They came from far and near; they were men and women, girls and boys, some carrying candles, some wreaths, some little crosses ofEaster palms which they would throw in the grave, or on it. The altar boys carried lighted candles, and the air was so still that the almost invisible wisps of flames rose straight upward, and were revealed by the undulous smoke that sprang from their tips as the candles wavered in the hands of the acolytes. Slowly we moved on—somehow I seemed half unconscious, and yet most sensitive to the day's supreme charm—the shrill chanting of the boys, mingled almost indistinguishably in my ears with the murmurous hum of belated cicadas, the slow rustling of footsteps before and behind me, the occasional whisper of the vacantly stirred foliage in the trees, the distant pipings of birds, and the far-off wail of some wandering or bereaved dog.
It was a dream almost, and ever and anon, like some spiritual effluence, the fragrance of the dying season from the field, the distant woods, the savory banks of the meadow-streams, invaded and enmeshed my feelings, with a strange fervor of complacency, as though I followed, not the dead body of my love, but was on my way to meet her elsewhere. So indeed it seemed to me in the little church, where all the frail magnificence our little church could summon for her funeral was so loyally displayed, and where the soft voiced father spoke with the brave and cordial accent of confidence, that Blanchette Bleu-Pistache was most surely nowin Paradise. Then I felt my own soul leaving me amid the tapestries and lights, and upward with her, hand in hand, I was hastening to fields of asphodel and unbroken choirs of the celestial, and that then I swooned sideways, and for an instant the captain held me, when the reverberant senses returned, with the rush of whirring sounds, and I was myself again.
Blanchette was buried in our church-yard, somewhat towards its western wall, where the ivy clung late in the winter to the stones, where a tall Lombardy poplar planted too against the wall, stood like some impossibly gigantic sentinel, and where afterwards indeed the flowers that I watered, in an agony of trust that Blanchette knew I kept thus alive within me the imperishable union of our hearts—spread the sweet wantonness of abundant color and perfume above her, flowers that when they died in the autumn's cold and the winter's searing frosts and snows, were replenished with others plucked from the conservatory of our home, and placed under the white cross like some herbal sacrifice.
Ah—c'est assez—I must not linger on the great sorrow, though in the inextinguishable pain that I feel at moments over its recall, a hidden selfishness as of a satiety of suffering prevails to force me to write and write. But I have forgotten and my wandering thought obscures my whole purpose. It is Gabrielle that all this grievous remembrance leads to, and she who has ended the awful WAR, is the theme of this most wonderful experience, I have essayed to tell so imperfectly.
After Blanchette's death I stayed with the captain for some months, until a grave disease struck me down almost to death's door, which indeed I craved to open and to close behind me. It was a nervous fever, from which I have never quite recovered, as it left me with recurrent fits of weakness and a debility of energy quite unlike my former self. The captain adopted an orphan girl, who was like an incarnation of his daughter, and who infinitely blessed him, with a similar gentleness and sanity and beauty.
Gabrielle and myself became again closely knit together in sympathy. She had nursed me in my sickness, and she read to me in my convalescence, and then she told me of the harsh and repulsive life of the hospital; how its penury of grace afflicted her, and the physical destitution of the hideously sick had overcome her with an irrepressible repulsion, and the half savage nakedness of exposures and surgery had thrown her into momentary spasms of despairing melancholy. But she had not complained; it was the ordeal of preparation, she said; she had undergone extreme dread and misery ofheart and mind, and, under the visitations of her distress, those ecstasies—as she now slowly and tearfully confessed—of desire to see the ghostly and immaterial had returned and strengthened, and to her had come visions and voices, and again and again in her prayers the apparent touch of fingers tracing the braid of her hair, or even smoothing the temples of her head had actually been felt.
None of these things were told to me by Gabrielle until I was effectually improved, and then they became the outpouring of her heart. She had been unwilling to speak of them to father and mother since they would have, beyond any question, regarded them as the symptoms of mental infirmity, and their solicitude might have readily taken the form of some new insistence upon the avocations of the city. Gabrielle, after the death of Blanchette had persisted in her refusal to return to the hospital in Paris, and, after a brief and a little unpleasant disagreement, mother and father permitted her to stay at home. Then came my sickness, when Gabrielle proved most useful, and then by a natural adjustment—for exactly as it had been in the old days of childhood we became inseparable—Gabrielle assumed domestic duties, and our home life was reinstituted and complete.
It was delightful, though the happiness it brought to me was a solemn tenderness of feeling and thought simply. I had brought back from America a small sum of uninvested funds, and when this was carefully invested, with the interest from the moneys held by me in America and with my father's maintenance, our living became, more than ever, free from anxieties, and comfortably luxurious. Nor were we careless of our duties to the less fortunate; the instruction of our parents had always laid emphasis upon the invincible demands of charity in the Christian life, and no one more thoughtfully than they furnished to us examples of its most admirable exercise.
And here I must refer to something now certainly obvious to my reader. The religious faith of our parents was not ours—not Gabrielle's nor mine. Perhaps that had much to do with that felt, though never mentioned, separation—désaccordement, we French would, I think, call it—that latently grew up between our parents and ourselves, dutiful as we always were and loving too. Gabrielle and I were Catholics, and our reversion, as it might be called, had taken place as we approached maturity, when something in our natures responded vitally to the spiritual richness and the sensuous impressions of the Catholic church, while the absence of a Protestant church in St. Choiseul—supplemented by the meeting together of various members in a room, wherein myfather often assumed the functions of the preacher—helped to establish our desertion. There was indeed a moment's exasperation over it all, but it was most evanescent, and, yielding to a larger liberality of conviction than most Protestants, our parents were at least contented that their children worshipped God and Christ.
Certainly to Gabrielle the Catholic symposium of saints, and its hierarchy of visible and invisible powers, appealed overwhelmingly. She surrendered to the full harvest of its supernatural offerings, with the gladness, the rapture, of the energumen. Now too that the psychiatric sense or control had started within her nature, she rose to the strange contingency of communication with the dead, with a transcendent joy. No longer thrust upon the abhorrent carnalities of the hospital, graciously as she acknowledged their necessity and kindness, Gabrielle, with me, her emotional companion too, returned to all the quietism of our life in St. Choiseul, and revelled in her exuberance of mystical detachment. It was a partial aberration of mind, I almost now think, despite its wondrous results, accompanied with the enthralled wonderment and pleasure of a temperament poetical and structurally imaginative. Gabrielle became neurotic. Her hospital life and its terrors had something to do with it.
This community of feeling and the gradualdevelopment of that unhealthy indulgence in the mediumistic power, Gabrielle now discovered she possessed (which became encouraged through my own solicitations) formed between us a bond of fellowship, that became secretive and masonic. It was not a fortunate circumstance, and yet SEE what marvels flowed from it—at least so I think, and indeed I am not unwilling to protest that it was God's hand! Of course it was my desire to approach Blanchette in her spiritualized state, that led us onward along the mysterious and fascinating path of our strange psychic experiments. And so I come to that illustrious moment when I saw Blanchette in the spirit, when—Mon Dieu, can I ever forget it?—that pale vision of my own Blanchette issued from the darkness, stayed on the threshold of the real for an instant, softly luminous, and yet discrete in form, though the corporeal properties of the dear face I adored, seemed blurred in the haze of an exceeding brightness.
