PART ITHE SLEEPING WOODSAMAZED, enraptured, I gazed about me. This, surely, was the very forest of the Sleeping Beauty in the Woods. Suddenly, at a turn of the road, her castle loomed up among the trees, huge and mysterious.I had been pushing my bicycle, despite its various gears, up a long heavy slope. Once again in the saddle, I had penetrated into a wild valley, a mere gorge at first, then broadening into field and forest, with a pool in the lower distance. The brilliant bouquet that autumn can make if it pleases, of water and trees and bushes massed upon a mountain side, was before me—autumn, the flower time of the woods, when the heaviest burdens have fallen and the spring of trunk and branch and airy foliage show all the indescribable hues of light. Golden lindens, pale elms, ruddy chestnuts, copper horse-chestnuts, rusty oaks, purplish fruit trees, poplars like golden candle-sticks, form under the level rays of sunlight, a fairy train: it is a gay parade that would cause a thrill of joyful amazement, did not the lightest whispering breeze threaten the loss of all the marvellous attire. Dread and pleasure meet in October walks, dread that comes with the pleasure that is fleeting.It was Sunday, and I had met no one. A village through which I had passed was as if dead. The women were no doubt at church, the men in the wine-shop. From the whole valley, as from a vast deserted garden, arose a perfume of old legend, which I inhaled with rapture. The country here had the look of some deserted park, and I was keen to discover some abandoned habitation in it. Any usual modern villa would have dishonoured this ageless landscape. Nothing would answer my mood but a confusion of ancient stones and wild vines, or at least real ruins, authentic and crumbling.To tell the truth, it was not ruins that I had perceived on the hillside at the end of the avenue of more than century-old oaks. The avenue led up to a terrace ornamented by urns and stretching all along the front of the house. The urns were empty and no one had thought to mow the grass. The chateau was a large building, with mullioned windows, and a sort of cloister running its entire length, and but for these ivy wreathed arcades would have appeared almost commonplace. The dark tone of its walls gave it an aspect of venerable age, with all the added solitude of silence and the melancholy of the season and the surrounding forest. There it stood, in its own well-sheltered place, presenting its front, as an old man his face, to the warmth of the sun, letting the days flow by. A clump of yellow chrysanthemums and a few climbing roses gave it the look of a faint smile.I dismounted to enter into communion with this old place. The gate was open; indeed the hinges, being sprung, would not allow it to be shut. A lodge at the entrance was almost hidden among the trees, overwhelmed as with a flood of greenery by their luxuriant growth. As I drew nearer I observed that several oaks had been replaced by horse-chestnuts, the rapid growth of which had speedily filled the gaps that time had made in the avenue.A peasant was raking up the nuts, though they seemed to me to be uneatable.“They are for my beasts,” he explained.I at once proceeded to question him.“What is the name of this chateau?”“The chateau of the Sleeping Beauty, that is, of the Sleeping Woods.”I could hardly have imagined a name more perfectly responding to the enchantment which had taken possession of me since my entrance into the valley.“Was it not an ancient nunnery?”“Perhaps—once upon a time, long ago. No one knows how long.”“Before the Revolution?”“Long before that. At the Revolution it belonged to the Count.”“What Count?”“Count d’Alligny. The same whose grandson sold it.”“Sold it to whom?”“To M. Cernay, the present owner.”The name Cernay is known to every one nowadays as that borne by the millionaire aviator who has devoted himself to perfecting the aeroplane, and in the train of Bleriot, Latham, the Wrights, has experimented in the conquest of the air. I knew Raymond Cernay personally, having met him in society a few years ago, before he became interested in aviation, and I was proud of the acquaintance. He gave me the impression of a man richly endowed mentally, though perhaps too versatile, one who would find it difficult to fix upon any interest, likely to abandon every attempt if the outcome of it were within easy reach. He had begun to succeed in many things, giving them up, each one, at the first smile of success, as if a mere forecast of glory was all he sought. A few rough-hewn sculptures, the narrative of a journey in the Indies, daring century motor rides, brief scientific investigations had sufficed at that time to win for him a sort of reputation in society for originality. The reputation was fostered by constant change, and appeared to satisfy him, for above all things he valued the celebrity of the drawing room. During the last few years he had disappeared from Paris, doubtless to devote himself all the more fervently to the new passion of aviation.I at once spread out my arms in imitation of a bird.“Cernay—the one who flies?”The man gazed at my pantomime with astonishment. He did not understand. Fame is short-lived. But there might be other Cernays. Pointing to the building I asked:“Does he live here?”“Not much, since his lady died.”“Hisladyis dead? How long ago?”“The grain has been reaped three times.”Then, memory awakening within him, he added:“I who tell you, I carried her to the grave. She was not very heavy, poor thing! But to know she was dead—that took the strength out of your arms and legs. All the villagers came.”By the dates it might be Madame Cernay of whom he spoke. But she had passed away almost unnoticed. Her death, too early though it was, had not awakened such regret in Paris. It had occurred at a distance, in the country, unobtrusively. Raymond Cernay himself had not reappeared after it until the notable week of Rheims, when he had won the prize for altitude by an ascension in regular spirals, like the circles described by some gigantic bird of prey, and amid the applause of a delirious crowd, became in a moment the popular hero.We are always ready to consider reserved persons, who ward off our confidences or fail to accord to our remarks all the importance we ourselves attach to them, as insignificant. This was the epithet with which she who was dead had been characterised in my hearing. My memory could at first revive her only as a colourless, washed out, vanishing figure. Then I vaguely recalled her hair, of many tinted blond, and her limpid eyes, so bright that one might suppose no shadow should ever have dimmed them. She was so reserved or so indifferent that people talked little with her. Once, chance having placed me beside her at a charity concert, I had been struck by an ecstatic expression on her usually pale countenance. Her face was suffused with colour, while on the stage a singer was interpreting, with an orchestral accompaniment, the air in Lulli’s Amadis:O faithful wood, redouble now your shades,You can not be too sombre—nothing fadesToo pale before my own too luckless love.It is an entreaty and supplication to the familiar forest that Lulli develops with a classic regularity, which far from weakening the energy of its musical expression, is in fact strengthened by it. Not a single one of those crude imitations of nature sounds superficial and meaningless, such as the well-known “Murmurs” in Siegfried, marred the air, in which passion is restrained by purity, and by consciousness of its own danger; but its ardour is none the less felt for not being expressed in outcry and convulsive rhythm. Mme. Cernay at my side was veritably living again the sentiments of the great poem. The episode gave me an intuitive conviction that the imputation of insignificance put upon her by society to justify its neglect of her, was false. I recalled it now. Still she had either little conversational power, or cared little to use it; she never sought the slightest display of culture. She kept her impressions to herself. Certainly no one ever saw her posing, nor ever practising the slightest deception, as other women in society do, putting on knowledge of art like a new headdress.I don’t know whether it was due to some dim conviction, or to curiosity now, that I asked the good man who had thus far been my informant:“Where is the graveyard?”The avenue crossed the country road by which I had come, and no doubt ended in a terrace, for at its extremity I could perceive nothing more of the near landscape, but only the slope of the distant mountain on the border of the valley. The road crossed the Cernay property, one of those expropriations, no doubt, which make no account of the decorative value of private estates. The peasant indicated the direction by a gesture.“Over there.”At the entrance of this part of the avenue were two granite columns, once evidently intended as supports for an iron chain, which, rusty and disused, was lying on the ground between them. I remounted my machine and urged it on over the rustling leaves. There were so many that I sank among them, and needed to take care not to be tripped up. Beyond the last two oaks I found, as I had expected, a terrace, from which, as from a balcony, one overlooked the deep valley. A pool in the hollow reflected the light of day, doubling the glory of the landscape, its banks of serried reeds, so close as to conceal their separate pliancy, forming a long golden barrier.This was what I saw at first, as from a window one first sees the opposite distance and later takes in the nearer features of the scene. When I looked closer I perceived beside me on the right a chapel, and on the left, against a hillock, the little graveyard for which I was looking.What a charming, sunny little graveyard it was! Girdled with a newly whitewashed wall, overrun with wild plants, it had the look rather of a deserted garden patch than of a cemetery. Here and there a cross pierced the thick green, making itself the trellis for some shrub. The lovely coral clusters hanging from one or two roan trees achieved an aspect almost of gaiety for the little enclosure. Sloping gently and with a fine exposure it seemed quite literally a tiny garden plot. It invited to terrestrial rest, not the eternal repose of death. No idea of the end of things was in this place.I wanted to sun myself on the wall there like a lizard, and had to resist the temptation. I entered, and before I realised it was searching for the grave of some one I hardly knew. The monument of the Allignys, crenelated like a fortress and crowned with a truncated pillar, first caught my eye. Happily the passing of this ancient family had given nature and the audacious weeds an opportunity to make successful headway against man’s domination. No other monument looked down upon these flower beds. Was the millionaire Cernay, noted for his love of pomp, so neglectful of his wife’s memory? No—at last a very simple tombstone, hardly higher than the weeds, showed me an inscription, though I could read it only by raising the ivy beneath which it lay half hidden:RAYMONDE CERNATBORN MAIRIEUXTWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD.How potent is the idea of youth! The mere reminder of her years upon this tombstone gave at once to the neglected plot its touch of glory and majesty. With an involuntary gesture I removed my hat. Not less mechanically I turned to go. If the forest had flung down the last of its beautiful flower-tinted leaves dead upon the ground in the meantime I should not have been surprised. I had felt too keenly my experiences of the morning: it was as if now, in a gust of wind, I felt the passing by of death.On my return, as my old man was still raking up his chestnuts, I resumed my questions:“Can one visit the chateau?”