The new terror
“Oh, can’t you speak.... Besides he is the first artist to paint the
‘aura.’”
“Just so.”
“What do you mean, ‘Just so’? Do you know what the ‘aura’ is?”
“No.”
“Then why did you say ‘Just so’? I will tell you what the ‘aura’ is:
it is the cloud of light which emanates from each individual and is
discernible by the trained consciousness.”
“Indeed! So the consciousness must be trained?”
Cordélia released herself from my arm which was round her waist, and
gave me a stern look:
“Don’t, my dear Hector, adopt an attitude of making game of what you
don’t understand. You would do better to think of all the matter round
us which radiates light. Why should not the human body shed a radiance?
It is not only a trained consciousness which can perceive these
light-rays, but they are visible to the open eyes of certain persons,
I can tell you. Look at this portrait! Besides, the negative of a
photograph can develop these light-rays for us even far from the body
whence they emanate, and sometimes they retain their actual shape. That
is the aura.”
“Really the negative of a photograph?”
“You are the only person to be ignorant of it.”
“I am very sorry.”
“This fluid substance,” she went on with intense seriousness,
“represents our perceptions and something more than our perceptions,
our intellectual life, which emanates from us and precedes us and is
conscious of things long before our body is. It is this force which,
when I am in the street, makes me think of a person whom I shall meet
in another five minutes, because my aura is conscious of him before
he is discernible by my physical vision. Do you follow me? Do you
understand me?”
“Yes,” I acquiesced, absolutely terrified by the turn which the
conversation had taken, “I am beginning to understand.”
“Well, it is none too soon! If you only knew how interesting in reality
the whole thing is. It is indeed the new thought—the only one that will
matter in a few years’ time. And this aura—your perceptions and my
perceptions—is a force which can operate from a distance; and be made
to operate from a distance; that is a well-known phenomenon. In this
particular aspect it is called suggestion; and suggestion is a reality
which is as indisputable as a mathematical formula—as two and two make
four, for instance. By means of suggestion, auras have been seen at an
incredible distance from the body, if not separated from it altogether,
for that would involve death at least ... almost to forget the body.”
And after uttering these last words in tones of rapt excitement which
utterly overwhelmed me, she became once more plunged in thought.
What was she thinking about? What was she thinking about?
I sank into a chair and as I gazed at her a sense of hopelessness came
over me. I saw her in profile as she stood erect facing the infernal
picture. The light wrap which covered her shoulders had slipped off,
and I beheld her bare young throat, the adorable outline of her arm
as it hung with infinite grace by her side. My feeling of dejection
gradually gave way to an admiration which longed to find expression.
I drew myself up cautiously and stole towards her like a thief; and I
closed my arms round her to seize her as though I already feared lest
my dear beauteous treasure should be torn away from me.
Taken aback, a slight cry escaped her and she turned round with a
peculiar look in her eyes which I had never beheld in them before, and
stared at me as if she no longer knew me.
“Cordélia, I am your husband and I adore you,” I whispered.
And I pressed my lips to hers, but the terror of it! I met lips which
were as cold as stone, and I had no sooner placed a kiss upon them than
she became a statue in my arms. I was holding to my heart an inanimate
form; a form not devoid of life, but from which life had taken wing
elsewhere.
Cordélia had fallen on my shoulders in a cataleptic-like sleep. I
called to her. I used the most endearing words. I implored her to speak
to me. She did not hear me. So far from returning my kisses she was
unconscious of them.
“Cordélia! Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!” I cried. “Where are you? Where
are you?”
At last, after laying her on the sofa in her deadly immobility, I began
to shout and summon assistance like a madman.
CHAPTER VII
AFTER THE WEDDING
Mathilde and Surdon came hurrying into the room and were not less
terrified than I was to discover Cordélia in this statue-like
condition. The only thing which we could be certain about was that she
was not dead. I cannot remember all that we attempted, Mathilde and
I, to “bring her back to her senses,” while Surdon went to fetch the
nearest doctor.
We carried Cordélia in her state of insensibility on to the balcony. We
brought her back again. We tried the effects of cold and heat in turn.
We placed hot bricks to her feet and cold compresses to her forehead.
What alarmed us more than anything else was the complete rigidity in
which she lay in our arms, and nothing that we could do succeeded in
relaxing the tension.
I employed a phrase just now with the full meaning of which I
was unacquainted. I said that Cordélia fell on my shoulder in a
cataleptic-like sleep. That was true, but I more or less learned for
the first time the meaning of catalepsy from the village doctor whom
Surdon brought back.
And even then I failed to grasp the significance of what he was saying
except that Cordélia was suffering from a nervous malady which had
reached the critical point, and must have been brought about by great
mental and physical strain and the unwonted excitement of a wedding
day. He did not tell us anything new from this point of view, for it
was in this sense that we regarded her illness. To what other cause
could we, in our ignorance, attribute it save to excitement and fatigue?