It was probably about six months after Blanchette's death, that I ventured to speak to Gabrielle about the hope I almost treacherously nourished—for the practice is forbidden by the Church—that she might be able to summon Blanchette from the world of spirits. It was towards the evening of a spring day, that just began to intimate the glorious oncoming of thenew season's wealth of beauty—a beauty I longed for, for with the reawakening earth, with the fresh laughter of the whole wide sphere of living things, I knew the dead weight of my grief would be lightened. The sunlight, the song of birds, the flowing vesture of the colored earth, would enter and dissolve it, and thus, mellowed into sadness only, it would encumber me no longer with leaden hopelessness. We were standing together at the bottom of the garden, watching the first sproutings of the crocus from beneath a film of sheltered snow, and the cheering warmth of the full sun filled us with the instincts of life. It opened my lips.
"Gabrielle," I said, "I want you to bring Blanchette back to me."
My sister was not surprised; she turned to me with the most natural gesture of willingness, placing her hands upon my shoulders and looking straight into my eyes.
"Yes, Alfred, I will. I have heard Blanchette. But I was afraid to tell you. Twice she has spoken to me, in the night, and once in the brightest daylight, as I stood at the window of my room. Can you stand it? ForseeAlfred, I feel the power strongly in these spring days, as if the resurrection of life in all these things," she swept her arms outward to the landscape, "brought with it the spirits of the dead; as ifthey too liked a reprieve from their isolation, and thronged to the earth. Is it not so?"
"Oh! Gabrielle what has Blanchette said to you? Was it in words? Gabrielle, Gabrielle, it cannot be. Do not fool me with mere fancies."
Gabrielle smiled, a smile, as it were, of commiseration at my doubt, for now indeed she lived, I do believe, in a mingled world of things that we call real, and things that we call unreal, andto herthey were almost the same.
"I do not fool you Alfred. Why should I? It is so simple and it is so true. See."
She left me, beckoning for me to follow her. She walked to a walnut tree, a low precarious sapling which had furtively pushed its way upward into some semblance of a tree, and leaned against its slender trunk, with her eyes pressed upon her crossed hands. I stood irresolute, half expectant, half miserably self-reproachful. Suddenly Gabrielle spoke. Her voice was itself strange, very distinct but chilled into a sepulchral gravity.
"It is all very dim, yellow and blue clouds float up and down, and here and there a figure moves, and there are voices, and now a great light—too bright—too bright—it shatters all!"
Her voice had risen to a tone louder than conversation, and she had raised her head with a quick upward movement, as if it had been jerked backward. Almost instantly she turnedagain to me, her face blanched, and her eyes just a little wild and strained, with no recognition in them. The oddness passed almost as quickly as it came, and Gabrielle smiled, and shook her head apologetically, and for one moment we watched each other with curiosity. But Gabrielle was quite herself, and coming close to me, she whispered:
"No Alfred it is not hard. You saw that I pierced the unseen; though, as it most usually happens when in the open, or with others, the pictures are confused and the voices difficult. I cannot make them out. But we shall try tonight together. Hold my hand and wish your wish, and let our minds—our souls—call forherand she will come. O! I am certain!"
"Gabrielle, I think this is not wise. You must cast off this inclination, and banish all of these impressions. Is it not a dangerous habit? Are you not afraid that it may unhinge your reason? And yet—Ah! how well you know, Gabrielle, that if I could only just be quite certain that Blanchette waits—waits. And thenbut once! Yes but once! Gabrielle," I caught her by the shoulders, and held her imprisoned, so that our eyes gazed into each other's, mine with a scrutiny that was half anger, half solicitude, and hers with an intense affection.
"Gabrielle—this must end. You hear me.End.Call Blanchette if you can. I will helpyou—and then—Let it all go. Cure your temperament, banish these hallucinations. I know I have been guilty in listening to you, but now—after Blanchette—after Blanchette—" the words left my lips wearily, as if the next alternative were feared most by me; "after Blanchette, no more of it. It is wrong, it is a diabolical procedure, mixed up with nonsense and disease.Stop it." How extravagant are our inconsistencies. I admonished Gabrielle, but I was not unwilling myself to stoop to the indulgence that might bring me a glimpse—no matter how fraught with deception, with the danger of madness, of the worse consequences of physical deterioration, even of religious apostacy, if only a glimpse of her I had made eternally the lode-star of my life, now and hereafter; if only a glimpse, might be vouch-safed.
Mais pourquoi Non—was I so wrong? What indeed has happened? Ah I know Gabrielle is—arretez vous, pauvre barbouilleur, pas encore—Go on with your story. It is Gabrielle speaking.
"Brother, you do not know what you are asking me. It is impossible—it would rob me of life, for I should not know then whether to really live in this world and to die in the other, or to leave you and mother, and father and home here, and to live the more glorious life beyond. Now I live in both worlds. Yestruly—in the mornings the clouds of angels waken me, through the nights my bed-side is covered with the spread haloes of the dead, and in my ears sound the sweetest whispers, and salutations of the saints. Throughout the day, if I only shut my eyes, and ask for their appearing, the visions continue, and even my face is brushed by fairy hands, or my lips feel the imprint of unseen, unknown faces."
My sister's face shone with an interior illumination, impossible to describe, and as she talked to me I felt the astonishment that might come to one who converses with some incarnate spirit. It did appeal to my sympathy, for I lived now myself half immersed in the daily contemplation of another world; it met my own anticipations vividly, and I could not condemn, nor evade its fascination. But I wondered and so questioned her more closely.
"Gabrielle, how can all this be? You have never said such things to me before, as if you were moving in a spirit-land with your feet in this world, and your head lifted above the stars. What does it mean? I knew something, but this tumult—fourmillement—of apparitions I knew nothing of."
"No, Alfred, I know you did not, though it has often been on my tongue to let you know how the visitations multiplied. I think, Alfred, it really is, as St. Paul says, that we are encompassed by a cloud of witnesses, or this world is itself unreal, and the realities are elsewhere; perhaps that everything about us, could we for an instant strip them of their appearances, would be something else—you see?—something else, and this atmosphere," she lifted her hand upward, shook it rapidly, causing little puffs of air against my face, "was loaded with currents of the dead!"
We both got up and walked slowly towards the house.
"Of course you have said nothing of any of these things to mother or father?" I queried.
"Ah, Alfred, I could not. They would not understand, and then why—why should I?"
After a pause: "Alfred, it will do no harm. Do not think me mad, or deluded, or—or—unbalanced, as they say, even. I cannot make it plain perhaps—but this I know—theyare there—they, the spirits—" and she waved her hand up and down—"and when I call them they come, and they come when I do not call."
