, so high that
the machine touched a cloud and was swallowed up.
“I waited,” said the lad, “and then I saw him further up. At that
moment he was right against the sun. Then perhaps he began to come
down, but suddenly he fell like a stone. I got up, I screamed, I closed
my ears, but still I heard the shock against the earth. Then I ran away
with my sheep.”
Cernay’s ability as a pilot was universally known. People passed over
the aviator’s fault. The broken aeroplane would not give up the secret
of its downfall. It was known that he had flown the day before in
stormy weather, and it was supposed, considering the condition of the
canvas and wood, which were still rain-soaked, that there had been
some warping by the heat of the sun that made them offer insufficient
resistance to the wind. The accident was thought to be similar to the
one which had killed Wachter at Rheims. For a while, people spoke very
feelingly about it. Later others took his place in the gloomy series.
Cernay terminated his career like a solitary, apart from the multitude,
after the manner of some mountain climber who accomplishes his
dangerous ascent alone and is found some day dead at the bottom of an
abyss.
* * *
Two months later I was presented to Mlle. Simone de R--. I had already
met her, but had never had an opportunity of speaking to her. We were
among the few French people at a Swiss resort near the snow line, an
unattractive place for men and women of the world. One of us, by way
of a little diversion, had invited us all to dinner that evening. I
confess that I studied carefully the face of that tall and graceful
young woman, who bore victory on her forehead. What did she know of
that Raymonde, whose place she had almost filled? What recollections,
more or less bitter, did she retain of her cruel fiancé of a few weeks?
We were only twelve at table, and the conversation soon became general.
It is quite unusual nowadays for a dinner to take place without some
mention of aviation. The younger generation is enthusiastic about
it, and there were two or three young men there who were greatly
interested in Mlle. de R--, whose sporting reputation they knew. The
fall of a band of mountain climbers, two or three days before at the
Dente Blanche, which we could see from the window, its peak still
lit up by the sun, while twilight had descended upon us, served to
recall the catastrophe in which Raymond Cernay had perished. Nothing
was more natural; the allusion had to happen; and Mlle. de R-- showed
no surprise, though she did not take part in the conversation. Then
some one--though how could one be so untimely and incomplete?--related
a version which he had heard retailed in Paris. Cernay had not been
killed accidentally; he had married an insignificant wife, and after
losing her, committed suicide following some unfortunate love affair.
This recital brought forth protestations and an outburst of curiosity.
One of the guests, who probably knew about the broken engagement,
attempted a diversion. But from all sides opinions were expressed.
“Nonsense! Cernay had become a veritable barbarian. No one knew of any
liaison.”
“Who said it was a liaison?”
“Who could have resisted him, then?”
“Well, a young girl, who after having accepted him, changed her mind,
the good child, and refused to marry him.”
Throughout this discussion I had not taken my eyes off Mlle. Simone de
R--, who had not taken part in it, but, erect and motionless, seemed
in her studied indifference to be lying in wait for an enemy like a
sentinel at the top of a tower. Would she, by any chance, dare to
intervene, when they were not perhaps aiming at her? She did intervene
brusquely with this denial:
“It isn’t true.”
Every one turned to look at her. Without any embarrassment at all,
throwing off constraint like a cloak, and taking a straight course,
like one whom no obstacle could stop, she continued, even before her
father, guessing her purpose, had an opportunity to interrupt her:
“It was I who was engaged to M. Cernay, and it was he who broke our
engagement. Mme. Cernay, of whom you speak with such ignorance and
injustice, could not have been replaced in his heart. He told me so,
and I understood him. That is all. He did not commit suicide.”
She made this avowal in a firm and rapid manner. Every one rose from
the table. Immediately afterwards she left the room with her father.
Cernay had deemed her worthy of knowing the truth then. He had felt
that the knowledge would ennoble her. Did she know, as I did, from the
notebooks, of the life and death of Raymonde? I was inclined to believe
so. However that may be, to render homage to her successful rival, she
had just done one of the most difficult things a woman can possibly
do--make public avowal of having been jilted by her lover.
