CHAPTER III
VASCOEUIL AND HENNEQUEVILLE
It was not that I entertained the slightest doubt of Cordélia’s love, but I fancied that my uncle was no longer favorable to our union, and had contrived the journey in order that I might understand for myself a position which he would have found hard to explain by word of mouth.
“Have they gone away for any length of time?” I inquired in a trembling voice.
Old Surdon, the man-servant, who was never a gossip, gave me to understand by a gesture that he knew nothing.
“Where have they gone?”
Another gesture in like manner to the first completed my discomfiture. Surdon, however, without undue haste drew a letter from the inside pocket of his coat.
I snatched it from his hand, opened it, and read:
“+My dear Nephew+,
“We find ourselves suddenly compelled to leave for abroad. I have to deal with a matter which, as you may readily imagine, is of the utmost importance. We shall not remain away longer than we can help, but I scarcely think that we shall be able to return for a couple of months. We shall frequently write to you through an indirect channel, because I am anxious that you alone should know where we are. Be careful to keep the secret of our whereabouts to yourself. Don’t worry about anything. Cordélia still loves you; and you will be married before the end of the year. Look forward to seeing us at Vascoeuil where I am sending my servants. Surdon will be your servant.”
While this letter and the remark, “You will be married before the end of the year,” reassured me as to my uncle’s purpose, it greatly perplexed me as to Cordélia. “Cordélia still loves you.” What was the necessity to add those words? Moreover, the letter filled me with a vague misgiving for a number of reasons. What was the meaning of this mysterious journey, and why should I receive tidings from him through an indirect source? Most of all, why should I be packed off to Vascoeuil?
My uncle and Cordélia were in the habit of spending the summer at Hennequeville, where they owned “Clos Normand,” a splendid estate on the main road to Honfleur. It was a huge, entirely new structure, by which I mean that it was built some fifteen years before, and possessed the most important thing in the world—modern comfort. Vascoeuil, on the other hand, which we used to visit once during the year, at the beginning of the hunting season, was a large country house not devoid of a certain style and charm but antiquated and lacking in well-nigh everything that makes life easy.
This manor house had always produced on me a peculiar impression, with its high, colorless walls, its tower at one of the extremities casting its reflection in the chill waters of the river, its great neglected courtyard, its dilapidated out-houses, and its ill-kept grounds whose moss-covered paths gave forth an odor of decay.
The rooms in the house with their paintings from which the freshness had departed, and the faded mirrors, seemed to be haunted by shades which our annual visit disturbed. I have never been a believer of ghosts, but Vascoeuil invariably gave me an uncanny feeling.
Strange to say, Cordélia rather liked the place and found “poetry” in it. When I began to analyze my feelings, the apprehension which Vascoeuil caused me seemed to be explained by the fact that I was a man of sound health and well-balanced mind, and everything round me which failed to correspond with these solid realities was unendurable. Vascoeuil was not a “healthy” place. That was enough to make me take a dislike to it.
My dislike was still further increased when I found myself there with old Surdon and Mathilde, his wife, but without Cordélia.
I have mentioned that Surdon was never a gossip, but Mathilde was in the habit of giving free play to her tongue. She had known us from our infancy and was very fond of us; and for years had spoken with delight of our future marriage. I had no sooner arrived than, taking her on one side, I asked her without beating about the bush to tell me the meaning of the whole thing.
She heaved a sigh and turned on her heel. I ran after her and caught her by the skirt. She began to cry:
“I swear, monsieur, that it’s nothing,” she said, wiping her eyes. “It was the master’s idea to live here. He did not ask our advice you may be sure.”
“Well, if it pleases him, let him come here instead of running about all over Europe and taking Cordélia away from me. As for myself, I shall clear out.”
“Where to?”
“Hennequeville.”
As soon as I uttered the word Mathilde betrayed the utmost excitement.
“No, no. Your uncle wouldn’t be pleased if he heard you were at Hennequeville. He has taken it into his head that you mustn’t go there.”
Mathilde was a native of Darnetal in the Rouen district. That meant that she was artful and obstinate. I saw that I should get nothing out of her. But I made up my mind to go to Hennequeville. I reached the place next day. It was about six o’clock in the evening when I got there.
Heavens! how pleased I was to see the country and how delightful the grounds were! In truth, with the glossy and luxuriant verdure of the meadows, and the sweet-scented hedgerows in full bloom, there was nothing ghostly about Hennequeville. And yet when, at the turn of the road, I came in sight of the empty house, my heart was filled with anguish. Never before had it greeted me with such a vacant look. Its shuttered windows and locked doors made a strange impression on me.
How remote it all seemed from Cordélia’s laughter and kisses and the welcome I used to receive when formerly I crossed the beloved threshold. There was no echo of the olden time. The house no longer knew me. I lay my head heavily on the garden gate and thus I remained for I know not how long, a prey to the gloomiest dejection.
Darkness had fallen by now, and when I looked up I was not a little surprised to perceive a few steps away from me a dark form which I might have taken for my own shadow, its posture so exactly resembled my own. The shadow also heaved a sigh. I was struck dumb with fear.
But my amazement did but increase when I heard this shadow give utterance aloud to feelings which I expressed to myself in a whisper. In words whose exact form I am unable to set down, but which admirably conveyed my thoughts, the dark form declared that it was impossible for a mind endowed with any sensibility to pass this beautiful domain without stopping long enough at least to regret that all that life of elegance and enjoyment for which it had been built, seemed to have departed from it forever.
Whereupon somewhat taken aback I made answer, lying to myself,—for I say again that my prevision was the same as the shadow’s—that there was no reason why this house which was closed for the time being, should not be re-opened some day and be filled once more with joyous life and activity. But the shadow sighed once more, shook its head, uttered the one word “Never!” which sent a shudder through me, and gliding behind the wall vanished from sight.
I left the place more cast down than when I arrived. My curious meeting with a stranger who seemed to be stirred by an emotion singularly akin to my own, unnerved me to a degree which at first I failed to realize; but as I was descending the hill which led me back to the Tongues valley, I thought I recognized in front of me the dark form of the man whose voice I had heard near me, and I started to run in order to overtake him.
I came up with him outside an inn from whose partly-opened door a faint glimmer of light could be seen. It was sufficient, however, to enable me to perceive some of his features, for he turned round as I drew near. Apart from a certain handsomeness, I was at once struck with his eyes, or rather their brightness. They seemed to burn in the darkness.
Only the eyes of certain albinos, or the eyes of cats who are able to distinguish things in the dark, unseen by human eyes, have produced a similar effect on me. The man emerged from the light and I saw his burning eyes as he stood in the road.
I would have liked to speak to him but my courage failed me.
I remained standing there as though dazed while he walked away. The fresh breeze from the sea fortunately swept my brow. Some one spoke to me. It was the innkeeper. I made my way into the inn and asked him if he knew the man who had just passed his door. He told me that he was a celebrated English painter, and people in the country round said of him that he was “a bit touched.”