“Ask the steward.”“Where is he?”In reply he simply pointed to the lodge.The land steward received me in a glass-enclosed dining room which resembled a conservatory. It opened upon the woods, though the trees were not near enough to shut out the air. An invitation to rest there could not but be most agreeable. I was at once politely invited to drink and smoke, for my host was at the moment filling his pipe, with an open bottle of white wine at his elbow. The sun shone upon his half-filled glass in sparkles of dull gold.“You see,” he explained, “I have already made my rounds on horseback this morning.”I too had been in the saddle all the morning, and so I accepted his invitation to fellowship. He was a man of some sixty years, holding himself a little too upright, as if to resist a tendency to stoop. He had the ruddy skin of those who live much in the open air, a colour emphasised by his white hair. One would have taken him, at a first glance, for an old cavalry officer worn out in the service. But he showed nothing of that apparent assurance acquired by the habit of command. His blue eyes had a confiding expression such as one used to see in those of young girls. I was prepared, from our first libation in common, to find a certain familiarity, but not the air of distinction and total absence of pose, the nobility of manner, unobtrusive and innate, that shrouded his simplicity as a tower in ivy. He bore the true hallmark of ancient lineage. In neither his person nor his speech was there anything superficial.At first he met my request with a refusal. To begin with there was nothing to see in the chateau. But he had hardly made the statement when, as if from an instinctive horror of falsehood, he corrected himself with an exception: perhaps a few old tapestries and pieces of furniture, and a small Italian painting, no bigger than that, representing an Annunciation. At once, I knew not why, perhaps because of his very reserve, a strong desire to see the interior of the chateau took possession of me, and I repeated my request, pleading my acquaintance with M. Cernay.“That is another thing. I will take you,” he said.In the avenue I expressed regret that I should not see the owner, adding:“But he seldom comes here.”“Oh, no,” said my friend. “He will be here in a few days. He always spends the month of November here. He comes before All Saints’ Day, on account of my daughter.”“Of your daughter?”The steward looked at me in some surprise.“Did you not know that he married my daughter, and that we have lost her?”There was no ostentation in the reminder, only a deep sadness. I told him of my visit to the graveyard.“Could you find her grave? It is hidden among the others.”“Yes, only an ivy covered stone. But there is so much of youth in the inscription that it goes to the heart.”“My wife would have liked a different monument. But it is enough.”The cloister surrounding the chateau, with the purity of its arches, over which vines and clematis clambered at will, was a joy to see.“It is all that remains of the ancient nunnery,” my guide explained. “The nunnery was abandoned in the seventeenth century for another religious house, larger and more severe, that of Saint Hugo, and the family of the Count d’Alligny took possession. The present Count sold the estate to M. Cernay. I had been steward in his day. He lost all his money at the gaming table; he cared for nothing so much as play. He was an excellent man.”“What has become of him?”“He is in command of the four soldiers of the Prince of Monaco, and having not a sou to lose he looks on while other men ruin themselves. The occupation diverts him. And yet I had administered his estate well. But he cared nothing for the land. No one cares for the land any more.”“Not you?”“Oh, I! I have walked these woods so long that I know every tree of them. I used to walk here so much with my daughter when she was a little girl.”The memory of his daughter visibly obsessed him. Was it that he wished to remind me of her brilliant marriage? Hardly: because he seemed, as I have said, so utterly free from snobbery.We found ourselves in the dwelling rooms, and he pointed to a portrait.“When she used to run the country with me she was not so pale and thin.”I recognised her pallor, a bloodlessness which the artist’s palette had not flattered. In the sumptuous ball dress in which she was tricked out her bare arms and shoulders seemed to embarrass her. One felt that they were cold, and almost looked to see the goose flesh. To this impression of discomfort the eyes added an impression of timidity, almost of fear. For a moment I thought that it was a sort of ecstasy which held her thus rigid—had I indeed not seen her almost shivering, listening to the air from Amadis? Examining the portrait more closely I attributed the expression to fear—excessive modesty or secret wretchedness, a mystery now unfathomable, one which the artist had either penetrated or unconsciously revealed. She reminded one of those portraits of Spanish Infantas whose youth seems stifled by etiquette and tight lacing. Presently I discovered another resemblance.By way of showing some degree of sympathy, I asked:“You lost her so early: of what malady did she die?”“No one knows.”The tone of the reply was so full of pain that I involuntarily coupled his enigma with that of the portrait.Just then I discovered the small Italian picture which the steward had mentioned, and hastened to ask for a better light upon it. It was an Annunciation, somewhat dark in tone, but surprisingly delicate, and easily to be attributed to the school of da Vinci. The subject was treated in the manner of that Ufizzi Annunciation in Florence in which people have found the special mark and stamp of the master’s style. The angel has just delivered his message: he has spoken, and now he bends the knee before the future mother of God. How touching she is in her surprise, her modesty and embarrassment! She crosses her hands upon her breast, as if to hold in check a heart that would leap from its resting place. She cannot refuse so high an honour, yet she feels herself unworthy; she is happy; and yielding under the burden of divine love she offers to God her readiness to endure the suffering that is to come.I stood long before this picture, deeply moved by it: it was so perfect, so full of grace. Then a resemblance began to force itself upon me. The countenance of Mme. Cernay incontestably recalled that emotion, that modest embarrassment. She might have posed long ago for that portrait of the Virgin. There was the same tender grace, the same elongation of the throat, the same slimness and even the same light in the startled eyes. I remarked the fact aloud.“My son-in-law bought this canvas because of the resemblance of which you speak,” said M. Mairieux.“It is striking.”“No doubt.”And the steward turned his head towards his trees, as if under the influence of a sadness which he would fain hide from me, and which it was not for me to fathom.By a refined delicacy, and as if anticipating probable comments, he took pains as we descended the stairs to dwell upon the generosity of his son-in-law, which I might have questioned on seeing that he himself retained his subordinate functions.“We do not live in the chateau, my wife and I, though M. Cernay has begged us to do so. Why should we change our way of life? In this great building I should not feel at ease as in our lodge: we should need too large a household. And he won’t let me render the accounts of the estate to him; he pretends that the revenues are so small and hard to collect. He gave me my horse Zeno, which is of Farbeo pedigree, strong and sturdy as I like a horse to be. Did you not see him as I came in from my ride?”“You had come in before my arrival.”“Would you like to see him in his box?”Condescendingly I accompanied him to the stable and admired the hind quarters of an ill-tempered brown beast which seemed more than willing to kick me. His owner calmed him with cajoling words, as a personage accustomed to flattery.“There is not a gentler animal,” he assured me. “When I am on Zeno’s back, and in the Maiden’s Wood, I let myself live in my memories.”In friendly wise he detailed his present pleasures. No doubt his country instincts would have found satisfaction in the monotonous administration of the estate, but for the tragedy caused in his peaceful existence by the untimely death of his daughter. A question came to my lips.“Madame Cernay left no child?”“Yes, indeed, a daughter, Dilette,” he answered. “Our little Dilette. My son-in-law entrusts her to us in the summer. In winter she needs more sunshine than we can give her here, on account of the trees. She will soon go away with her father. It is not a cheerful thought. See! There she is!”A child of six or seven years, with long hair flying, was at the moment crossing the greensward. Lightly she skipped along, her feet hardly touching the ground, like a bird learning to fly. The moment she saw me she ran away. My host smiled, approving and disapproving at once.“She is shy,” he said, “as her mother was.”I was about to take my leave, when he earnestly begged me to come into the house.“Madame Mairieux would be charmed to receive you,” he said.I excused myself to the best of my ability, pleading the early hour, my bicycle costume. He would not let me off, and I perceived from his kindly pertinacity that a scolding would be his lot should he permit his wife to be defrauded of a visit—a rare event in these parts, no doubt. I was therefore admitted to the presence of Mme. Mairieux, who, I assumed, had been watching me, not without some ill-humour, from the window, since we found her at that early hour all tricked out in silk and lace; unless, indeed it might be her Sunday garb she had on. She was certainly endowed with charm and Conversational ability, though the charm was a bit affected and the conversation that of the fashion papers and the women’s magazines. I at once made a distinction in favour of her husband, though he kept silence and appeared to be dominated by her. She talked intimately of “Raymond,” and, not without a certain satisfaction, of the chateau in which they might live whenever it pleased them so to do.