The new terror
had asked me to let her take a short rest before dressing for dinner,
that made me mount the stairs four at a time, for the request, perhaps,
concealed a subterfuge intended to keep me away during the great
secret of the polygonal promenade.
Everything that Surdon had told me about Patrick’s curious behavior at
the Grand Hotel at that hour, merely strengthened the infernal idea
which led to my accusing Cordélia of a veritable crime, the crime of
premeditation, whereas it may have been simply a coincidence; but
jealousy invariably goes to extremes and never feels satisfied unless
it has multiplied its torments by some new supposition.
When out of breath I reached our rooms, however, I clung for a while to
a last hope, the hope of discovering Cordélia standing before the glass
putting the finishing touches to her evening toilet; but unfortunately
the door of her room was locked and it was in vain that I shook it with
all my strength.
“Cordélia! Cordélia!” I shouted, but there was no reply. I bent down
and looked through the keyhole, and I saw her lying at full length
on a sofa near the window in the rigid posture which had so greatly
perturbed me at Vascoeuil.
I could not restrain a yell of fury and, clenching my fists and
grinding my teeth, I ran to join Surdon in the gondola.
“As quickly as you can to the Grand Hotel,” I ordered.
The gondola took us there in a few minutes. As we drew near, Surdon
pointed to a window which was lit up on the right of the principal
entrance, for at this time of the year it grew dark early.
“There you are,” he said.
I at once propelled the gondola forward so that we hugged the foot of
the wall and became merged in its shadow. We did not make the least
sound.
When the gondola stopped under the window, I stood up and managed
without difficulty to hold on to a small cornice, resting my elbow on
the stone embrasure of the window. The latter was partly opened. I
could thus both see and hear.
My excitement had reached its height, and I shall not attempt to
describe it. Moreover, it is not difficult to conceive what passed
through my mind from that moment, and the feelings with which I was
stirred by the spectacle which I alone could understand, and from which
I alone was to suffer.
The two covers on the small round table which occupied the center of
the room were close together; the two chairs were side by side. In one
of them Patrick was seated, leaning over the other in an attitude of
sentimental tenderness, while his face, like the face of a mournful
cat, wore an expression of peace, not to say bliss, which made me long
to rush into the room and box his ears. But I restrained myself.
A chandelier which shed a soft light on persons and things stood on
the table. Why do I say “persons”? I observed only Patrick, and as to
Cordélia, I failed to perceive her in spite of my concentrated will
and strained attention. I would have given, at that moment, everything
that I possessed to be able to see with the same facility as Patrick,
who was assuredly caressing the exquisite outlines of Cordélia’s astral
figure.
O those eyes like the eyes of a mournful cat, calm and content, while
I was seething with excitement at the window!
How was it that I had the power to control my impulse?... I wanted to
know more.... And now I listened, for as he stretched out his hand to
take an apple from the fruit-dish and place it on Cordélia’s plate, he
began to speak:
“A union of minds begets sympathy, and from this sympathy is born real
love, compared with which the other is but the blind instrument of
nature in the fulfilment of its essential functions.”
I shall remember that sentence for the rest of my life.
“The bond which unites us, O Cordélia”—he used the words “O Cordélia”
and I felt as if my heart were being pierced with a sword—“the bond
which unites us recognizes no impediment; nothing can restrain it,
nothing can shatter it; it can penetrate walls, traverse space, set
time at defiance. It partakes of the divine essence,” and so on and so
forth.
I could not repeat everything that he said in this strain while peeling
a pear which he shared with her—I mean the half of which he laid on
the plate beside his own.
I must confess that his gestures perplexed me more than his
speechifying. To me it was unendurable that he should lean over the
next chair, and I experienced an uncanny feeling as I saw him lift a
glass of wine to his lips which he had previously placed in space on
his right on a level with a mouth, which had, perhaps also drunk from
it.
“The wretches are drinking out of the same glass,” I muttered between
my teeth. “Don’t mind me!”
I was in such “good training” by the psychic phenomena of which I
had been the victim since my wedding-day, and also by the scientific
explanations to which I had listened, and by that which I still saw,
that nothing could surprise me, and the impossibility for an astral
body to swallow the material substance of a meal did not occur to me
at first. It was not until I had seen for myself that the wine was
entirely drunk by Patrick, and the food on Cordélia’s plate conveyed
in the end to his plate, that I gave up this absurdly fantastic idea,
which shows once more that the mind deflected from its accustomed
groove easily loses all sense of proportion, and is ready to open the
door to every form of self-deception; and my delusion at that cruel
moment when others beside myself might likewise have lost their common
sense, was to believe in the reality of this fallacy—of this farce
which was being played between Patrick and Cordélia’s astral body when
under his influence. The real truth was that they provided themselves
with the vision and delight of a little dinner for two in this room,
but the person who was in fact eating it could only be Patrick.
And as he drank wine for two, which seemed to me to be tokay, he looked
less like a mournful cat, and began to talk nonsense which was not
without a touch of humor.
