The new terror
approximately my figure, could offer no more resistance to the little
hand of the maid in question than could the sigh of a new-born babe.
Indeed, here we have in all its wonder the phenomenon of levitation.
And from what I saw, it is the mind only that has any weight!
* * * * *
I was perhaps lacking in mind that evening. It does not become any
one to reproach me. In life one must do the best one can. And I was
powerless against Cordélia’s determination to remain at the window.
It was then that she visibly lived over again her experiences of the
night before, and as I listened to her, I began to suffer infinite
pain. It will at once be seen why—at least I hope so.
Her hand had furtively sought mine and she drew me beside her in the
shining moonlight. Her head was resting on my shoulder and, seen from
below, we must have borne some resemblance to those saints linked
together on stained-glass windows which adorn and illumine the chancel
of a church. I set down this thought because it occurred to me at
the time, which shows that in my mind’s eye I realized that we were
somewhat absurd, but, through that very fact, it indicates also that I
was absolutely bereft of any power of resistance.
Poor dear Cordélia was able to do anything, anything she pleased with
me!
“Shall we take a stroll in the park as we did yesterday, dearest?”
“Come, Cordélia, I say....”
“Let’s take this path,”—we did not stir from the window—“Let’s go along
by the poplars.”
Here she uttered some curious sentences about the song of the poplars
when the wind whispers among the branches.
“Let’s go by the river side,”—more strange sentences in the form of
stanzas about the floating heart of the water lily and the tiny cradles
of the fairies sailing over the stream. “This is the path which will
lead us to the marriage-chamber.”
“What marriage-chamber?” I could not help asking.
“You know as well as I do, dearest. The chamber which has been prepared
for us, all in gold.”
And thereupon she gave me a description of the marriage-chamber all in
gold. I cannot recount the exact words which Cordélia used in speaking
of this chamber. From that moment onward, indeed, her language seemed
to lose sight of earth and even mundane things, to become a kind of
music befitting the understanding of angels or poets who are never
unduly troubled to discover the significance of unconventional words.
However that might be with the fanciful melody which flowed from my
beloved’s lips, my natural common sense restored the dream-palace in
which, in Cordélia’s imagination, I had been wandering for some time to
its proper proportions. I gathered that this chamber all in gold, was
neither more nor less than a small glade in the wood, shaped like an
arbor, sheltered by lovely trees on whose branches some foliage still
lingered while beneath them, on the earth, lay a rich, dense carpet of
leaves, yellowed by autumn.
The beginning of my cruel experience on this occasion was that
these flights of fancy, which accompanied our promenade in the
golden chamber, were intoned in English. Cordélia and I knew English
perfectly, but we did not speak it when we were together. My pained
surprise reached its culminating point when Cordélia, with the utmost
seriousness, asked me to recite as, it would appear, I had recited in
the golden chamber the night before, a few lines from “Lara” and “The
Corsair.” I must have opened my eyes in dumb amazement, for Cordélia
became more and more importunate:
“Come, come, dearest, don’t wait to be pressed. Don’t waste time. It’s
so fine, so pathetic, so splendid. And then you can wind up with
Childe Harold’s farewell. You know the lines:
Adieu, adieu! my native shore
Fades o’er the waters blue:
* * * * *
Come hither, hither, my little page:
* * * * *
My Native Land—Good Night!
“And while you are reciting I will place my head on your shoulder, as I
did yesterday, so as to hear your delightful voice.”
While she was speaking she laid her head on my shoulder, but I raised
it in my trembling hands and forced her to look into my eyes which
doubtless were disturbing to see, for she suddenly grew restless.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“A very simple matter, Cordélia. I have never known by heart a line of
Byron or any other poet, and I have never read ‘Lara,’ ‘The Corsair,’
or ‘Childe Harold.’”
“What do you say?”
“I say that it was not I who was with you in the golden chamber.”
“Be quiet, you poor dear, be quiet.”
“I say that it was not on my shoulder that you laid your head.”
I came to a stop. Her appearance filled me with dismay. Her eyes were
staring at me with a strange light as if she saw me for the first time.
She gasped a dull moan of despair, and a cry escaped her lips like the
cry of a soul at the point of death striving to cleave to earth:
“Save me, Hector, save me!”
She uttered that cry and uttered it to me proving that she belonged to
me, to me alone, and had never belonged to any one but me. The thief
might say what he liked, he was but a thief. It was all very well to
assume an arrogant attitude at the Assize Court; and the world was able
to grasp his meaning when he said that her heart belonged to him. He
had burgled it. The shame of it!
I replied to Cordélia’s poignant cry of “Save me, Hector, save me!”
with a transport of supreme delight. Yes, my love would indubitably
rescue her from those frightful delusions. It would be no difficult
task for my arms to wrench her this time from the accursed window. She
weighed but a feather in my grasp. Her head, with its hair in disarray,
lay adorably on my shoulder. The look of mingled fear and love depicted
on her face immensely stimulated my strength. I really believed that I
was at length able to dominate this frail and quivering anguish, and I
pressed my lips to hers.
