The new terror
facing each other, we had no occasion to ask the question: “What are
you thinking of?” It is during fits of abstraction, when the mind is
preoccupied, that the “polygon” is up to its tricks. The best method of
preventing one’s thoughts from wandering is to refuse to think at all.
I know what I am talking about.
But the mind must be occupied. After Naples we retraced our steps to
Florence, and finally we reached Venice which I had reserved for the
last. A disastrous town! But let us not anticipate events.
CHAPTER XV
IN WHICH MY ANXIETY ABOUT CORDÉLIA’S POLYGON IS REVIVED
Surdon had engaged a suite of rooms for us at the Hotel Danieli on
the Riva degli Schiavoni. It was in this hotel, it seems, that Alfred
de Musset fell ill and learned the treachery of his lady love, George
Sand. Cordélia heard the story of this lamentable event on the second
day after our arrival, and it seemed unduly to depress her. I hated the
bungler and his story and wanted to leave the hotel. But Cordélia had
taken a fancy to it, and I had to give way to her.
One day I found her with a book in her hand. It was de Musset’s
correspondence with this George Sand. I read a few lines and threw the
book out of the window, went over to my beloved and embraced her, and
told her that it was a crime to spoil our perfect happiness by opening
the door to disagreeable thoughts about two persons who did not know
how to love.
Was I not right?
“Oh, my dear, now you are preventing me from reading,” she made answer.
“Think, Hector, you have already refused to let me visit the museums.”
“Heaven forbid, Cordélia, that I should refuse you anything whatever,”
I exclaimed. “I am your slave as you know. If you are really keen on
seeing some pictures, we’ll go this afternoon to your museum. Would you
like me to countermand our trip to the Lido?”
“That would be too much,” she returned, smiling. “We’ll go to the Lido
for dinner and supper. All the same I shall be glad if you will show a
little more eagerness to see the ‘wonders of art.’”
“Lord above, what string are you harping on now?” I exclaimed. “Did we
not go, as was proper to the Doge’s Palace and see the dungeon in which
Marino Faliero was imprisoned?”
“Oh, Hector, it amused you to slip our cards into the secret letter-box
which was used at one time for anonymous accusations to the Council of
Ten. And you call that seeing the ‘wonders of art!’”
“Yes, and I denounced the proprietor of our hotel, accusing him of
trying to poison us! You had a good laugh at the time, you must admit.”
She was not laughing now. What new shadow was passing over her brow?
She seemed carried away by a depression of spirits which rendered her
more beautiful still, but which filled me with alarm, because it was
akin to sadness. And, indeed, her eyes were bedewed with tears. I threw
myself at her feet.
“I have hurt your feelings,” I exclaimed.
“No, let me cry,” she returned in a broken and far away voice. “Tears
that we owe to the emotion caused by beautiful things are sweet tears.
I remember those happy moments when we left our gondola and entered the
church of Santa Maria della Salute. Just think of the lagoon, the grand
canal—all that marvel of walls and towers and opalescent water.”
“A walk in the Salute!” I cried, making no effort to conceal my
amazement. “We were never together in the Salute, dear.”
“Oh you don’t mean it,” she protested. “We went through the church
thoroughly.”
Thereupon she took a great deal of trouble to describe it to me. And
then suddenly, observing my bewilderment, she came to a stop, and
declined to say another word about her visit to the Salute. She went as
red as a cherry; and I left her in a state of profound uneasiness.
I felt the need of being alone to ponder over what had come to pass.
While we were at Venice we had not parted from each other. I left her
sometimes in her room, but I remained in the hotel. She could not,
therefore, have visited the Salute.
I hurriedly made my way there, and I was dumbfounded to discover that
her description of the church was accurate.
I was intensely alarmed, for I could no longer doubt that Cordélia’s
polygon was beginning to play its tricks again. While she was supposed
to be asleep her polygon was wandering about the Salute! I recalled to
mind Dr. Thurel’s words:
“Just as cases are quoted in which the subject discovers in a dream,
memories placed therein without his cognizance by his polygon while
awake—the O being then in a state of abstraction—so there are numerous
instances in which the subject while awake discovers memories placed
therein, without his cognizance, by the polygon which has been at work
while he was asleep—the O being lulled to sleep or under the influence
of suggestion.”
When I landed from the gondola and found myself again on the Riva degli
Schiavoni I could not help exclaiming:
“The misery of it! It’s that confounded polygon again. Still we in
Venice are a long way from Patrick.”
I had no sooner uttered these words than a voice behind me exclaimed:
“You make a mistake, monsieur. Patrick is here!”
CHAPTER XVI
THE APPOINTMENT
It was Surdon who had spoken. He seemed not less perturbed than I was.
I took him in hand with an excitement which may easily be imagined.
“Patrick here!” I cried. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve seen him.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“And since this morning couldn’t you....”
“I’ve followed him, monsieur, and I can assure you that I haven’t
wasted my time.”
“Out with it! Tell me what you know. The whole thing is awful.”
“Yes, monsieur, awful.”
“I shall kill him.”