“But M. Mairieux detests luxury and even comfort. And M. Mairieux must be heard too, for he will hear no one.”I turned toward M. Mairieux, who made no protest. Possibly he was endowed with that gentleness possessed by obstinate folk, who quietly escape from everything that does not accord with their pleasure. The want of harmony between the pair was patent, but, contrary to first appearances, the reins of government were in the husband’s hands.Mme. Mairieux confirmed the report of M. Cernay’s approaching arrival. “He always comes for All Saints’ Day,” she said.And when for the second time I spoke of my visit to the graveyard she asked me if I did not deem her daughter’s tombstone very mean. She would have desired a larger monument, a colonade, a broken vase, a weeping angel; at least something that might be seen from a distance and would speak of grief.“No, no,” interposed M. Mairieux, “a stone is enough.”My leave-taking was quite a ceremony. I was about to occupy quarters in the neighbourhood, at the hunting lodge of Sylve-Benite, where I was to find my baggage. I promised to return and renew my acquaintance with M. Cernay, who was to be duly informed of my proximity. Just as I was bestriding my machine, little Dilette again crossed the court on the run, her long hair floating upon the breeze like wings. With this vision before me I turned my back upon the chateau of the Maiden of the Wood.Was this in Savoy? In Dauphine? I have forgotten to say. But what does it matter? I recall to mind a ballad with the recurring refrain:Was it in Brittany? Was it in Ireland?Perhaps in the land of the King of Thule.If I am not more definite every one will think it was in Savoy!One evening about five o’clock as I came in from the chase, a hare in my game bag, a fine fatigue in my legs and my stomach empty down to my heels, I found an urchin awaiting me at Sylve. He was the bearer of a pressing letter from Mme. Mairieux, begging me to dine with her on the sudden and unannounced arrival of her son-in-law. Between Sylve Benite and the Maiden of the Wood there are two good leagues. In case of need one can cover three-quarters of the distance on the bicycle by a bad road, which shakes one to pieces, and I should greatly have preferred to be spared such a night march, and remain peacefully in my lair, where the soup was already simmering over the fire. But an inexplicable impulse of curiosity or vanity urged me to visit Raymond Cernay—the victor of Bethany.“Very well, I will go,” said I to the small messenger. “Go on ahead. I will change my clothes and overtake you with my machine.”He smiled with a knowing air, for he was riding an old nag which it might not be easy to distance. In fact, I did not see him again. When I descended the avenue the chateau with its cloister was half buried in obscurity, lighted at but a single window. I rang at the lodge: which on the other hand was resplendent with light. I had put on my most elegant hunting suit, but I regretted the lack of formality when I saw Mme. Mairieux in great pomp of toilette and her husband ill at ease in a frock coat which he must have exhumed with difficulty from the wardrobe in which it had been buried. I was beginning to dread M. Cernay’s dinner coat, when I was informed with no little embarrassment that he would not be of the party.“He begs you to excuse him,” explained Mme. Mairieux. “An indisposition. The long journey—”The steward, more sincere, came out with the truth:“He desires to be alone. He always shuts himself up thus the first few days. I told my wife how it would be.”“And your granddaughter,” I asked. “Will she hide again?”“Dilette? She was here just now. She ran away when she saw you. She was afraid of you. Faces frighten her, but danger, never.”“Do you know where she is?”“In her usual place I’ll wager, perched upon the cloister wall, waiting for some adventure to come to pass—an apparition of angels, or the arrival of a knight on horseback. Wait a little: perhaps I can persuade her to come.”M. Mairieux returned with the fugitive, whom he had succeeded in taming. The grandfather and grandchild had no doubt come to understand one another by their walks in the forest together. I looked more closely at the child, of whom I had barely caught a glimpse on my first visit. Her hair, golden at the ends of the curls, paler blond on her head, fell unconfined far down her back. She was small and slight with legs and arms of no size at all, and yet her slightest motion revealed the easy play, the facile grace of the swift runner. Her dark eyes, at once limpid and deep, like still water pools, encircled by shade, the transparency of which serves no purpose, were wide open, and far too shy for the eyes of a child. Had her mother transmitted to her some of that mysterious fear that haunted her?I paid systematic court to this little girl of six and a half years. At coffee she handed me sugar, remembered to remove my empty cup, and shortly after she was perched upon my knee. Proud indeed I was of the conquest.“It is surprising,” remarked Mme. Mairieux, somewhat disconcerted by the importance which I attached to the incident.But her husband was unreservedly delighted with my attentions to Dilette. As for Dilette, she would not go to bed. Only a scolding could detach her from the place to which I had enchained her with stories.“You’ll tell me some more, won’t you, Sir?”“Surely.”“Stories with afraid in them?”We parted the best friends in the world.* * *Two days later, passing that way, gun on shoulder, I perceived her slim little figure in the part of the avenue that leads to the graveyard. It stood out sharply against the sunlit arch. She was kicking her feet through the dead leaves, which rose as it were in a wave before her. All the golden autumn was pouring itself in light upon the child, and all unknowingly she adapted herself to it, miraculously. When she saw me she darted to one side and would have hidden behind the oaks. I called to her, reassuringly:“Dilette, don’t you know me?”She stopped at the sound of my voice: in two or three leaps, like a young greyhound, she was beside me.“Have you run away, Dilette?”“No, papa is over there with flowers.”“With flowers?”“Yes, that he is taking to mamma.”“And you?”“I got tired of it. So he told me to go back.”“All alone?”“This is our place, and I know it all.”She gravely led me toward the chateau when it appeared that I was minded to join Cernay.“We mustn’t disturb papa. He doesn’t like any one to talk to him when he is there.”“Very well, let us go.”We installed ourselves upon the low cloister wall, Dilette with her legs swinging, I leaning against a pillar under the pendant sprays of the wild vines whose reddening leaves clambered over the arches.“Now,” she said, “a story, quick!”Rapidly I reviewed in mind my repertory of myths and legends, choosing from it a touching version by Tennyson of an ancient ballad. Do you know it perhaps? If not I must tell it to you too. Try to imitate Dilette and listen very quietly, for it is necessary to follow this story if you would understand what is to come in my book.* * *THE STORYThe eyes of the little shepherdess were fastened upon the picture which the poor painter who had lately come to the village was making at the edge of the forest. Upon a square of canvas no bigger thanthathe had put everything one could see,—or almost everything. How could he do it? It was wonderful!He gave the last stroke of the brush, then turned and looked into her face as if he would like to carry it away with him. She was the prettiest and best girl in all the country-side.“You are beautiful,” he said; “did you know it?”She laughed gaily as if pleased.“The fountain told me so,” she said.“Did it tell you something else?”“What else?”“That you please me?”And he added, softly: “Will you be my wife?”She turned her face away, trembling with happiness, for she loved him secretly.“Yes,” she murmured.They were married in the village church. But before leading her to their home, a little thatched cottage on the edge of the wood, he turned toward the fields:“Let us take a walk, while the sun shines,” he said; “we can go home when evening comes. Shall we go to the great castle, away over there? I have heard wonderful things about it. You have never seen it, have you?”She smiled disdainfully.“I would not exchange our little home for it,” she said.But he asked again: “Don’t you want to see the castle?”“I want whatever you want,” she said.They went beyond the end of the parish and through the gate of a park into a long shady avenue of ancient oaks. Far away at the end of the avenue they could see the castle. Evening was coming on; the branches of the trees leaned kindly over them. The birds were singing, but they heard only their own hearts.As they drew near the castle, the dogs came running out.“I am afraid,” she said.“With me?”But the dogs barked joyfully and licked the young man’s hands.“Why, they know you!” she said.“I have been here sometimes,” he answered.They went up the steps of rose-coloured marble.“We may go in,” he said. “Visitors are allowed.”They went in, and he showed her all the glories of the palace. While he was pointing out the beauty of the pictures and furniture, the convenience and luxury of the rooms, she was all the time thinking of the little white cottage among the trees. They would be going there soon. He had showed it to her the evening before, saying: “Here is the fireside where we shall warm ourselves when winter comes. It is small and mean, but love is enough for us, is it not?” Yes, love was enough. She would love him so tenderly that he would never think again of this fine castle, to which he had no right to bring her.He saw that she was not noticing what he showed her.“What are you thinking of?” he asked.“Of you,” she said, simply.They had reached the great drawing room, where there were windows upon all sides through which one could see the trees and fountains of the park. The sun was setting, and the mirrors reflected its last rays.“It is getting late,” she whispered. “Shall we go home?”He bowed low before her, smiling.“This castle is yours, Madame.”The vast room echoed with the young wife’s merry laugh.“Mine!”He replied gravely:“Yes, yours. I am the Lord of Burleigh. All that I have is yours, with my heart.”She turned pale and was obliged to lean against the wall, near the window. The view from it, at that sunset hour, was full of peaceful beauty. Far away, the little white cottage reflected the sunlight.