Unfortunately this blockhead of a doctor proved his inability to awaken
Cordélia. After blowing on her eyes without effect he seemed greatly
perplexed. He knew more about it than we did, perhaps, but he was as
powerless as we were. To our stormings and complaints he could but
reply: “She will wake up of her own accord just as she fell asleep.”
And he counseled me to have patience.
Have patience!... He was the limit!... I asked him in a voice strained
with anxiety, how long this torpor could last. His only answer was to
shake his head. He exasperated me.
“But, look here, will it last one hour—two hours?”
“One can never tell.... One can never tell.”
“Still it can’t go on for a couple of days, I suppose?” I cried,
incensed.
“Well, there have been such cases, but generally speaking....”
I could have struck him. And yet he was a worthy man who strove to
comfort me, to persuade me that the case was not very serious, to lead
me to hope that we were confronted with a phenomenon which, if due
precautions were taken, might not recur, and, moreover, would yield to
treatment. And at the finish he recommended me to consult a specialist
in nervous diseases. Having said so much, he gave me the slip.
I at once sent Surdon in the car to Rouen, whence he was to bring back
Dr. Thurel, celebrated in the district for certain unusual cures which
bordered on the miraculous.
I turned Mathilde out of the room, for since the doctor’s remedies
and her own nostrums were of no avail, she imagined that we were the
victims of the devil, and she wearied me with her lamentations and
exorcisms. I had the utmost difficulty in preventing her from going for
the priest. What a honeymoon!
Left alone before the sofa on which Cordélia’s statue-like form lay, I
felt less affected by the pitiable spectacle of my beloved than by a
sort of almost childish frenzy against the fate which had played this
trick upon me. Heaven knows I deserved to be pitied! To have waited
so long for this day and to pass it with a woman who had been turned
to stone! By what fatality had Cordélia fallen asleep at the very
moment when she was in my arms? It was indeed, to use my uncle’s words,
“utterly silly.”
In my intense selfishness, knowing now that Cordélia’s life was in no
danger, I mourned rather for myself than for her. I was, so I thought,
the victim.... Thus many men when they are balked of something on which
they have set their hearts, or when the object of their desire escapes
them, act like brutes. I am ashamed when I think of myself cursing
Heaven in this room in which Cordélia and I were “at last alone.” I
am bound to say, however, in my own favor, that by degrees this blind
resentment which arose in me against things in general, gave way to a
feeling of great compassion and sorrow for the beloved being who still
slept.
As the hours slipped away I was oppressed by an ever-increasing
anguish. Now I kept watch over Cordélia as though she were dead,
and I bowed in wonder before this great mystery, which was not less
terrifying than the mystery of death itself. Poor, poor, poor Cordélia!
CHAPTER VIII
DR. THUREL
The day was beginning to dawn when Surdon returned with Dr. Thurel.
He had to seek the famous doctor at an official function. Not that he
had, however, to drag him away by main force. The story which he told,
straightway induced the doctor to leave, and he did not even take the
trouble to return to his house and change his clothes.
I shall always remember his arrival in the wan light of day with his
white shirt-front, his long, pallid face, his colorless eyes whose
expression of deep thought it was impossible to forget when once you
had encountered it.
From that day the image of Dr. Thurel has lingered in my memory. He
brought with him so much that was new to me as I stood struggling on
the threshold of this mysterious drama, and shed so much light on it.
True, I was not at first dazzled, but I was at once “stirred” by the
depths of my ignorance.
While the facts themselves had merely aroused my wrath without making
any impression on my mind, he was able in a few words to reveal a new
world to me. He was a man who was constantly saying the most astounding
things and yet they were always impregnated with good sense. One felt
compelled to understand the meaning and to believe in him unless one
wished to be taken for a fool.
He gazed at Cordélia for some time, used the stethoscope, drew himself
up and said:
“This is not exactly a case of catalepsy. It is what is called hypnotic
sleep with muscular rigidity. Have no fear. We shall get the better of
it.”
Thereupon he bent over her, blew on her eyes and made some curious
gestures, but obtained no greater success than his country colleague.
Nevertheless after each futile experiment he seemed quite satisfied.
“That must be it. That must be it. Of course,” he muttered.
Strange to say, whatever he did, and even the fact that his efforts
were of no avail inspired me with perfect confidence. I felt sure
that, thanks to him, we should soon be out of our misery.
He requested me to step into the boudoir and questioned me at great
length. He told me that, on the way, he had drawn out the servant, and
the man had acquainted him of his mistress’s peculiar mental condition
a few months before our marriage. He begged me to confide everything
to him without reserve, and regard him not only as a doctor, but as a
father confessor.
Then I recounted the story of the English painter and the portrait and
the various incidents relating to it, and how Cordélia had complained
of being “as cold as the portrait.”
He asked to be allowed to see the canvas, and after examining it,
observed:
“All the trouble comes from this picture. There is no doubt about that.
Your wife, monsieur, is under the influence of this man Patrick, but we