She was almost laughing now, and studying her attentively I could not see any of those symptoms in feature, or eyes, or voice, or manner, that betray to the alienist the disordered brain. Gabrielle never to me looked lovelier.
The next moment as we entered the hall-way I caught her arm and turned her abruptly to myself; "Gabrielle, show me Blanchette."
Her arms were about my neck in a trice, and she spoke in my ear; "Yes, Alfred, tonight, in the library. Come. It will be my seance—andyourstoo. Our spirits are in tune. We will roll back the visible and see the invisible. The substantial shall become the transubstantial, and the diverse, one."
This language was the only indication, at the moment, that I possibly could have regarded as idiotic—in the common sense—and I was half inclined to believe that Gabrielle—not without fun and humour—meant to bewilder me with it, as a joke.
Would I come? "Yes certainly," and so I left her, wonderingly, as I passed to my room, recalling that utterly impossible fiction in an English book written by an artist, called, as I remember it,The Martian. I shuddered a little when I closed the door of my room, and sank back in an easy chair, to grapple with a now peculiar problem. Should Gabrielle be permitted to live in this world of spiritual essences, and apparitions any longer?
I think that I was not disinclined to live in it myself, but with me the material stringency of affairs was unmistakable, and I did, spasmodically at least, revolt against this extreme spiritualism. I hunted along my book-shelves, and found the Martian book, and chasing throughits pages I stopped at this incomprehensible passage:
"For when the life of the body ceases and the body itself is burned and its ashes scattered to the winds and waves, the infinitesimal, imponderable, and indestructible something we call the soul is known to lose itself in a sunbeam and make for the sun, with all its memories about it, that it may then receive further development fitting it for other systems altogether beyond conception."
"For when the life of the body ceases and the body itself is burned and its ashes scattered to the winds and waves, the infinitesimal, imponderable, and indestructible something we call the soul is known to lose itself in a sunbeam and make for the sun, with all its memories about it, that it may then receive further development fitting it for other systems altogether beyond conception."
And then came the intolerable fancy of these Martian souls getting into the bodies of animals, and into men and women, and how the particular Martia influenced the divine Englishman, and made him write wonderful transforming books, and he thought of a life
"where arabesques of artificial light and interwoven curves of subtle sound had a significance undreamt of by mortal eyes or ears, and served as conductors to a heavenly bliss unknown to earth."
"where arabesques of artificial light and interwoven curves of subtle sound had a significance undreamt of by mortal eyes or ears, and served as conductors to a heavenly bliss unknown to earth."
I fell into a stupor of meditation. Might not Blanchette do such things for me? Her image sprang to my eyes, her voice sounded in my ears, her arms embraced me, the very fragrance of her person enchanted my nostrils, and then,as the stupor passed, and the dying day sent the broad beams of the sun full into my face, I rose, and, feeling with a sudden particularity of certitude, the absolute hopelessness of fancies, of dreams, of anything butwork, with my own life broken at its very beginning, and the overshadowing pall of an unforgettable disaster shrouding it from corner to corner, I sank to my couch, and, stretched along its length, wept bitterly.
CHAPTER IV
GABRIELLE'S SEANCE
Itwas only a few minutes later that, shaking off the dreary sluggishness of my grief, I started out of the house for a brisk walk. Down through the village, out into the broad highway towards Briois, where the Diligence from Paris then shot past me, with salutations shouted from its windows, and handkerchiefs waved from its Imperial and still on, along the fields growing verdant, while the warm tremulous air, with its procreative touch, unclasped the glutinous envelopes of the buds in the alders and poplars, and afar towards Bienne, and the ruined chateau, the massed background of the walled forests spanned the horizon with a palpitating purple haze, as of an arrested atmosphere or emanation, and in the very zenith above me a creamy rosiness, like an etherial colored lymph, dripped from cloudlet to cloudlet.
How wonderfully beautiful it all was; its tenderness, the auroral lights of the sky, and the definite joy of the returning life; it renewed my courage, rather it put to flight the dull meanness of sottish fears and regrets. The verses of —— came to my mind, and aloud,on the straight road that was now darkening, as the day fled to the empyrean, and thence must fly over the great ocean to the wonderland of America, I repeated them:
O renouveau! Soleil! Tout palpite, tout vibreTout rayonne, et J'ai dit, ouvrant la main; "Sois libre,"L'oiseau s'est évadé dans les rameaux flottants,Et dans l'immensité splendide du printemps;Et J'ai vu s'en aller au loin la petite âmeDans cette clarté rose ou se mêle une flamme,Dans l'air profond, parmi les arbres infinis,Volant au vague appel des amours et des nids,Planant éperdument vers d'autres ailes blanches,Ne sachant quel palais choisir, courant aux branches,Aux fleurs, aux flots, aux bois, fraîchement reverdis,Avec l'effarement d'entrer au paradis....Alors, dans la lumière et dans la transparence,Regardant cette fuite et cette deliverance,Et ce pauvre être, ainsi disparu dans le port,Pensif, je me suis dit: "Je viens d'être la morte."
Then my thoughts reverted to the strange things Gabrielle had told me, to the mysterious experience she promised to lead me through,that night, and, as the stars stole one by one timorously out of the filmy shadows of the east, into the grey dark sky, I speculated on ourrelations with the unseen, and whether we might be so attuned, as Gabrielle seemed to be, to respond and feel that numerous company, and their thoughts, and wishes, their influences, and their designs? I knew, everyone knows, that the scale of sound runs beyond the coarse mechanism of our ears at either end of the gamut, as indeed there are rays of light which our eyes do not catch in the ultra-violet end of the spectrum. Could it be that actually we are immersed in a vast ocean of spiritualized animation, which we cannot apprehend—most of us—which touches us on every side, and is yet as unapproachable as the stars I was looking at, but, unlike the stars, is not even suspected.
But perhaps—so I mused—there were hierophants, translators of its mysteries, souls enriched with some finer sense, who felt it, saw it, or, like pulsating membranes that record the varying pressure of the air, were so marvellously made as to feel its pressure too. They were pendulums, swinging in two worlds, and passing from one to the other, as one might pass from darkness to light, from discord to harmony, from confusion to order, from the apparent and back again to the real. Of these was Gabrielle. Or they were doorways, windows, passages, that afforded access to us, the corporeal prisoners of the earth, through which they came back—les revenants—when they too dearly loved us tofind even happiness in their new abode unless they might occasionally regain our company. Ah could it be so with Blanchette! And then the queer book of Du Maurier's (that was the name of the English artist who wrote it) came into my head, and the impossible fancy of the Martian woman living in the body or the brain of Barty Joselin, and the death of the girl Marty who had become the second home of the beautiful demon woman—the Martian sprite.