“Alas!” she murmured softly, as if her happiness was gone.“I chose you before all others,” he went on, “because you are beautiful and good. And I wanted to win your love apart from my rank and fortune.”Until then he had always said “thou” to her, as the country people did, but now he was saying “you.”“Why did he so suddenly stop saying ‘thou,’” she whispered to herself. But not wishing to disappoint him, she smiled upon him sweetly, though with sadness.She soon became mistress of herself, and acted as I was fitting in her new estate. But every evening when she was alone, she would stand weeping, at the window from which she could see the little white cottage among the trees.“Ah,” she would think, “if only he were still the poor, proud artist who could put all the country-side upon a square of canvas, and bounded our horizon with his love of me!”Soon she began to pine away. Not doctors, nor journeys to new places, nor amusements, nor all the attention and comforts that money could buy were to make her strong again. One summer evening, like that on which she had first come to the castle, she leaned her head against the window casing and closed her lovely eyes for ever.“We cannot tell of what disease she died,” said the doctors.“But I know,” said the Lord of Burleigh, bowed down with grief.Then he called to her attendants: “Put her in her wedding gown. The simple woollen dress which she wore when she came Here, that she may rest in peace.”* * *I realise that this was hardly a story for a little girl of six or seven; a tale of disillusionment, rather; of use in discouraging the ambitious,—if the ambitious trouble themselves about the poets—teaching the beauty of a humble lot in an age when every one is envious of his neighbour and eager to push himself into the foreground. But a whole flood of questions and comments from Dilette explained and embellished it.What is an outskirt?A thatched cottage?An horizon?A doctor who does not understand sickness?etc.—I admit, too, that the ending is sad enough, and that when Dilette demanded some changes, in particular a happier conclusion, I should have been willing to revive my heroine, if the angry man who intervened had given me time. I admit whatever you wish. But certainly all this did not warrant the scolding I received from Raymond Cernay, who had crept silently behind the cloister wall, and now sprang up so abruptly that he both frightened and shocked us.“Leave that child alone, if you please!”I am telling the exact truth: he spoke to me thus rudely. In a second I was on my feet, angry, and my face crimson. My first words challenged him without regard for politeness.Now I ask you whether any man has a right to behave in this way to a person who is taking enough interest in his progeny to sit on top of a wall and teach her English ballads. Dilette, herself, although she did not dare say anything, suffered from the paternal injustice. Such a lack of courtesy, she realised, was not likely to help our future relations. Cernay turned to his daughter.“Go find your grandfather and say good-night to this gentleman who has been trying to entertain you.”This pacified me somewhat, and still more the gracious good-night that Dilette purposely emphasised. When the child had gone, Cernay appeared to hesitate over his course; then he resolutely commenced a strange catechism, to which, I confess, I submitted with a bad grace, for his ridiculous injunction still rang in my ears.“How do you know what happened?” he began.“What do you mean?” I retorted.“What happened in my home. Who told you?”“I do not understand,” I answered.“You understand very well—but the heroine of your story did not die as you said. Her husband killed her. Her husband, do you understand? But of course you know that—only you did not want to say so to my little girl. You were very wise—I was there, I heard every word—and I should not have allowed you to go on. One does not talk to a child about her mother’s unhappiness.”My anger left me. Cernay was evidently crazy. He had suddenly imagined that he was Lord Burleigh. His experiments in aviation, which taxed too heavily his daring and presence of mind, possibly also, his disappointment and isolation, had unsettled his mind. In order not to provoke him, I decided to humour him.“Follow me,” he commanded imperiously.The prospect was not very reassuring. Night was falling and I did not care for a walk in the country with an individual who gave every evidence of being demented.He led me, however, directly to the garden-like grave of Madame Cernay, whence the mingled fragrance of the flowers rose to us, though the gathering dusk obscured their colours. There, my companion became lost in his memories. Forgetting my presence and his own pride, he permitted at intervals a kind of wail of agony to escape him. Yet I was not greatly affected by this manifestation of despair, because, dreading some more dangerous happening, I devoted my attention to a close watch upon his movements. When he had grown calmer, he was to astonish me still more. We were walking back up the avenue through the night, when at last he decided to speak:“I was at fault just now,” he said. “Forgive me. That story which you were telling my daughter—I don’t know where you found it.”“In Tennyson,” I hastened to reply, in order to clear myself of my unknown offence.“It caused me much pain.”“You?” I asked.“It is so much like my own,” he replied.This, then, was the explanation of his distress. I had attributed it to madness but it was really only the expression of a protracted agony, of a secret that had been kept too long and was now perhaps ripe for confidence. He continued to accuse himself in broken phrases.“It was I who killed her, do you understand? Some murderers are less cruel. They only strike once. They do not kill gradually, by a slow fire. She forgave me. And I—instead of expiating my crime, I am preparing to commit another. Oh, I hoped, I dared, to take up my life again. Since my return here, the past has gripped me, possessed me absolutely again, and I feel a savage pleasure in coming back to it—”Without any farewell, he turned away, in what direction I could not tell. Night enveloped us. I lost sight of him almost immediately, and returned to my quarters at Sylve-Benite, surprised and dumbfounded by such an unexpected revelation, a revelation which the future was so strangely to fulfil.* * *After a farewell day of fairly good shooting I prepared to leave Sylve-Benite, despite the peace and quiet that I had enjoyed there, and I was collecting my luggage when Raymond Cernay called upon me. He charged up at a full gallop, on M. Mairieux’s horse, and the hardy animal must have been pushed beyond reason for he was badly blown. It was five or six days after our singular meeting. Cernay noticed my preparations and demanded abruptly:“You are leaving.”“As you see,” said I.“Where are you going?”“I am going home.”“Is it necessary?”“We must always go home in the end.”“But nobody is waiting for you?”“No, nobody.”“Very well, then, I will take you with me.”“Where?”“To the chateau. You can stay there several days, as long as you wish. Your luggage is ready. Come.”I was so far from expecting this invitation that I had myself thrown away all pretexts for declining. Nevertheless I was determined to refuse it, the more so on account of the peremptory way in which it was given, much as a millionaire with money to spare might throw down a little cash. “Come, now,” he seemed to say, “strap up your valise, you are wanted.” Without troubling my conscience, therefore, I invented some pressing obligations.“But just now you did not mention any of those things,” he said.“I had not thought, then,” I replied.Raymond Cernay made an angry movement. Apparently he did not admit the possibility of the least opposition from any one, or possibly he was in a highly nervous condition.“No, no, no,” he repeated, “you will come.”“I am exceedingly sorry.”“I wish it.”I could not keep from smiling as I listened to him storming, ordering and commanding. He was ashamed of making an exhibition of his temper, and he changed his tone with a promptitude that amazed and touched me.“Yes,” he said. “I am not yet chastened. Shall I ever be? It is not easy when one has taken the wrong turn from childhood. I always knew that I could satisfy every one of my whims, and so I could not endure opposition. Even misfortune does not always succeed in humbling us. You must excuse my brusqueness.”Then he added, pleadingly:“Won’t you come with me. They are waiting for you, M. and Mme. Mairieux, and Dilette especially. Dilette wants you. She asks every one for stories, stories like yours. I cannot tell them to her; I have never learned them.”“Ah, Dilette wants me.”He dwelt upon his daughter’s wishes, until out of respect to my wild little friend, whom I was proud to have conquered, I permitted myself to be convinced, or rather to be carried off, for we left without delay, he on Zeno and I on my bicycle. My luggage would be sent for. That evening I was installed in the chateau.* * *I sincerely believe that my arrival there was a pleasure to every one. The atmosphere pervading the chateau was troubled with mists which the presence of a stranger might perhaps succeed in dissipating. I am not speaking only of Dilette, who bounded to welcome me like a dog wild with joy, but also of M. and Mme. Mairieux, who despite their long life together had neither feelings nor opinions in common, and above all of Raymond Cernay, who, to all appearances was not in a state of mental equilibrium. He had urged his daughter as a pretext to secure me, when in fact he sought assistance for himself.For the first few days he monopolized me. The emptiness or the bitterness of his life he lightened with fishing, shooting, riding, and walking. He had long since retired from all intercourse with other men. Hitherto his unhappiness, his mechanical studies, his experiments and his flights had sufficed to interest him. Now, however, yielding to his old taste for society, or perhaps simply to the thousand and one charms and attractions of everyday life, which does not long permit us to defy it, he felt the need of a companion and sought one. His daughter he surrounded with an almost passionate affection, yet he did not know how to talk with her as one talks with a child. He recognised this and left her, not without sorrow, to M. Mairieux, who understood both the child’s bursts of confidence and her reserve. I noticed, not without surprise, the respect that Cernay showed his father-in-law, though he exhibited too such embarrassment in the older man’s presence that of his own accord he kept out of his way.I soon believed that I had found the explanation of his character. Out of conjugal loyalty he imposed upon himself each year one month of solitude in this dwelling in the heart of the woods, and little by little the solitude became intolerable to him. Boredom preyed upon him, he turned about in his prison like a tiger in a cage. I supplied him with a diversion. He was faithful to the grief in his heart, to his abiding love. But, then, what can one expect? He did not know how to feast upon his sorrow, how to satiate himself with it. Few people do. Introspection had played but a small part in his life. His days had been consumed by the need of physical activity. Within him a similar fever had devoured that tender affection which was most dear to him, and he was grief-stricken at his helplessness to fan its ashes into flame.Thus I analysed his restlessness. I deceived myself thoroughly, it afterwards appeared; but how could I then have perceived its complex causes?