CHAPTER X

THE SECOND NIGHT

I have taken particular care to trace in detail the various stages of this extraordinary story in order that the reader who would fain judge us, notwithstanding the jury’s verdict, may know as much about the facts as I do, and be in a position to fix the responsibility definitely as between me and the man who was the greatest thief that ever lived. If the reader will follow me step by step he will understand me, and it will be open to any candid person of average intelligence to measure the extent of the calamity which befell me.

I now come to the second night, which will throw a light upon the events which occurred at Vascoeuil and those which were to follow; a light which others may regard as supernatural, but which I am compelled, unfortunately, to proclaim as entirely natural after what I know and saw with my own eyes.

At least that is what I maintain to-day, but considering that I was sailing on an unknown sea, it will be realized how far I had to go before I recognized the truth.

Cordélia wished to wind up the day, as on the previous evening, by a little homely supper in her boudoir, and, to be sure, I should have been the last person to think of raising any objection. Anything that could bring me closer to her gave me the constantly renewed hope that I might succeed in driving away, once for all, the delusions which kept us apart. I use the word delusions advisedly, because that is how I regarded the matter on that second evening when I sat down beside her at dinner.

And how could it have been otherwise? How could I fail to cling to this word when I take into consideration the abyss over which my poor distracted mind hung suspended for a moment in the course of this startling day. Just think. Remember the altogether unforeseen attitude of a Cordélia filled with gratitude and affection. Delusions! Delusions! I appealed to you, O delusions, in defense of her, and, as the lesser of my enemies, to her unhealthy imagination, at once ardent and poetic—for the whole thing was but the aberration of a highly sensitive mind. I tried to convince myself of it.

And thus I no longer wished to remember anything but Dr. Thurel’s reassuring words: “I have rid her mind of any thought of the other person. She is cured.”

Upon my word, when I think of her as I beheld her on that second evening seated at our little domestic fête, helping me as though I were a spoiled child, anticipating my every wish, stirring the fire lest I should catch cold, assuming the superior and tyrannical graces of a nurse which caused us to burst out laughing, I cannot but cry: “There she was as God made her, and as He gave her to me—my dear, dear, dear Cordélia!”

Before she met the thief, she was sweet and fresh and girlish and perfectly natural, slightly inclined to be mischievous and self-willed, but born to make a husband happy who would have made her happy. And, take it from me, it is not necessary to be clever or brilliant to make a woman happy. It is a question of being an ordinarily decent man; at least I still think so, and I have yet to meet the person who can prove the contrary. I know what I mean. One must also be in love with her. Who ever loved her more than I did? And did she love any one more than she loved me? Did she love the thief? Lord above, let those persons who know everything tell me if the dove which is transfixed in its flight loves the hawk whom it encounters on its way from the nest....

But let us return to our little supper.

I forget on what subject Cordélia was good-humoredly making fun of me. I have always possessed an equable temper. I can allow myself to be teased without taking offense, just as a pet dog will permit his ears to be pulled by those to whom he is attached. Thus Cordélia could throw herself into the game to her heart’s content.

But suddenly I sprang to my feet with a look of ferocity on my face, a very excellent look of ferocity, and walked up to her, grinding my teeth, as if I had sworn to gobble her up alive. She started to run round the table, laughing boisterously. I for my part, while I continued to give chase, strove to keep my countenance and to assume a more ferocious air than ever. At length she pretended to be frightened as I was pretending to be in a rage; and when I mention that in our race round the room the light wrap which she wore rose higher, caught on to a piece of furniture and even became torn, revealing a glimpse of some new loveliness, it will be gathered that the game had become an extremely attractive one; so much so that I thought the best thing I could do was to finish it by capturing the fugitive and holding her in my arms.

She had taken refuge in a recess of the window, and it was there that I dived after her. I caught her, but straightway I was impressed by the fact that she had stopped laughing. I lowered my eyes to her face, but it was no longer the face of a young girl. She gazed at me with a look of grave distress yet, I must say, full of love. I felt her young heart beat against mine. I held her closer, calling her the most endearing names.

“Oh dearest,” she breathed. “Have you seen the park? Look at the park. How beautiful it is!”

She was not now looking at me. Her eyes were turned to the park which gleamed ghost-like in the moonlight. The night was a dream of brightness and opalescent light. The tall trees whose leaves had already fallen, stood erect like huge silver chandeliers, their wondrous shadows lengthened, as though by the brush of an artist, on the luminous grassy slopes and gravel paths. In the distance the unseen mystery of the park into which I had never set foot, stirred under the motionless, effulgent, impassive moon.

I tried to turn Cordélia’s eyes away from the ill-omened sight, and bring her back to our own interests. She thrust me aside with her little hands and returned to the window, pressing her forehead against the pane. I may be asked: “Why did you not compel her to leave the window and the perilous spectacle of the park in the moonlight?” Let those who are unable to understand that more power sometimes lies in a young girl’s little finger than in an elephant’s foot, cease to read me!

This is the answer that I have to make:

Men of science, or those who call themselves men of science, have not yet, perhaps, given a name to this “psychic” force, but if they were to take the trouble to study and weigh its power mathematically, and dignify it with a Latin or Greek name, there would be less astonishment, perhaps, that the aura of a marriageable girl yielded to the suggestion of a sham-necromancer than to realize that a mass of flesh and blood weighing about thirteen stone, for that is 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.