I half wondered whether Blanchette could come and tenant my own body, with me, or was she inhabiting Gabrielle? Ah—la folie—but should I indeed see her tonight? I hurried along the familiar road, now in a growing tempest and terror of mind, almost with, I cannot describe it, a queer sense of disembodiment, as if I, myself, were not in my flesh and blood, but some ghost of myself, with an engagement to meet the ghost I had loved—and yet loved. Thus I hastened backward in the night, and entered my home, where the lights burned most cheerfully, and found my parents and sister waiting for me, and Hortense—still with us, with her flagging energies helped out by a pretty brunette waitress Gabrielle had brought from Paris—impatient, at the table, for our evening repast.
"Alfred, we have been waiting for you. Tonight your mother and myself must go to Briois.There is to be a meeting there of the Protestant Union, and I am expected to say something on the needs of our country-side for religious instruction. I hope to be able to bring about the building of a little church where our people may have the consolations of their religion;" it was my father speaking.
"Ah pardon, Iamlate, but the night is heavenly, and the spring comes on divinely. I have been just now towards Briois, and I could have walked, I think, on to La Ferté without fatigue. My legs do improve in these pleasant days, and the warmth stirs my blood. I am glad, father, you will have a church. Are you sure it is best to build it in St. Choiseul?" I answered.
"Why not, Alfred?" asked mother.
"Well there are not so many here who would need it andpas d'abeilles pas de miel;" I said laughing.
"But, Alfred, we are to have a new visitor to live with us in St. Choiseul, a rich man from Bordeaux, who is a leader of our congregations there. He is too what the English call, an exhorter,un homme qui exhorte; very eloquent, a great preacher in his way. If the church is built in our village he will help us, and then it might be that he will be willing to be our pastor too. He is a relative ofle Capitaine, and now he has suffered a great sorrow. His daughter—the apple of his eye—died on the same day that Blanchette left us,nous laissait. The captain begged him to come to St. Choiseul, and he consented. It will be good for the captain, good for St. Choiseul—good for all of us. Is it not so?"
"Yes, mother," said Gabrielle, and she leaned towards her with her gentle smile of reassurance—there had been growing between sister and myself, and our parents, since Blanchette's death, a severer feeling of religious estrangement—"Itwillbe good. I have heard Père Grandin. I heard him in the wards of the hospital, and he is a good man,parlant le plus beau? français avec une voix délicieuse."
Mother and father were delighted; it was a great surprise, and during our evening meal we talked of nothing else than the coming of Père Grandin. They asked Gabrielle about him with an increasing pleasure, as they saw how really admiring sister was of the excellent man's skill and sweetness. It was a pleasant time, and in the domestic glow of confidence, that the Père Grandin would become an instrument of propitiation, rather than of discord, while Julie placed before us one of Hortense's masterpieces—chefs d'oeuvres—le ragout de mouton, with garnishments of peppers and haricots, with her hot cakes—pains de seigle—and the meltingchou-fleurand the inspiriting Burgundy, webloomed, so to say, into a renewed affection. It was admirable. I recall it—shall I ever forget that wondrous night?—almost as if it had been a moment ago. I was soothed and quieted, and the rising frenzy of my blood subsided, and a most ingratiating blissfulness invaded me, and we lingered long at the table. Gabrielle was so gay and reminiscent it seemed as if she loved the hospital, now she was well free of it, and, as I listened in astonishment, I slowly realized that Gabrielle was responding to some hidden elation, and that—Was it her ecstacy to show me her strange power? Ah, yes, there was, too, her gladness that mother and father were to be away that night, and so—Voila, la diablerie sans bornes!Bah, I will confess I was displeased, and felt a little disgusted amazement at Gabrielle.
An hour later our parents were tucked in the cabriolet, the short snapping strokes of the horse's hoofs passed away into silence, and Gabrielle and I were alone. We faced each other as the door closed, and Gabrielle seized my arm, and speaking very slowly, with her face covered by her other hand, with all her late show of spirits vanished, said:
"Alfred, I feel the power; it thrills me. I cannot explain, but as the time comes on, I am crowded with a multitude—un essaim—of motions within me, as if I might be slowly dissolved into air, or something else light and floating. You thought that I was careless at dinner. I know, I watched your eyes. You thought I was glad that father and mother were going away, so that I could show you my power when I call Blanchette (I shuddered) back to meet you. But that was not true. I felt disengaged and well, most well, and my heart was contented. There was no deception, no guiltiness as of escaping detection. None, I was myself, that was all. And Alfred I shalltellfather and mother. Why not?" at my gesture of discouragement.
"Gabrielle, promise me you will reveal nothing about this to anyone, until I have consented. Remember—the Hospital. Father and mother will be appalled. They cannot understand as I do your mysticism—and then, who knows what the power leads to? Be silent."
My sister lifted her face, and stared almost stealthily into my eyes. I, thesoi-disantcritic of her "delusions"—that was my word, was now masking her concealment, and urging her to continued secrecy, intending—what did she think?—to use her potency for the gratification of my mad cravings?—to make her the servile means of communication with Blanchette, more and more, that thus my awakened desires might be stilled with the apparitional image of possession?
I did not answer the mute question. I could not. An unopposed, a sudden quenchless need of Blanchette, frustrated all honesty of speech, and I really caught at, snatched, the proffered chance—diablerieor nodiablerie—to see again the face, the form, the flesh—Was it indeed materialization as the mediumistic parlance had it?—of Blanchette. The more I thought of it, the more I coveted the vision. Its quality should be tested. That I swore. And my connivance became more cautious. We would try nothing, until Hortense and Julie had retired. A sudden tension of almost ravenous expectancy rose within me, utterly surprising, andnow, I was the exhilarator, and prompter, and accomplice, more desirous, more credulous, than Gabrielle herself. The delay forthe thingto begin seemed insufferable, but there must be no interruption, and the sceptic, the half believer, the moderating protestant, at the unreasonableness and danger of the indulgence, moved now in its preparation with an unresisting acceptance of its realization, hungry for its fulfillment, every scruple banished!
"Gabrielle, go to your room. We will not begin until Hortense and Julie have gone to bed; then, when the house is all ours," my voice was strained and unnatural, and perhaps my features were themselves distorted with excitement, for Gabrielle slightly withdrew from me,"then, let us go to the library, and there we will unite our minds and hearts, and—bring Blanchette back!"
Only a violent self-control withheld my tongue from shouting the words, so monstrously grew within me the insatiable passion for the coveted design, a passion, half orgiastic, half a maddened curiosity, and within which, I know now, not a trace of spiritual feeling, or aspirations, or tenderness, or beauty, reigned, or had a part. So variously are we composed, and thus from the waters of our souls, when stirred, or clouded, darkened by the overturning prods of the rebellious body, which disturb its slimy sediments, rise the exhalations of unworthy motives. In that instant, as I waited afterwards for the hour agreed upon for our nocturnal incantations—the word suits the debased frame of my mind—just one overpowering conception ruled my heart, the possibility of clasping Blanchette to my breast as a physical presentment. Whither had flown the beautiful boundless dreams of our beatific, immaterial union, bathed in the everlasting lights of celestial choirs? Alas—whither?