* * *In the course of our walks I noticed the minute and prolonged study that he invariably bestowed upon the sky before we started. He was skilled in interpreting the form and movements of the clouds; those cumuli, lying on the horizon like snow hills, would dissolve in rain; these parasites hanging upon the summits of the mountains heralded a storm. I saw him sniff the air, examining it, one might say, as a hunter studies the depths of the woods and inhales their odour, or a fisherman scrutinises the mysteries of the water.“It is the enemy,” he confided to me one day. “It is invisible and formidable. Before attacking it, we must try to understand it.”I knew that he was thinking of his flying machines, and while we walked on to a neighbouring pond, I questioned him about the origin of his sudden interest in aviation.“It is no sudden interest,” he explained. “I have always loved the conquest of space. The same motor drives the automobile and the aeroplane. Is not the rudder for the air much like that which steers a sailboat at sea? One grows out of the other. But what does the sensation of speed amount to, compared with the satisfaction of springing free from the soil and attaining true liberty at last? And the field is infinite.”I listened without interrupting him, knowing that he was interested only in his own visions.“Shedid not dissuade me when I thought of it before.” (He did not mention his wife more directly.) “To her, work was the glory of man. ‘I am afraid,’ she said to me, ‘but I will pray. A woman can afford to be afraid.’The other, at Rheims, always cried to me to go higher.”What other? I abandoned any attempt to understand this unexplained allusion. On several previous occasions I had questioned his incoherent remarks. This time it was better not to interrupt him.“After I lost her, I endured days of agony. I should have been glad to punish myself, to scourge myself.”Again I found trembling on his lips the same confession of some mysterious guilt which had come when he heard “The Lord of Burleigh.” Here was the secret that tormented him. After a moment’s hesitation he went on:“Even in the greatest suffering, the desire for life keeps its power. It seemed to me that danger would bring me nearer to her and at the same time in danger there is an exaltation which carries you one does not know where. Perhaps my vocation, as you call it, is due to that. Some old investigations and scientific studies had prepared me for it. I have perfected somewhat the work of others, but I have not yet invented anything. My merit is unimportant. Do not exaggerate it. Only good luck and a certain audacity have enabled me to attain interesting results. Ah, if I could discover some automatic way to assure lateral stability, that would be another story.”Our path ended in the reeds along the bank of the pond. He cast loose the boat that was moored there, and I took the oars, while he steered. After we had pushed off, he continued:“The monoplane which I use I have named for her, but nobody knows it. Very soon I shall not have the right to do so.”Why would he not have the right?I inquired about his experiments in altitude.“I must fly high,” he replied. “It is an irresistible fascination, a necessity. Above my two wings, I possess the infinite. The air surrounds me, bathes me, caresses me, as this water does our boat. I forget the noise of the motor, the buzzing of the propeller. Energy clamours within me. My wings shift about, like extended arms, to ensure control. A horseman is no more one with his living mount than I am with my machine. I experience a new calm, a peace like that of religion. She is with me, she does not speak, she smiles. She is no longer a victim of the fear that paralysed her on earth. It is just as if I were carrying her to her heaven. I am quite sure that I shall never again cause her any harm. As long as my flight lasts, I am scarcely a separate being from her. Between my suspended life and her invisible one, there is no longer anything but a thin veil.—But we fly too seldom. The machines need incessant repairing.”In the very act of describing his sensations to me, he had forgotten me. It was to himself, rather than to me, that he continued:“Some wood and linen, a little steel, and a few wires, and you have an arrow with which to cleave the air. It is not complicated. And yet, how much study, how much preparation and effort in order to fly a few hours, a few hours without touching earth, while we do not take the trouble to learn to know a soul which trusts itself to us, which would carry us equally high in life, if we understood it.”Expressed though it was in incoherent phrases, his exaltation won me, and I begged him some day to take me with him. But he refused with unexpected violence.“Do not ask me that. I have never carried a single passenger. My solitude is necessary to me, the comforting solitude of space. The Rheims woman asked me to take her. She wished to drive away theother. Ah, I used to think that some day I would break my wings while in full flight. It would have been a good end, and so easy, nothing but the cutting of a rope. Nobody would have suspected. But it is impossible. It would mean betraying the machine, allowing a false suspicion to rest upon it. It can play false: the man it carries—no.”I laid down the oars. He had already abandoned the rudder, and we drifted with the current. Seated in the back of the boat, he stared down at our wake. Thoughts of death or madness accompanied us like sombre birds. From that moment I began to alter my opinion of the intensity of his memories, in which remorse for some crime showed itself clearly.We returned almost in silence. I had not dared to question him and he was absorbed in himself.* * *The next day I waited in vain for him to take the walk which we had planned. He did not leave his room until the luncheon bell rang, and at table uttered nothing but a few insignificant remarks. Without Dilette, with whom I talked and laughed, and M. and Mme. Mairieux, who took their meals at the chateau while their son-in-law was there, we should not have exchanged twenty sentences during the whole luncheon.* * *In the afternoon he again isolated himself, and on the succeeding days I saw no more of him. Did he avoid me because he thought he had told me too much, too much and not enough? At first I believed this to be the case, and without making any explanations, I informed Mairieux that I was about to leave. Of what use was it to remain?“No,” he urged, “do not affront him that way.”“He would not notice my absence,” I said.“Listen,” replied M. Mairieux. “For one or two weeks last year he was so depressed that he moved me to pity. Besides, your company will be welcome to us. Wait, I beg of you.”“But what does he do all day?” I asked.We were talking in the carriage road. Raymond Cernay’s apartments consisted of three adjoining rooms on the second story, a library, a study, and a bedroom. The autumn days were so mild that the large bay window of the study was open and we could see him seated at a table, with his head between his hands. He was reading or studying. A ray of light came to me—he disappeared in order to work the better on his monoplanes.“Calculations?” I asked M. Mairieux.“I don’t think so.”In spite of myself, the secret of this man’s life tormented, I was about to say haunted, me. Why at our first meeting had he imagined himself to be the Lord of Burleigh whose wife could not live outside of her own environment? What was there connected with Mme. Cernay for which he blamed himself? Why did he insist upon punishment for some unknown crime or crimes which nobody but he suspected?* * *I fell into the habit of spending the end of each day at the pavilion in order to escape from the morose atmosphere of the chateau. One evening it happened that Mme. Mairieux began to speak freely of her daughter and with deep emotion. Sympathising with her grief, I tried to console her:“At least she was happy,” I murmured.“Was she not?” the good lady replied quickly. “Her husband gave her such a beautiful life, Paris, society, luxury, entertainments, everything that one cares for at her age. It is true that she was not as fond of that sort of thing as most young women are. According to my ideas, she was a little too quiet and serious. It was pleasure, nevertheless, especially after this desert of The Sleeping Woods.”“Thisdesertpleased her,” interrupted M. Mairieux, who did not like this statement.“Perhaps the change was too abrupt,” I suggested.“Oh, no. She never complained of it, and surely she would have told me. In whom would she confide, if not in her mother? I knew her so well, the dear child.”Her husband was obviously and unmistakably growing irritated. He tried to change the subject, but she would have none of it.“During her long illness Raymond was perfect to her,” she persisted. “He came here with her, he gave up all his own affairs, he called in the most celebrated physicians, and now, on top of it all, he accuses himself of not having been a sufficiently devoted husband. To us, who saw him at the time, it is simply madness.”She had reached this point in her eulogy of her son-in-law, when M. Mairieux left the room. I believed that I understood the meaning of his departure: he was protesting silently against his wife’s praises.* * *Cernay’s seclusion led me to frequent the park with the steward and Dilette. M. Mairieux, little by little, as he watched the child skipping ahead and then running back to us like a young greyhound travelling over the same road two or three times, fell into the habit of conjuring up before me an earlier childhood, that of his daughter. He never spoke to me of Mme. Cernay, but constantly of little Raymonde. I learned every detail of her life up to the age of fourteen or fifteen. Beyond that there was silence.His memories kept time with Dilette’s actions. One morning, as she bent over a colchicum, he asked:“Why don’t you pick it?”