As it happened he spoke of the material limits which his magnetic power
encountered.
“It is a pity,” he said, “that I cannot attract your body here as I
can attract your sensibility, but that is a miracle, for all we know,
which psychic science, which is still in its infancy, may achieve
in the near future. See what has already been done in the matter of
table turning. The day when those idiots—I am referring to official
experts—cease to laugh at these phenomena, we shall not be far from
discovering the method which will enable the unseen mind to control
visible matter. On that day we shall learn something that Newton did
not know, namely, that gravitation is a variable quantity in space.[1]
[1] Einstein has since merely repeated the words used by Cordélia’s
admirer and given a mathematical formula to his theory. Author’s
Note.
“That reminds me of a rather amusing story that old Surdon used to
tell, my dear Cordélia”—how it hurt me to hear him say “My dear
Cordélia!”—“He said ‘I can make this table jump out of the window when
and as I please. One day two friends were taking their coffee on it. I
commanded the table to move. It remained motionless. When they left I
lectured the table. Do you know what it said in reply? “They are such
fools!”’”
Whereupon Patrick began to laugh, and I seemed to hear Cordélia laugh
as well. Their gaiety disturbed me more than their gloom of a few
minutes before. Suddenly they stopped laughing, and began to converse
in complete silence.
I was absolutely convinced of it.
They were talking and understanding each other. It is generally
recognized that subjects and mediums and persons who have it in them
to control the mind can converse among themselves without the aid of
sounds, by the mere power of suggestion, and communion. When Patrick
spoke from the throat it was done over and above his psychic power,
from habit, and possibly to give himself the illusion to which,
whatever he may have said, he seemed to set store, of Cordélia’s
bodily presence beside him in his room, but the use of his voice was
unnecessary. He was now speaking to her with the voice of the mind.
And there could be no doubt that Cordélia was answering him, for it
must not be assumed that I was witnessing, in this extraordinary and
loathsome seance, a monologue. Far from it. But when Patrick used his
ordinary voice there were pauses which were undoubtedly furnished with
Cordélia’s answers. Patrick’s remarks which followed were a sufficient
proof of it.
I was more or less aware of what was passing, but now they were
conversing in silence. What were they saying? Why was Patrick bending
over her with his right arm resting on the back of her chair?... I
could perceive a tremulous movement of his arm....
Suddenly he raised his head and said aloud: “It is unfair of me to
reproach heaven for not giving you to me body and soul, because your
soul is mine and I have the best part of your body.” And then he took
his glass in his left hand without moving his right hand which still
shook as it lay on the back of Cordélia’s chair, and exclaimed: “I have
tasted your lips, O Cordélia. I have tasted your life. I drink to our
longing for everlasting love!”
He had no sooner poured the glass of wine down his throat than I sprang
into the room.
It seemed that I was literally foaming with rage. He himself said so
afterwards, and it was, in truth, quite possible, for my patience which
my restless and insidious curiosity had held in check, was exhausted,
and I was overcome with fury.
I rushed up to _them_ and cried:
“I’m thirsty too. Aren’t you going to invite me?”
He stood up and thrust himself in my path as though to shield her.
“How clumsy you are! You have wounded her,” he murmured, stooping to
pick up a knife which, when I darted to the table had fallen to the
floor.
“What do you mean—‘wounded her?’” I said excitedly.
“Calm yourself, monsieur,” he returned with characteristic English
coolness. “Indeed, it’s nothing, though it might have been serious. Let
this be a lesson to you. Another time, don’t forget to knock at the
door or the window.” He spoke in a tone which set me beside myself.
“It shall never happen again,” I said hoarsely, casting a glance in the
direction of Cordélia’s chair.
“Oh, you may finish what you were saying,” he interrupted with a
gesture of encouragement. “We are alone. She is no longer here.”
“Well, monsieur, what I wish to say is simply this—there are two of us
here, which is one too many.”
“That’s my opinion, monsieur,” he acquiesced, “but it’s not I who am in
the way.”
“We shall see about that—to-morrow!”
“Just as you please.”
I had nothing more to say to him that day, and I turned towards the
window, but he opened the door for me, and we bowed to each other with
perfect propriety.
CHAPTER XVII
THE DUEL
When I read over again the preceding pages I find nothing in them to
eliminate, for they truthfully set down the intolerable situation in
which I found myself after Surdon informed me of Patrick’s presence in
Venice. In my belief I had good reason for suspecting that my beloved’s
ego had yielded without any great resistance to the whims of culpable
hypnotic suggestion. And when I conjure up the vision of the meeting in
the little room in the Grand Hotel, I see myself again as I was then,
that is to say, less distracted by rage against Patrick than tortured
by Cordélia’s apparent acquiescence.
Fool that I was! Ought I not in my ignorance of the tremendous nature
of psychic mystery, or in my mistrust of it as an entirely new
initiate, to have warned Cordélia of all that appeared suspect and
impossible to understand in it? And yet I took a bitter pleasure in my