It was about eleven o'clock, when Gabrielle tapped at the door between our rooms, and I opened it. Gabrielle had changed her dress somewhat. She had put on a dark serge gown that fitted quite closely, and she had openedthe waist at the throat slightly, and discarded all collar. The sleeves closed about the wrists; in her hair, loosely piled up above her temples, were three silver combs, and they formed the only light touch in her apparel. We both wore slippers, as almost instinctively the association of lightness and noiselessness with the work in hand came to my mind. We said nothing, but passed out of my room, and stepped swiftly down the stairway to the library. I glanced out of the window hastily, and found the sky clear, mistily studded with the stars, and with strips of cloud strung along the western limits of the firmament.
Gabrielle asked me to light the lamp for a minute's instruction; otherwise we would proceed in complete darkness; that she averred was best. I lit the lamp, and was a little disturbed by Gabrielle's pallor which in the yellow light of the lamp appeared deathly. I asked her if she felt unwell. She smiled and said, "No, not at all," and then she motioned me to a seat near her, at the centre of the room, where she had chosen a chair, quite detached from any other article of furniture. Behind her were simply the unillumined corners of the apartment. I sat down and waited for her instructions, which however I fully understood as the manner of this seance had been in words rehearsed between us.
"Alfred, take my hands in your own, and bend your forehead forward upon my knees, and then just THINK of Blanchette, and remain so, no matter how long it seems. When the soul of Blanchette comes it will be light, but do not release my hands."
I recall the absolute precision of certainty in Gabrielle's words, in her voice, and then that she leaned back, shut her eyes, and just perceptibly drew her shoulders upward, while her lips moved as if in prayer. I put out the light. I pressed her hands in mine; they were supremely warm, and soft, and unresisting, and then I knelt and bowed my head and—endowed, as I have in this narrative many times intimated, some visualizing or occult force—brought to my eyes the very figure, color, expression, and voice of the dead girl. It was not so much a feeling of solemnity—that does not express it at all—as a feeling of mystery, of indefinite approach towards the incredible, with the mingled half delirious anticipations in myself of actually again seeing the live Blanchette, that held me rigid.
At length Gabrielle's fingers twitched slightly, and she half released them, but I held them tightly, and then Gabrielle seemed to be murmuring aloud. I still held my face downwards, forcing to my eyes the image of Blanchette, recalling her voice, and straining my mind outward as it were, in my effort to impress all of this upon Gabrielle. The voice of my sister grew slightly louder, and the words were at intervals coherent and intelligible, and then I lifted my head.
At first I could see nothing but soon I became conscious of some diffused light or glow, a kind of absorbed brightness, as if it escaped from the darkness itself, perhaps faintly bluish. It arrested my attention, and the thought of Blanchette died away as I actually saw the brightness increase around me. It was a strange indescribable light. It was not only seen by the eyes; it was felt by the mind, if I may put it that way. Looking more cautiously and intently it became evident that it lay in lines proceeding through the blackness of the room, from a point somewhere at our side, and it still grew slowly stronger, with a soft interior palpitation, as if the source of the emanations pulsed regularly, sending out the luminous streams in waves. With this increasing intensity—though intensity hardly expresses it, it was so vaguely dispersed and yet obviously confined in radial directions—with the increasing intensity, the mental influence deepened also, and it was only by a supreme effort that I retained my position.
The inclination with me was to allow myself to float, from the unmistakable sense of buoyancy that invaded all my body, and with thatcame to my sensorium a most peculiar incomputable sensation of diffusion. I cannot put it into words. It felt like a dissolution, as if the material substance of which I was composed were undergoing dispersion or extension, and the solvent was this strengthening light. But the sensation was also peculiarly delightful so that, while you felt yourself as it were vanishing, there was no sickness of fear with it, nor any, the slightest, physical resistance. I feel certain it was the prelude to unconsciousness. Some residual wakefulness, springing from my curiosity, saved me from the invited surrender, and I slowly rose to my feet, still holding Gabrielle's hands.
Then I looked at my sister, and, so it seemed, in that gloom there had developed around her head a half nebulous curtain or aureole of light also, which, in its turn, was emitting the peculiar light beams. It was at that moment I dropped her hands, that had become almost lifeless to my feeling. In an instant the previous sense of dematerialization left me, and with a shock, absurdly like the flying back of widely distended or separated limbs, I became keenly conscious, and concretely centered. I remember the faint thrill of amusement that thisréassemblagecaused to me. And now—there was not much desire on my part to be ratiocinative—the other point, the emergent initial centre ofthe emanations grew, not only brighter, but greatly larger, and I divined with a sudden consternation of heart, that there were forming before me the outlines of a human figure. I shrank backward for an instant, and for an instant only, and then bent forward and moved forward with the increasing light, for now the adjutant centres—that about the evolving apparition, and that around my sister—both increased, filling my eyes with the radiance, and yet administering no particular illumination to the objects in the room. These latter were perhaps more visible than they had been. That I think was incontestable, but the light might have been described as self-centered, in this sense, that it was entirely refluent on its source and confined in its illuminating effect to that.
And now—I lost sight of everything else, so concentrated was my thought upon the spectacle—the light to the side and in the depth of the room expanded rapidly, and the shape that it made was that of a naked phosphorescent figure, whose configuration, while it was discerned, was not really revealed, so bathed it seemed to be in the billowy light that encumbered it, and yet exposed it. Only the arms of the figure escaped that luminous envelope, and, stretching outward beyond it, put on the semblance of white flesh. I put my hand to my head. It was wet with the dew of perspiration,that may have been the sweat of amazement, or of excitement.
The intention so dearly formed of seizing my restored Blanchette died away before this immaculate phenomenon, for in it there dawned no reminiscence of the earthly charm I had called by that name. That loveliness whose perishable garb of color and of matter I had worshipped was not suggested here; the showery lightness that seemed tremulous with a thousand interior responses had its wonderfulness indeed, but it only left me wonder-stricken. Neither did it appall me. I became chilled into immobility, although every nerve was shaking with the impressed realization of a miracle. I was standing before the resurrected DEAD.
Whether it was this thought or the resuscitated passion of my heart, rebelling against the incandescent splendor, I do not know, but I suddenly stepped towards the scintillating object and spoke: "Blanchette! Blanchette! Blanchette!" My voice was instinct with the note of human passion, the earthly cry of love for the reality of warmth, and softness, and breath, and fragrance, the concomitants of the living body—and, as my words were repeated, and again repeated, and my arms were outstretched, while my face, bathed in the sepulchral light, perhaps might have showed my yearning, this marvellous and stupendous reality occurred:
The phosphorescent configuration with the extended arms grew paler and paler, and as its extreme blurry splendor died away, there sprang forward from within it, the real similitude of Blanchette, a pallid figure of light, and in it the dear face of the girl, tender, divinely, to my eyes, beautiful, with now a compassionate wistfulness of prettiness, O! so faintly expressed, in the dim radiance that seemed yet to stream with undulous waves through the room from the relaxed, motionless body of my sister. And—so it appeared to me—the figure advanced towards me with the same outstretched arms, with which I leaped forward to receive it.