“It is better there in the grass, grandpa,” she said.This reply seemed to me to affect him beyond measure.“Raymonde,” he explained, “loved flowers in the same way, and never plucked them. She thought them lovelier growing on their stems in the fields. No one could ever get a bouquet from her. It is odd, don’t you think?”But the oddity brought tears to his eyes. At other times he spoke of other characteristics.“I had taken her into the forest at sunset,” he said once. “How old was she? Probably Dilette’s age. The leaves were nearly all gone, it was this time of year. In front of us the tree trunks partly blocked our view of the sun’s red disc. She stretched her little arms towards the disappearing orb and when it had completely vanished, I found her dear face so sad that I began to apologise. ‘I can’t stop the sun, my darling,’ I said. ‘It is a great pity, grandpa,’ she replied with a sigh. Ah, it was a sigh that would break your heart! Would you believe it? That evening I envied Joshua. As a matter of fact, I had as good reason as he for working a miracle. The laughter of a little girl is the dew which refreshes our years. A child who does not laugh seems to be reproaching the one who gave it life.”On this topic he was never silent; now, it was Raymonde’s inborn love for all things, or again, of her running along the forest paths and her abrupt halts, as if she saw some one coming, her charming combination of trust and fear.“She was so timid, so shy,” he said, “that we even determined to send her to boarding school near by, in a convent in the city, in order that contact with companions might accustom her to everyday life. You have no idea of the ceremony that took place before she left. She wished to say good-bye to all the rooms in the house as if they were persons of flesh and blood, and to certain favoured trees and to Stop, the dog, and my horse, and the whole farmyard. She was not absent long. At the end of three days she ran away. She had to climb over a wall, topped with iron spikes. A little of her dress stayed there. Moreover she lost her hat and did not go back to look for it. In this condition she passed through the city somewhat ashamed of her appearance; and ran off at full speed from an old gentleman who began to question her. Once out in the country she was reassured. The city faces did not trouble her any more and those of the peasants gave her confidence, as though she were on familiar ground. So she came back to us on foot, just before nightfall. Have you noticed at the side of the gate a single birch, planted there by chance? It was much smaller then. Raymonde’s first act was to go to this friend and embrace it. From a distance I thought a little pauper girl was coming up the avenue. Stop was already licking her hands, and even her cheeks. And in this beggar I recognised my own daughter.”While he was narrating this memorable Odyssey, M. Mairieux straightened up, he seemed to grow younger, and he smiled. He threw out his leg and walked like a dancing master explaining a step. Then suddenly he fell back into his former attitude, as though ashamed of his spirit. He was recovering from the past a little of its lost happiness.“And how lovely she was at fifteen! Like a ray of golden light, you understand. Curls of changing shades, a fresh complexion of that unsullied white that actually shines, and eyes which it did one good to look at, because you would never imagine that there could be any so pure. There was a little terror in my love for her. She seemed too delicate, too sensitive, and yet I would not have wished her less so. I felt that she would never be happy. I feared for her beforehand. Oh, how right I was!”The last reflection, which escaped involuntarily from his lips, appeared to upset him completely. It coincided too well with the painful allusions of Raymond Cernay not to strike me forcibly. M. Mairieux did not agree with his wife about the conjugal felicity of their daughter. There was a secret here, which a few days later I was destined to learn under tragic circumstances.* * *Bad weather followed the last of the Autumn sunshine. We were prisoners of the rain. A dense fog hid the forest from our sight, and the atmosphere of the chateau became unbearable.Raymond Cernay, buried in his study like an alchemist in his laboratory, occasionally passed like a ghost through a corridor or sat at the table without recognising us, his gaze lost in space. Dilette, not daring to raise her eyes to him, implored my protection. M. and Mme. Mairieux, being in accord on nothing, maintained protracted silences. I determined to take refuge in flight, but the tragedy anticipated me.On the day of which I speak, we were together in the drawing-room after luncheon, sitting almost in silence, like a family whose scattered members have re-assembled in anticipation of a funeral and await the coming of death. The child once more insisted on a story from me, and I protested that I did not know any more. Cernay, who had not yet opened his mouth, descended from his tower of ivory:“And the Lord of Burleigh?”“I have already told that.”But Dilette clapped her hands, and insisted so long and so hard that I began over again the story of the Lord of Burleigh. I attempted to introduce a variation, generously permitting the heroine to recover, but Cernay shocked his daughter by objecting. When I had finished, he asked in a sarcastic voice:“And what happened then to your Lord of Burleigh?”What was the purpose of this embarrassing question?“I don’t know,” I answered at random. “I suppose he went on living.”“Yes,” he announced, in a tone of utter despair that I can still hear. “Yes, one lives.”He rose from his arm-chair at the corner of the hearth, where a fire was sputtering—one of those fires of half-dried wood which char, cry, and smoke. He paced the room two or three times, his pace growing quicker and quicker. His irregular gait and the fixed expression on his face impressed and worried us. Moreover we heard distinctly phrases not intended for us but referring to my story.“He lived—He forgot the evil he had done—Perhaps he married again.”Then, with sudden decision, he rushed to the door and disappeared. We looked at each other wearily. Some moments later we saw him rush bare-headed through the rain and wind, down the avenue of oaks, and disappear in the direction of the forest.We found nothing more to say until Dilette went out to play. Then Mme. Mairieux assumed an air of importance and favoured us with this news:“Listen to me, I know something. He is really going to marry again. He is already engaged.”“How do you know,” demanded her husband.“I read it in the society announcements two days ago.”“Why didn’t you tell me?”“I did not want to give you pain. I was waiting for him to announce it.”“Do you know the name of his fiancée?”“Mlle. Simone de R—. A good family. It is quite right. He is still so young, he is so rich, so prominent, so much sought after. During that week at Rheims the papers did not talk of anybody but him.”“It is not right,” replied M. Mairieux drily.And we relapsed into silence in spite of the desire that possessed Mme. Mairieux to excuse and to justify her son-in-law, to whom, whether from indulgence or admiration, she conceded every privilege.I had instantly connected this information with the obscure allusions to “The Woman at Rheims” and “the other” which had escaped from Raymond Cernay when he had been previously disturbed that day at the pond. Nowadays even young girls are famous and the name of Mlle. Simone de R— was not unknown to me. I had met her two or three times, a tall woman, the effect of height being increased by her way of carrying herself, supple, muscular, possessed of the grace that strength gives, devoted to sport, and a champion at tennis or perhaps polo—I no longer remember exactly—which brought her the honour of having her picture in the illustrated weeklies. She went steadily on her way without coquetry but with the thirst for conquest which is the mark of the new generation. I could easily imagine their introduction at Rheims, she conquered by the boldness of the aviator, he attracted, despite the past, to this beautiful and frank being, who breathed life and promised victory.Two or three hours passed before Raymond Cernay returned, exhausted and drenched, but not calm. The insane look on his face terrified us, as he passed by without noticing our presence.When the bell rang for dinner he did not come down. Going up to his apartment in search of him, I had great difficulty in securing his attention. When I did obtain a reply, it was a flat refusal. Without him the meal was lugubrious, and Mme. Mairieux was quick to withdraw with little Dilette. When we were alone, M. Mairieux confided his fears to me.“I believe I understand him,” he said. “Since his return the past has gripped him again. There are some memories one cannot betray. If you only knew! ... Well, he has not made up his mind about this new marriage. He is tormented, crushed. And it is right that he should be.”Then, either through a deliberate effort at compassion or from an inherent goodness that was stronger than all his bitterness, he added:“His agitation to-night alarms me. You have seen his eyes. He must be watched.”We summoned his valet, Jean, and he admitted that the condition of his master seemed so serious to him that he had not slept for three nights. “M. Cernay,” he said, “was in the habit of immersing himself in his reading or writing until a late hour, and it was not until the early morning that he sought his bed. However, the library adjoined the study and it would be possible to observe him from there without his knowing anything about it.”Preferring to retire late, I claimed the first watch and seated myself silently in the library, close to the communicating door, with a book in front of me to serve as a pretext in case I should be surprised. Outside the closed windows the silence of the country soon grew so marked that I could hear not only my own breathing, but the least movement on the other side of the thin partition which separated us, even the light touch of a sleeve against the arm of a chair. Without doubt he was reading at his table. From time to time I fancied I could catch the rustle of a page as he turned it over. Suddenly he pushed back his chair and began to pace the room with his irregular step. None of his actions escaped me—my ears took the place of my eyes. I was certain that he would open the door, and how was I then to explain my presence there? He stopped. I calculated that he must be in front of the window. Then he appeared to turn the bolt and throw open the glass wings. Only empty space was now in front of him. Anxiety paralysed me. I did not dare interfere; what if my interference should determine him! The few seconds of