And I saw on her courageous face that night, a as shows on high
mountains after sunset, the divine rejection of Raymonde’s soul.
* * *
I have just paid another visit to the Sleeping Woods.
First I rang at the lodge, which was closed. As no one answered, I took
the road toward the chateau, whose open windows I could see through the
oaks. Mme. Mairieux received me with her customary affability.
“Yes” she explained, “we have at last come to live here. It is surely
more suitable and consistent with our position. Besides, shouldn’t
Dilette get used to her fortune?”
I hastened to express approval. No doubt she mourned the loss of her
son-in-law, but it was a sort of compensation, too, to be living in the
chateau.
“And where are M. Mairieux and Dilette?” I enquired.
“I don’t know exactly,” she replied. “They have gone out together, as
they do every afternoon. Perhaps you will find them at the edge of the
wood, or perhaps they have gone as far as the Green Fountain.”
“I’ll go and look for them.”
“And come back for dinner.”
I thanked her, and set out on my search. But on the way I changed my
mind about following them into the wood, and took the path that led to
the cemetery. I found my gay little field of the dead with its air of a
neglected garden. M. Mairieux and Dilette had preceded me, and at sight
of them I felt again the emotion of so much youth and love lost to them
both. The grandfather, assisted by his granddaughter, whom the work
amused, was carefully replacing the twisted ivy over a new inscription.
And I read on the stone, beside that other name:
RAYMOND CERNAT
DEAD AT THE AGE OF THIRTY-FIVE
We returned to the chateau together. I had taken Dilette’s hand, and
was admiring the calmness of M. Mairieux, whom I had scarcely seen at
Cernay’s funeral. He had without doubt grown old, but he resisted age,
resolved to accept without complaint the burden of his daily life, and
to keep on for the sake of the orphan daughter.
“I have a package for you,” he said to me, as we entered the house.
An envelope, left by his son-in-law, bore my name with a note. It
contained the two notebooks. I hesitated a long time before publishing
them, but the conquest of the air has claimed so many victims now,
that no one will recognise Raymond Cernay. I have suppressed or
modified what might have designated him too clearly. He did give me
that melancholy record for myself alone. If he could not make clear
his intentions, they nevertheless appear in this legacy. If I have
overstepped them, I do not believe that I have hurt his memory. The
admission of a mistake is so noble and so rare a thing, in the life of
a human being, that, perhaps Raymonde’s radiancy may light up other
hearts now unmindful, proud or frivolous.
With the notebooks there were also some loose sheets covered with
figures and drawings, which I submitted to a constructor of aeroplanes.
They appertained to a device for automatic lateral stability that
should revolutionise the science of aviation. Unfortunately the notes
are worthless, being embryonic and incomplete.
On one of the sheets I came across a peculiar expression: “The face of
the world changes.” I believed this to be one of Cernay’s reflections,
after a daring flight, when from his position in the air the earth
seemed to become smaller and smaller and finally disappear completely.
But in a volume of Bossuet’s “Meditations on the Gospel,” which M.
Mairieux showed me as the most precious souvenir of his daughter, I
reread that same phrase, underscored by Mme. Cernay. So one must take
it in its mystic meaning of splendid isolation. I inferred from it a
posthumous and closer union in eternal love.
* * *
That evening, a little before dinner, I was seated in our favourite
place on the cloister wall, with Dilette, who did not forget to ask me
for a story.
“Tell me about Lord Burleigh,--please!”
But I no longer dared repeat that story. Too many recollections clung
to it, like the ivy on the tombstone in the cemetery. I was searching
my memory for another, when I heard the little girl repeating to me
almost word for word the end, which she had learned by heart:
“Then he said, Put on her simple woollen dress. That is the one she
liked. And then she will lie in peace.--”
THE END.