I clasped the empty air and fell headlong in a convulsion, that rattled my very bones, while sharp strokes of pain severed my muscles, and throbs, like the intermittent knocks of a hammer, beat within my brain. It was an utterly unnatural collapse; the strained attitude of the last few hours, with the previous anticipation—unsuspectingly untying the resistance of my nerves—did not clearly explain it. There was something else. I was still quite conscious and, more than that, I was wrathful with disappointment, as if caught in a trick of deception, the hocus-pocus of a mereniaiserie. My eyes watched the faded spot of light from which the transfiguration had started. It actually flitted unevenly for some moments over myfallen body, and then it moved slowly—now contracted into a mere ball of luminosity—towards my yet unawakened sister. There it increased in brilliancy, and the former glowing outline, with the resumed extended arms, reappeared, and then came the last denouement. In an instant there was a flashing collision between the light of the vision and the light, seemingly emitted by my sister, when the entire room became vivid with light—everything seen, with absolutely nothing there but my sister and myself, and then the darkness again more profound by contrast, and swimming—the word is exactly descriptive—upward, and then sideways a ball, a mere star, of brightness, sparkled for one second in the fire-place, and vanished.
There was no sound, there had not been an audible word, and now there was the undisturbed apartment with myself spread out in pain on the floor, and my sister still in her unbroken trance. I struggled to my feet and seized Gabrielle's hands and drew her up. She awoke, dazed, and also in pain, standing at my side in a benumbed speechless way that startled me. I lit the lamp hurriedly, and led her to the couch, where she again fell into unconsciousness. I chafed her hands. I wet her temples. Finally she slowly responded to the treatment, and I was able to lead her to her room. She had by that time become normal,but reticent and oppressed, and begged me to leave. I went away.
My own distress lasted some hours, but slowly improved, the jolts of pain growing less, and at longer intervals, and succumbing to my complete restoration.
The next day found Gabrielle and myself talking in the garden at the same spot where we had conceived of the seance; we had both been almost feverishly waiting the opportunity to rehearse our experience. We met almost as if by agreement, walking down the garden, on opposite sides at the same time, as to arendez-vous.
I related everything to Gabrielle as I had seen it, and asked her about her own experience. I said, "Gabrielle, I think that it is best not to indulge this power of yours any longer. It was a disappointment every way, and the results only unhealthy and stupid."
"Alfred," she replied, "I have often brought back the spirits of the dead, not by my own will but because they came to me willingly, and it has never hurt me. It seemed a delight rather, and the sensations were blissful. But it was all different last night. It was spoiled somehow. There was some discord, something improper in our thoughts—in yours,Alfred?"
"Gabrielle, just what happened to yourself, when you fell away in the trance?"
"I seemed to be rising upward on wings, with sunny lights shining upon me, and the endless shimmering of spirit bodies about me, and then came a darkness with a despairing feeling of loneliness and of desertion, and then a slow, consuming pain until you waked me."
"Gabrielle, have you ever actually seen the spirits? Were they, as the jargon goes, materialized before your eyes?"
"Not exactly, perhaps. They came to me in my sleep, but I have indeed—so it seems to me—awakened and found the air about me filled with shapes. They did not last, wavering away with swingings this way and that, but their faces smiled as they went off, and a low pleasant light remained; that too gently—doucement—fading away."
We walked slowly back again towards the house, quite silent. I, buried in a reverie of self-dissatisfaction, Gabrielle doubtless in one of afflicted wonder. At length I said, stopping abruptly, and turning Gabrielle towards me, as I often did, with my two hands clasping her shoulders, "Gabrielle, let us agree to banish these practices. It may cost you an effort, but I believe it is best for both of us. We shall lose our wits with these devilments." Gabrielle resented that, and her face showed her protest. "Well, not that exactly," I added quickly, "let us call them illusions. Some scientific wiseacrescall themhypnagogicillusions. It is not altogether normal and reasonable and—" I hesitated a moment, and Gabrielle added, "You mean improper, unhealthy, unsafe?"
"Yes I mean all that, and then I think by some occultism we cannot define, or even recognize, they will torment us, and actually drag us into lunacy."
"Alfred, did you see Blanchette?"
"Why, yes, I saw something that brought her distinctly before me for an instant—but, Gabrielle," I was ashamed to betray my hope for some sort of bodily incarnation, "it was only a madness of the brain—only that."
"But, Alfred, you did see the light; they always come in light-clouds—les voiles de lumière."
"Oh, yes, I saw the shining figure—so it seemed—and the light, Gabrielle, that seemed to stream from your head in rays. All that I saw, but whether it was an actual light, or some infernal hallucination, or just some mesmeric phenomena, and we both were asleep, I fear to say. But it has left me queerly disgusted and upset. At any rate I will have nothing more to do with it—nothing. My work (Redaction of the Code Législatif for Court Practice) will be interfered with, and then perhaps my poor brain will leave me altogether."
We laughed, and at length Gabrielle answered, liberating herself from my hold and musingly watching the sparrows twittering and flying spasmodically in swarms from the thicketed ampelopsis on the house. Her voice was low, and its accent firm, and half persuasive too.
"Alfred, I will go half way. I will do nothing to bring back the visions, but if they come I shall not scare them away. And as for séances—well, we both have had all we want of them. Eh?"
"Truly Gabrielle, I think that if we continued these visitations, if they are that, it would be with us as it was with Argan inLe Malade Imaginaire, who was threatened by Dr. Purgan, you know, after a long line of disorders,avec la privation de la vie, ou nous aura conduit notre folie."
I never again spoke about the spirits to Gabrielle. I grew strangely fearful of them, the thought of them made me shudder—until the war brought upon us the awful visitation that I have written this book to describe, and which—Well, what it did is now the common knowledge of the world. Nor did Gabrielle allude to them until the gathering terrors of the dead broke her silence. And to describe that moment and its undreamed of marvels, its vast resurrections from the holocausts of the battle fields, the fathomless panorama of the endless dead, with the stupefying and convulsing climax of thehorrid warfare, choked by their immitigable hosts, is now my dangerous and difficult task.
Father and mother returned from Briois most radiant over their success. Père Grandin was superb, a wonderful man,un homme de sagesse, de piété, et, ma Foi, un homme des affaires; enfin, un homme eloquent et fin aussi. He would come to St. Choiseul, and it was certain that Père Grandin and Père Antoine would get on well together.
The spring was all about us; each day added to the charm of the country-side and the gardens of St. Choiseul grew gayer and gayer with the snowy and carmine splendor of the tulips, the purple glories of the hyacinth, the blossoming trails of periwinkle, leading at last to the zenith loveliness of the blushing roses, when St. Choiseul sent its fragrant breath far and wide over the green meadows, and far into the thick-set and shadowed woods.