suspense were filled with agony. At last he left the threshold of the window, but without shutting it, and seated himself again at the table. I could not endure the situation any longer. I preferred to talk to him, to attempt to distract him, anything rather than abandon my reason to his unseen madness. With a great effort, for my legs seemed too weak for their task, I rose and went to the door. I knocked; he did not reply. A second time there was no response. Then I walked in.At first I saw nothing but his back. A portfolio of documents lay open on the table, but he was not reading. Some white paper, covered with geometrical figures, was littered about, but he was not writing. He sat with his head erect, apparently absorbed in his thoughts. Then I perceived in a mirror the reflection of his face. Occasionally, in order to indicate that a sick man is doomed, we use the expression: “he has death in his face.” But a young man in perfect health—how can he bear this stamp? Nevertheless I perceived it clearly. There it was, unmistakable, obvious, threatening, and time stopped for me.I remained motionless behind him as though hypnotised. To shake off the evil influence, I lowered my glance, and an object on the table, which I had not at first noticed, attracted my attention. I was not mistaken. He had a revolver within reach of his hand—and it seemed to me that his arm was reaching toward it.It was no time to hesitate longer. I stepped abruptly and silently forward, and seized the weapon. Raymond Cernay shook his head like one who has received a blow, and remarked with astonishing indifference, as if he had just returned to life:“What are you afraid of? That revolver is not loaded.”Nevertheless I kept it in my hand, for I doubted him.“If you don’t believe me,” he said again, “you can throw it out the open window. I know what I wish to do, and nothing will hinder me from doing it.”Convinced then, I put the revolver back where I had taken it, and apologised, a little ashamed of my interference and ready to retire. But he stopped me.“No, stay, I beg of you,” he said. “I have not yet decided. That can happen any minute.”So I had not deceived myself about his determination after all. He continued in a manner that was both savage and enigmatic.“What I do not want, what I will not have at any price, is to have my inexperience or my machine blamed some day. I have already killed that which I loved; I will not kill my work at the very moment I am perfecting it.”I should have regarded these words as merely incoherent if, by one of those lucid intuitions which in exceptional circumstances guide us like some mysterious instinct, I had not instantly connected them with the less confused utterances of a few days before: “I used to think that some day I would break my wings while in full flight. It would have been a good end, and so easy. Nobody would suspect. But it is impossible. It would mean betraying the machine, allowing a false suspicion to rest upon it. It can play false; the man it carries—no.”He was forearmed against death when its appeal would be most immediate, most alluring, most caressing; the revolver was there to put an end to the temptation if it should become irresistible. This reverence for a sacred work, which I had not expected from Raymond Cernay, formerly so fickle and so easily wearied, threw more light upon that which followed:“A soldier goes on to the end.”But the reason for it all still eluded me. Trembling under the domination of the raging fire that he struggled to restrain within him, he permitted himself fragmentary explanations, which the information imparted by Mme. Mairieux prepared me to comprehend:“I am tormented by an intolerable situation—and there is no way out. I crush my victims under me as I go. I am about, you understand, to cause another misfortune.”Believing that I had divined his meaning, I challenged him brusquely to greater frankness:“Yes, you are divided between the old love and the new.”He bent on me that madman’s look that no one faces willingly.“No love will ever equal mine for Raymonde. No love will ever efface her memory from my life.”I ceased to understand him. After a silence which I did not disturb, he continued:“The week at Rheims was filled with shouts of applause, it was a veritable triumphal progress. You were not there, you cannot imagine it. The boldest hopes accompanied our flights. I had my share of glory. The intoxication of success which I had formerly been so eager to taste even in small measure, exaggerated and magnified now, went to my head and for the moment made me forget. I was introduced to this young girl, who shone with enthusiasm as the windows of an unknown city blaze in the sun. When I came to myself I was her fiancé. Do you know that the day of our marriage has been announced? It is set for next month. Since my return here, I have recognised my mistake. The days have passed; they are passing now, and I am still silent and they are waiting for me. But understand me, it is impossible, it would be monstrous.”He addressed me with increasing violence, and I endeavoured to reassure him. Life holds us captive, I urged, in spite of ourselves. Youth has an aptitude for happiness which may be nothing more than the faculty of beginning over again. He stopped me.“No, no, you don’t understand.”Two manuscript portfolios were lying on the table, one open and the other closed. With a movement that seemed almost inspired, he suddenly picked them up and handed them to me.“Here, read this,” he said. “You will understand then. You will learn that there are silent dramas more tragic than the bloodiest crimes. Now leave me. Good-bye till to-morrow. Oh, don’t fear for me. Your presence this evening has dissipated bad ideas.”It was his secret that I was about to learn.
AMAZED, enraptured, I gazed about me. This, surely, was the very forest of the Sleeping Beauty in the Woods. Suddenly, at a turn of the road, her castle loomed up among the trees, huge and mysterious.
I had been pushing my bicycle, despite its various gears, up a long heavy slope. Once again in the saddle, I had penetrated into a wild valley, a mere gorge at first, then broadening into field and forest, with a pool in the lower distance. The brilliant bouquet that autumn can make if it pleases, of water and trees and bushes massed upon a mountain side, was before me—autumn, the flower time of the woods, when the heaviest burdens have fallen and the spring of trunk and branch and airy foliage show all the indescribable hues of light. Golden lindens, pale elms, ruddy chestnuts, copper horse-chestnuts, rusty oaks, purplish fruit trees, poplars like golden candle-sticks, form under the level rays of sunlight, a fairy train: it is a gay parade that would cause a thrill of joyful amazement, did not the lightest whispering breeze threaten the loss of all the marvellous attire. Dread and pleasure meet in October walks, dread that comes with the pleasure that is fleeting.
It was Sunday, and I had met no one. A village through which I had passed was as if dead. The women were no doubt at church, the men in the wine-shop. From the whole valley, as from a vast deserted garden, arose a perfume of old legend, which I inhaled with rapture. The country here had the look of some deserted park, and I was keen to discover some abandoned habitation in it. Any usual modern villa would have dishonoured this ageless landscape. Nothing would answer my mood but a confusion of ancient stones and wild vines, or at least real ruins, authentic and crumbling.
To tell the truth, it was not ruins that I had perceived on the hillside at the end of the avenue of more than century-old oaks. The avenue led up to a terrace ornamented by urns and stretching all along the front of the house. The urns were empty and no one had thought to mow the grass. The chateau was a large building, with mullioned windows, and a sort of cloister running its entire length, and but for these ivy wreathed arcades would have appeared almost commonplace. The dark tone of its walls gave it an aspect of venerable age, with all the added solitude of silence and the melancholy of the season and the surrounding forest. There it stood, in its own well-sheltered place, presenting its front, as an old man his face, to the warmth of the sun, letting the days flow by. A clump of yellow chrysanthemums and a few climbing roses gave it the look of a faint smile.
I dismounted to enter into communion with this old place. The gate was open; indeed the hinges, being sprung, would not allow it to be shut. A lodge at the entrance was almost hidden among the trees, overwhelmed as with a flood of greenery by their luxuriant growth. As I drew nearer I observed that several oaks had been replaced by horse-chestnuts, the rapid growth of which had speedily filled the gaps that time had made in the avenue.
A peasant was raking up the nuts, though they seemed to me to be uneatable.
“They are for my beasts,” he explained.
I at once proceeded to question him.
“What is the name of this chateau?”
“The chateau of the Sleeping Beauty, that is, of the Sleeping Woods.”
I could hardly have imagined a name more perfectly responding to the enchantment which had taken possession of me since my entrance into the valley.
“Was it not an ancient nunnery?”
“Perhaps—once upon a time, long ago. No one knows how long.”
“Before the Revolution?”
“Long before that. At the Revolution it belonged to the Count.”
“What Count?”
“Count d’Alligny. The same whose grandson sold it.”
“Sold it to whom?”
“To M. Cernay, the present owner.”
The name Cernay is known to every one nowadays as that borne by the millionaire aviator who has devoted himself to perfecting the aeroplane, and in the train of Bleriot, Latham, the Wrights, has experimented in the conquest of the air. I knew Raymond Cernay personally, having met him in society a few years ago, before he became interested in aviation, and I was proud of the acquaintance. He gave me the impression of a man richly endowed mentally, though perhaps too versatile, one who would find it difficult to fix upon any interest, likely to abandon every attempt if the outcome of it were within easy reach. He had begun to succeed in many things, giving them up, each one, at the first smile of success, as if a mere forecast of glory was all he sought. A few rough-hewn sculptures, the narrative of a journey in the Indies, daring century motor rides, brief scientific investigations had sufficed at that time to win for him a sort of reputation in society for originality. The reputation was fostered by constant change, and appeared to satisfy him, for above all things he valued the celebrity of the drawing room. During the last few years he had disappeared from Paris, doubtless to devote himself all the more fervently to the new passion of aviation.