And straightway it seemed as if I had killed her, and was kissing a
dead woman ... I held in my arms, as on the night before, a marble
statue.
CHAPTER XI
THE GOLDEN CHAMBER
I did not now summon any assistance. I was seized with a cold grim fury
of despair which called for no witnesses. I carried Cordélia into the
next room and laid her on the bed, and gazed at her in impotent rage.
I called to mind every word that Dr. Thurel had said in describing the
condition of bodily immobility in which I now beheld her, and I had not
a doubt from what I heard from Cordélia’s own lips that her mind, which
a little before had given animation to that now lifeless form, had left
it for some other place.
What other place? Was it hard to guess? Was she not at the very moment
when she escaped from me making at full flight for the bridal-chamber
of which I knew nothing?—the bridal-chamber to which, it seemed, an
influence that was independent of her will and mine lured her with a
force which I had vainly striven to shatter with a kiss?
Or rather did it not seem that I had but to press Cordélia’s lips with
my own to cause a repetition of the catastrophe of the night before?
I remembered then, in the growing irritation of my mind, Dr. Thurel’s
amazing words: “If you kiss her, kiss her as a brother.” What did that
mean? I shook with horror and the most terrible resentment. Was I to
understand that every time my lips united with Cordélia’s I should
stand in fear of this awful phenomenon and that she would never be
anything to me but a wife of stone?
At the thought that so infernal a suggestion was within the bounds of
possibility, a tremendous wrath made the blood surge in my veins, and I
felt capable of murdering the man who was responsible—the villain who
was making me suffer agonies to say nothing of the hideous ridicule
which would attach to so grotesque a marital position as mine. I was
perfectly aware of that fact also, and I did not fail to derive from it
a capacity for revenge which in the end swept me off my feet.
In any case I could not consent to remain any longer an impassive and
inactive spectator of a scene which offered me but the image of an
inert body; and I made my way in haste towards the spot where I knew
that Cordélia’s mind was wandering in thought with the mind of another
person.
A few minutes later in the dead silence, under the hostile moon which
looked down, perhaps, upon things invisible to my own eyes, I passed
along the line of tall trees which screened the edge of the park into
which I had never entered.
As soon as I had traversed this screen I found myself in a wood so
densely entangled that I was at a loss at first which way to go; and I
began to think of Cordélia’s words when she described it; a forest full
of snares for those who did not know it and hospitable only to lovers
of woods and solitude.
I was certainly no lover of these woods, and in spite of all my
efforts, I did not succeed in ploughing my way through it, and I made
scarcely any progress. The branches laid hold of me on every side and
held me back with their thousand small arms, or transfixed me, by
stealth, with their thorns. The bridal-chamber which lay within its
recesses was well guarded!
Hardly knowing what she did, however, Cordélia had sufficiently
enlightened me. Nevertheless I knew that before she betook herself, in
mind, to the place, she must have visited it more than once in body,
or else, as I imagined like a simpleton, she would not have described
it to me so fully. That was another opinion which I have since been
constrained to abandon.
And yet how did she get through? I suddenly remembered that the
bridal-chamber stood beside the river. Cordélia’s actual words were:
“In the bridal-chamber there is the great mirror of the river set in a
frame of gold and the rays of the moon make the surface of the water
like a silver sheet. You see yourself in it from head to foot. Owing to
this you are never alone. When you think that you are one, you are two,
and when you think that you are two, you are four. You have to keep
your eyes open!”
“If I follow the river’s bank,” I said to myself, “I shall be certain
to reach the bridal-chamber,” and I made for this bank through the
avenue of poplars.
At first I congratulated myself on my idea, and my path for some way
was properly marked out. My pace, however, began to slacken when I
left the poplars behind me; and soon I had considerable obstacles to
surmount in order to follow the stream. Every trace of a path had
disappeared, and I was forced to hold on to the willows to prevent
myself from falling into the water.
The Andelle, at Vascoeuil, is not a very imposing river. It cannot be
used for towing, and its banks are visited only by an occasional angler
who wishes to savor the delights of solitude among the reeds.
Such as it was, it flowed that night with so much quiet grace between
its pleasant banks, reflecting so coquettishly its clumps of reeds and
rushes, like little silvery chignons, in the midst of this wild nature
where all was beauty and delight—the moon smiled strangely at me from
the river—that despite the mortal horror which stirred me, I was
impressed by its charm, and I interrupted my course, for a moment, to
exclaim from my heart “I understand you, O Cordélia!”
What was it that I understood? In truth, was I about to become affected
by it? Was this park, under the moon, so amazing a sight that my mind
would remain for ever impressed, preferring this wild retreat for my
honeymoon, to the luxurious modern nest which I had built at so great a
cost?
Still, let us pull ourselves together.
Besides, where was the bridal-chamber? Suddenly I caught sight of it