Thebienséanceof nature was seen too in the overflowing happiness of the country, its peace and increasing wealth, with the flow towards it of the gracious friendliness of the peoples, and the establishment among us of the pure principles of liberty. Indeed we were all gay. Privat Deschat's hideous predictions that evening so long ago—how long ago it indeed seemed, as if in another age; that was before I went toAmerica—were all forgotten, or if recalled just laughed at—and yet there had been the Agadir affair and there had been disturbances in Alsace and cruel muttering elsewhere; the Cassagnac matter and the German correspondents. But that was nothing—une bagatelle simplement—and so the bright years rolled along, braided with delights, illustrious with hopes, serene with gifts, not altogether free from acquiescent tears, while the inevitable CALAMITY came closer and closer, and like a thunderbolt crashed suddenly from the peaceful skies, and darkened all the world with its despair and misery.
CHAPTER V
THE WAR
Père Grandinvery soon became a favorite, and not the least devoted of his friends was Père Antoine, our village priest. The temper of the two men was most congenial, and the fervor of their love of goodness, their common age, a certain sweet complacency in the joyousness of life and in the complete mercy of God, wedded them to each other, and so into our intimate circle of friends Père Antoine, through the mediation of Père Grandin was joined, and both father and mother thus grew more sympathetic and permissive with Gabrielle and myself, and the days flowed smoothly, and the years followed each other joyously.
I became more and more interested in the work I had undertaken, and, under the pressure of its laborious needs, with frequent visits to Paris, found my time admirably occupied, while I was not too busy to omit the recreations of the home life with our friends. Above all caressed by my dear sister, whose companionship I now more and more delighted in, I was growing, perhaps by a premature decline of animal spirits, into a bachelor, whose inmostheart still kept unimpaired the image and hope of his first love. That indeed dwelt with me perpetually, and by the platonic resuscitation of its enjoyment administered literally to my physical contentment.
There was in my library an English book written by an American authoress in which I came upon this sentence (the book was sent to me by a Texan acquaintance after I had left America): "there were hours when she felt that any bitter personal past—that the recollection of a single despairing kiss or a blighted love would have filled her days with happiness. What she craved was the conscious dignity of a broken heart—some lofty memory that she might rest upon in her hour of weakness."
The philosophy and the psychology of the paragraph are profoundly true. That relationship which sex seems inexorably to claim is satisfied naturally by union, but its omission finds exoneration at least in the remembrance of disappointment. I grew with each succeeding year more and more sedately complacent, and a gravity of thought, deepened by a pleasant melancholy, mingled with the real consolations of religion and the inseparable charm of my sister and kept me composed and evenly—at times almost jubilantly—happy. My work was attracting some attention, and it promised for me continued and congenial employment.
We had many garden parties with Privat Deschat and Capitaine Bleu-Pistache—growing more feeble now, more silent, with often unbidden tears springing to his eyes—and Quintado and Père Grandin and Père Antoine—though he was not so often with us—and the sweet-voiced and sparkling little orphan girl the captain had adopted—Dora Destin, a vivacious creature with delicate ways and a keen appetite for tarts and pastry, and a peculiar shyness that came and went so oddly, that one instant she might be hiding, as if afraid, and the next leaping amongst us like a bird. Mother and father had become in the later years even graver, and a calmness—I dreaded to believe that it meant some interior failing—descended upon them, that made their ways a little embarrassing at times. We all noted it. It was a presage, a shadow. They were silent in company, and once or twice, I thought—this was just a year before the War—father seemed unconscious of his surroundings; his mind wandered and he kept saying "Alfred,Alfred" to me, as if dazed or grieved. The stealthy hand of Paralysis thus crept slowly forward towards its unescapable conclusion.
Of course Gabrielle was in our parties, and she had become to me the concentrated bliss of my living. Her growth into a healthier condition of mind and body had accompanied an increasing adaptability to company, and while thereserved manner remained, bestowing upon her a fine dignity, she was truly sociable and friendly. Gabrielle never quite outgrew the secretive habit of her thoughtfulness, and her deportment had been criticized and found fault with, as cold and austere. The inference would have been cruelly unjust, for never breathed a kinder and more devotedly good heart than my sister possessed. Her abstracted way often arose from the custom of religious meditation, and I suppose too was influenced by that singular supernatural—to call it so—power that she always felt, but now, so far as I knew, seldom exercised. It was that power that made of her the MEDIATRIX of the nations.
It was hardly fifteen years after my return that the Grown Prince of Austria was shot in Sarajevo in Serbia, and that was on the day of theGrand Prix de Paris. I read the news to Gabrielle, and Père Grandin was there. He had taken dinner with us. How well I remember his terror-stricken face. He pushed his spectacles up over his high white forehead, and his bright eyes glowed strangely with a growing fear. His expressive lips twitched almost as if he were in pain, and he lifted up his hands in protestation.
"God forbid. The blow has fallen then. The bolt shot. Alfred, this is the torch that starts the conflagration. The material—all inflammable, all explosive—has been heaped up betweenthe nations, and, like a fiercefeu-de-joieit will kindle into a wall of fire—un rideau de feu—between the countries. God save France!"
I was incredulous as were at the time most people. I laughed at the good man's warning, and because he felt half grieved at my carelessness, half stifled with apprehension as if almost—so he put it—his ears were filling already with the rumble of cannon, he begged our pardon for his distress. He put on his crumpled Panama hat and stood at the doorway, almost irresolute in his trepidation and sadness. He looked at me quite long.
I recall the moon riding high in white drifting vapors that came in from Calais—and in the changing light and shade he seemed almost preternaturally pale and sombre.
"Mon patrie," he sighed, "again the ravage, the desolation, the orphaned, the widowed, the crippled, the sick, the breaking hearts—Ah, Ah—" and seizing my hands as if in support in his agitation, he wept.
"But Père Grandin" I said, now thoroughly alarmed over his evident agony, "surely you are too quick, too hasty. Europe is at peace. Its people are reasonably happy. They will not permit war, and—"
I got no further. The old man was choking with emotion—it was half wrath, half despair.
"Permit it? Can they stop it? Do theygovern? Is it not kings and princes and royal houses and titled ministers, the tyrants of opinion, the caprice or the pride or the selfishness of aristocrats, that control everything?
"See, they prance by us, unseeing, unthoughtful, just living for themselves, and then when the crash comes—the crash they have prepared with their silly talk of national honor, national enlargement, national continuity, racial union, destiny, putting over it all a gorgeous light of promised glory—just as the heroes in a stage play walk and stand in the glare of the electric lantern from the gallery, uttering bombast—when the crash comes, they summon the troops, they dragoon the people, they empty the banks, they crack the whip of urgency, and, pointing to the flag, drive us in hecatombs to death.
"No, no, Alfred—the war will come. I have long felt its growing tremors. We cultivate revenge in our hearts, the Germans cultivate hate, the Cossacks conquest, the Austrians dynasty, the Englishmen trade-money, their assumed preeminence, and there have been cabals and understandings, and a jolt snaps the artifice of our pretended brotherhood and, with hoof and claw, we fly at each other's throats. Bah—vous verrez."