“Of course, that would be the best thing to do, for there’s no question
that he isn’t chasing you.”—The worthy Surdon dared not make any
allusion to “madame”—“This Patrick assumed that you would be passing
through Venice. He’s been expecting you here for the last three weeks.
And since you came here he has pretty well lost his head.”
“Oh, come, he has done that before, Surdon. But tell me everything you
know down to the least detail.”
“Well, it’s like this. I was brushing your clothes this morning when I
happened to put my nose out of a window, and caught sight of a man in
a gondola staring with such persistence at our windows that I stopped
my work. He did not see me. To come to the point—his eyes were fixed on
madame’s room.”
“Was madame out?” I inquired breathlessly.
“No, monsieur, she was getting ready to go out, and you were waiting
for her in the hall. Just then I recognized Patrick, and I continued to
watch his game.”
“Do you know if madame saw him?”
“I don’t know. I can’t be positive. The gondola stopped for a moment,
then having changed its course turned down towards the lagoon. I
rushed out of the hotel just as you were leaving it with madame, and
had the luck to reach the bend of the Riva degli Schiavoni as Patrick’s
gondola rounded the point. I took a gondola and followed him. My
intention was to find out where he was staying. For hours he dragged
me about to impossible and apparently uninteresting places. Finally he
landed at the Grand Hotel where I was told that he had taken a room
with the windows on the ground floor—I mean on a level with the water
of the Grand Canal opposite Santa Maria della Salute.”—At the mention
of this church I gave another start.—“The servant who waits upon him
had no objection to give me certain particulars which, for that matter,
show Patrick as the laughing-stock of the staff at the Grand Hotel....
“It seems, monsieur, that during the last four days he has regularly
shut himself up in his room between five and seven o’clock after
ordering a light meal for two persons to be served on a small round
table.”
“A meal for two persons between five and seven o’clock!” I exclaimed,
feeling a shiver pass through me from head to foot.
“Just so, monsieur. The servant has to lay two places, and the beauty
of it is that no one has ever seen our man enter his room with another
person, while he is always seen to come out alone. And yet this
servant hasn’t the least doubt that two persons sit down to this small
round table and partake of the meal which has been served. It’s a
mystery which amuses every one, though Patrick doesn’t appear to be
aware of it, for he never speaks to a soul. He is generally looked
upon as eccentric and even slightly mad. Most sensible people are of
opinion that he is playing a part with himself and living upon past
recollections.... Good Lord, how pale you are! Perhaps I made a mistake
to tell you all this. It would have been better to keep it from you
that he was here.”
“No, Surdon, you were quite right. You are a sharp and faithful
servant. But, tell me, when did you leave the Grand Hotel?”
“Just now, monsieur.”
“What about Patrick?”
“I left him shut up in his room as usual at this time.”
I looked at my watch which shook in my hand.
“That’s true,” I said. “This is the hour for his meal. Wait for me in
this gondola, Surdon. I shall be back soon.”
I hastened to the hotel in a state of agitation which bordered on
frenzy. I was unnerved, be it understood, less by the evidence which
Surdon brought me of Patrick’s renewed efforts to secure control of
Cordélia’s O, than by the apparent willingness with which my beloved
consented to allow her polygon to be influenced by this most dangerous
of tempters. The mere thought of it made me shake with fever, but could
I doubt the truth when I recalled what had passed that very day between
Cordélia and me? She had spoken in the most natural terms of her visit
to the church of Santa Maria della Salute, and then perceiving, from my
look of amazement, that her polygon had chattered too freely, she at
once enjoined it to be silent, blushing to the roots of her hair.
Not long before when she observed something abnormal passing between
us, she threw her arms round my neck and cried: “Save me, Hector, save
me!” but now she seemed to display only a certain embarrassment for
having allowed the secret of a psychic condition to be discovered which
ought to have been kept from me; the secret of another existence which
she considered perhaps that I was unworthy to share, and which, in any
case, no longer gave her a fright seeing that her O, after reflection,
made no such request as: “Take me away!”
Was it not another who now took her away wherever he wished, if not
with her complete assent—for in my delirium I strove to be just—at
least with very little opposition from her? The pity of it! No, she
made very little resistance, or else she would have warned me and cried
aloud: “He has come back, the thief—the man who stole my love!”
Her O and her polygon were now in league to conceal this ignominy from
me. For after all, the nervous fluid, to use Dr. Thurel’s words, is
not strongly united to the body in certain subjects—and obviously
Cordélia was among these—yet it is impossible to lure it far from
its visible focus, the body, without producing a certain amount of
suffering which in Cordélia’s case formerly caused her to resist, while
now she accepted it. Cordélia was failing me, for she was now accepting
her suffering. It was a dreadful thought, a thought beyond all bearing.
These tragic considerations did not enter my mind, as may be imagined,
only as the result of inferences which I drew from the scene with
Cordélia that morning, but from my memory of various other little
scenes of this kind which had impressed me less, because they were of
less importance, but which now acquired their full significance, and
that, too, from the first hour of our arrival in Venice.
Still, it was the terrible thought that during the last few days she