His rage had restored his strength, and he stumbled away muttering and gesticulating. I watched him going across the roadway in thelight that danced with the swinging lanterns when the night wind from the distant shores blew more strongly. The disks and outlines of shadows imparted to him a peculiar effect of unsteadiness. I half thought he staggered.
I went back to the library. There I found Gabrielle leaning over the paper I had flung down at the old man's outburst, and reading of the assassination. She looked up as I returned, and her face was white, and in her eyes too I saw an awful consternation. I was impatient with this foolishness, and expostulated loudly.
"What, Gabrielle, are you too imbecile? Père Grandin is in a panic. Why? He sees us fighting already—just because the heir to a crown is shot. It's absurd—pas vraisemblable."
"Alfred, I think we should not be too sure. It all looks bad to me, and—if it comes. What?"
Her eyes dilated with terror.
"Why, Gabrielle, have we not prepared ourselves for just this! Besides we have allies now—it is not as it was in 1870. There is England, there is Russia.Sacre nom, it will be as when Greek meets Greek—notcomme les vautours et les pigeons."
"Ah, Alfred, think of the suffering. O! I have seen suffering in the hospitals, but a wholenation to be made into one huge hospital.Mon Dieu, c'est incroyable!"
"Wait, Gabrielle. Don't borrow trouble. The world cannot afford war now.La Guerre est un peu passée aujourd'hui. Eh?"
"Alfred, the devil is never sick, and never tired, and never asleep."
That night the news was confirmed. Then came Austria's demands; and then a chasing hither and thither of couriers; the wires hot with messages; lights in the embassies all night; rage, dismay; in the cities the people silent or cheering in the streets; houses closed or hidden in flags; in the ministries forebodings; feverish despatches; and almost always hopelessness. Peace was impossible; everywhere the "mailed fist"—poing armée—of the Kaiser. Then came Austria's declaration of war against Servia on July 29th. The detonation was at hand which would burst Europe asunder.
Capitaine Bleu-Pistache asked me to go to Paris at once, so did Père Grandin, so did Privat Deschat, and although father and mother seemed listless about it I, thoroughly awake now to the disaster, was impatient to visit the capital, and see how things were going. But Gabrielle did not wish me to go.
"Alfred, is it not best to hear the news here? You cannot enlist. Alfred you know that is impossible." She suddenly checked herself. Iknew her thought, and my cheeks grew crimson—my weakness and physical deficiency now cut me off from service—"No, Alfred it was not that, not that," her embarrassment brought tears to her eyes. "No not that, but I am afraid of some danger. Now it is everywhere, an explosion, a chance shot, a street quarrel. Alfred let me go too."
"Gabrielle I shall be quite safe. I shall be O! so very timid."
She smiled.
"Not so timid alone Alfred, as if I were there too."
"Nonsense Gabrielle, is it not written,la femme fait le coeur intrépide. But really it would be very foolish for you to come. Watch here. I will be so careful."
She seemed inconsolable, so I promised to write daily.
Père Grandin wished all the papers sent to him, and the captain, the pictures, illustrations, prints, anything that wouldspeakrather thantell—so he put it. And Privat Deschat whispered, "Alfred Lupin, you remember my prophecy of more than twenty years ago. I have said nothing about it—rien. But Lupin, if by a chance you can kill a Dutchman or even come by a dead one bring me his two ears."
"Privat," I almost shouted, "by all means—but Why?"
"Alfred," Deschat tossed his big head this side and that as a mastif might, coming out of the water, "I would dry them hard, tan them, and wear them as tassels on my smoking cap,mon chapeau de fumée."
Père Antoine was the last man I saw in St. Choiseul. I left for Briois in the cabriolet in the evening, and with all of my adieus at home over I had settled back in my seat, in a gloomy meditation upon the frightful turn in events, and with some compunctions too over my own indiscreet skepticism as to its possibility. My face was buried in the nosegay Gabrielle had pressed into my hands—I see her now standing in the doorway where the light from the hall flung around her the aureole of its pale illumination—and my thoughts grew each moment more sombre, when the carriage was abruptly stopped, and I heard the voice of Père Antoine speaking to the driver.
I recognized the father at once, and delightedly welcomed the interruption; my own sombreness threatened a positivemalaise.
"Father, you here? Step into the carriage. I am on my way to Briois, and then by train to Paris. My friends—yours too—wanted me to go and I am impatient to watch things nearer the focus."
"Ah, my child" answered the benignant man, now seated beside me, "what new horrors does itall mean? I tremble for religion. I know the sneers that will be flung at FAITH. Where, where, they will cry, is this merciful GOD?—and as the misery rises, their cry will seem to have its justification. But surely God is in the storm as well as in the quiet dawn? If the war really breaks out then it leads to larger things—all in the scheme and providence of the Almighty."
"Father we must hope and pray that the worst cannot happen."
"Yes my son, but we must be also submissive. We must not fix in our prayers the stubbornness of expectation. What comes we must accept as the work of God. There can be no reservations in our acknowledgment of the immediate and uninterrupted immanence of the divine POWER. Let us simply trust."
I murmured disheartedly:
Ici tout meurt, la fleur, l'été,La jeunesse et la vie.
The good man pressed my hands, and as we drew near to the lights in the station I saw his pained and overflowing eyes.
I came into Paris at the Gare d'Orsay on August first. Mobilization began the next day and when I reached the Place de l'Opéra crowds of young men were marching in the streets, crying, almost shrieking, "Vive la France." Girls along the balconies and from the windows showered flowers on them. In other streets groups of young men were singing the Marseillaise, and waving the flags of France and Russia and England. It was fiercely exciting, and when at last my eagerness broke all restraint I joined some of them—my limp was no hindrance there—and almost forgot my destination, drinking in the elixir of patriotism for a few delirious moments.
It was the next day (August third) that I hurried to my publisher's—Avenue de l'Alma—and found him with his family about him, disordered in dress, and dismally grave. It was M. Albert Yvette. He welcomed me with effusion, and resolved to take me to the Chamber of Deputies where the premier M. Viviani would speak on the situation. That would be the next day, and for the moment we would go over some copy as a temporary distraction from the mind-blighting crisis which had overcome the country. M. Yvette had four sons, two of whom had already joined the colors, and three exquisite daughters, two young girls, and the third a married woman, who in this extremity had united her family with her father's, and added to his own overflowingfamillethree boys—joufflus et bruants—so that there was no lack of excitement; conversation and predictions too.
On August first Jaures the socialist leader had been assassinated, and yet this monstrous assault failed to arouse national dissension. Yvette said it was significant. France was as one man and an undivided nation would frustrate the enemy.
We all agreed, but the coming test promised to be a severe one. The news that came in from the advancing Germans was not welcome, and showed the organization of a powerful attack. Yvette was confident that even the "spray," as he termed it, of the Teutonic wave would not reach us. I did not think so. Paris was in danger. Madame Yvette became tremulous and the daughters were in tears. Then came the news, flashed through the streets as if by a magnetic sympathy, answering the popular suspense, that England had declared war upon Germany. This was most cheering, and the days before France seemed less threatening.