I at once spread out my arms in imitation of a bird.
“Cernay—the one who flies?”
The man gazed at my pantomime with astonishment. He did not understand. Fame is short-lived. But there might be other Cernays. Pointing to the building I asked:
“Does he live here?”
“Not much, since his lady died.”
“Hisladyis dead? How long ago?”
“The grain has been reaped three times.”
Then, memory awakening within him, he added:
“I who tell you, I carried her to the grave. She was not very heavy, poor thing! But to know she was dead—that took the strength out of your arms and legs. All the villagers came.”
By the dates it might be Madame Cernay of whom he spoke. But she had passed away almost unnoticed. Her death, too early though it was, had not awakened such regret in Paris. It had occurred at a distance, in the country, unobtrusively. Raymond Cernay himself had not reappeared after it until the notable week of Rheims, when he had won the prize for altitude by an ascension in regular spirals, like the circles described by some gigantic bird of prey, and amid the applause of a delirious crowd, became in a moment the popular hero.
We are always ready to consider reserved persons, who ward off our confidences or fail to accord to our remarks all the importance we ourselves attach to them, as insignificant. This was the epithet with which she who was dead had been characterised in my hearing. My memory could at first revive her only as a colourless, washed out, vanishing figure. Then I vaguely recalled her hair, of many tinted blond, and her limpid eyes, so bright that one might suppose no shadow should ever have dimmed them. She was so reserved or so indifferent that people talked little with her. Once, chance having placed me beside her at a charity concert, I had been struck by an ecstatic expression on her usually pale countenance. Her face was suffused with colour, while on the stage a singer was interpreting, with an orchestral accompaniment, the air in Lulli’s Amadis:
O faithful wood, redouble now your shades,You can not be too sombre—nothing fadesToo pale before my own too luckless love.
O faithful wood, redouble now your shades,You can not be too sombre—nothing fadesToo pale before my own too luckless love.
O faithful wood, redouble now your shades,You can not be too sombre—nothing fadesToo pale before my own too luckless love.
O faithful wood, redouble now your shades,
You can not be too sombre—nothing fades
Too pale before my own too luckless love.
It is an entreaty and supplication to the familiar forest that Lulli develops with a classic regularity, which far from weakening the energy of its musical expression, is in fact strengthened by it. Not a single one of those crude imitations of nature sounds superficial and meaningless, such as the well-known “Murmurs” in Siegfried, marred the air, in which passion is restrained by purity, and by consciousness of its own danger; but its ardour is none the less felt for not being expressed in outcry and convulsive rhythm. Mme. Cernay at my side was veritably living again the sentiments of the great poem. The episode gave me an intuitive conviction that the imputation of insignificance put upon her by society to justify its neglect of her, was false. I recalled it now. Still she had either little conversational power, or cared little to use it; she never sought the slightest display of culture. She kept her impressions to herself. Certainly no one ever saw her posing, nor ever practising the slightest deception, as other women in society do, putting on knowledge of art like a new headdress.
I don’t know whether it was due to some dim conviction, or to curiosity now, that I asked the good man who had thus far been my informant:
“Where is the graveyard?”
The avenue crossed the country road by which I had come, and no doubt ended in a terrace, for at its extremity I could perceive nothing more of the near landscape, but only the slope of the distant mountain on the border of the valley. The road crossed the Cernay property, one of those expropriations, no doubt, which make no account of the decorative value of private estates. The peasant indicated the direction by a gesture.
“Over there.”
At the entrance of this part of the avenue were two granite columns, once evidently intended as supports for an iron chain, which, rusty and disused, was lying on the ground between them. I remounted my machine and urged it on over the rustling leaves. There were so many that I sank among them, and needed to take care not to be tripped up. Beyond the last two oaks I found, as I had expected, a terrace, from which, as from a balcony, one overlooked the deep valley. A pool in the hollow reflected the light of day, doubling the glory of the landscape, its banks of serried reeds, so close as to conceal their separate pliancy, forming a long golden barrier.
This was what I saw at first, as from a window one first sees the opposite distance and later takes in the nearer features of the scene. When I looked closer I perceived beside me on the right a chapel, and on the left, against a hillock, the little graveyard for which I was looking.
What a charming, sunny little graveyard it was! Girdled with a newly whitewashed wall, overrun with wild plants, it had the look rather of a deserted garden patch than of a cemetery. Here and there a cross pierced the thick green, making itself the trellis for some shrub. The lovely coral clusters hanging from one or two roan trees achieved an aspect almost of gaiety for the little enclosure. Sloping gently and with a fine exposure it seemed quite literally a tiny garden plot. It invited to terrestrial rest, not the eternal repose of death. No idea of the end of things was in this place.
I wanted to sun myself on the wall there like a lizard, and had to resist the temptation. I entered, and before I realised it was searching for the grave of some one I hardly knew. The monument of the Allignys, crenelated like a fortress and crowned with a truncated pillar, first caught my eye. Happily the passing of this ancient family had given nature and the audacious weeds an opportunity to make successful headway against man’s domination. No other monument looked down upon these flower beds. Was the millionaire Cernay, noted for his love of pomp, so neglectful of his wife’s memory? No—at last a very simple tombstone, hardly higher than the weeds, showed me an inscription, though I could read it only by raising the ivy beneath which it lay half hidden:
RAYMONDE CERNATBORN MAIRIEUXTWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD.
RAYMONDE CERNATBORN MAIRIEUXTWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD.
How potent is the idea of youth! The mere reminder of her years upon this tombstone gave at once to the neglected plot its touch of glory and majesty. With an involuntary gesture I removed my hat. Not less mechanically I turned to go. If the forest had flung down the last of its beautiful flower-tinted leaves dead upon the ground in the meantime I should not have been surprised. I had felt too keenly my experiences of the morning: it was as if now, in a gust of wind, I felt the passing by of death.
On my return, as my old man was still raking up his chestnuts, I resumed my questions:
“Can one visit the chateau?”
“Ask the steward.”
“Where is he?”
In reply he simply pointed to the lodge.
The land steward received me in a glass-enclosed dining room which resembled a conservatory. It opened upon the woods, though the trees were not near enough to shut out the air. An invitation to rest there could not but be most agreeable. I was at once politely invited to drink and smoke, for my host was at the moment filling his pipe, with an open bottle of white wine at his elbow. The sun shone upon his half-filled glass in sparkles of dull gold.
“You see,” he explained, “I have already made my rounds on horseback this morning.”
I too had been in the saddle all the morning, and so I accepted his invitation to fellowship. He was a man of some sixty years, holding himself a little too upright, as if to resist a tendency to stoop. He had the ruddy skin of those who live much in the open air, a colour emphasised by his white hair. One would have taken him, at a first glance, for an old cavalry officer worn out in the service. But he showed nothing of that apparent assurance acquired by the habit of command. His blue eyes had a confiding expression such as one used to see in those of young girls. I was prepared, from our first libation in common, to find a certain familiarity, but not the air of distinction and total absence of pose, the nobility of manner, unobtrusive and innate, that shrouded his simplicity as a tower in ivy. He bore the true hallmark of ancient lineage. In neither his person nor his speech was there anything superficial.
At first he met my request with a refusal. To begin with there was nothing to see in the chateau. But he had hardly made the statement when, as if from an instinctive horror of falsehood, he corrected himself with an exception: perhaps a few old tapestries and pieces of furniture, and a small Italian painting, no bigger than that, representing an Annunciation. At once, I knew not why, perhaps because of his very reserve, a strong desire to see the interior of the chateau took possession of me, and I repeated my request, pleading my acquaintance with M. Cernay.
“That is another thing. I will take you,” he said.
In the avenue I expressed regret that I should not see the owner, adding:
“But he seldom comes here.”
“Oh, no,” said my friend. “He will be here in a few days. He always spends the month of November here. He comes before All Saints’ Day, on account of my daughter.”
“Of your daughter?”
The steward looked at me in some surprise.
“Did you not know that he married my daughter, and that we have lost her?”
There was no ostentation in the reminder, only a deep sadness. I told him of my visit to the graveyard.
“Could you find her grave? It is hidden among the others.”
“Yes, only an ivy covered stone. But there is so much of youth in the inscription that it goes to the heart.”
“My wife would have liked a different monument. But it is enough.”
The cloister surrounding the chateau, with the purity of its arches, over which vines and clematis clambered at will, was a joy to see.
“It is all that remains of the ancient nunnery,” my guide explained. “The nunnery was abandoned in the seventeenth century for another religious house, larger and more severe, that of Saint Hugo, and the family of the Count d’Alligny took possession. The present Count sold the estate to M. Cernay. I had been steward in his day. He lost all his money at the gaming table; he cared for nothing so much as play. He was an excellent man.”
“What has become of him?”
“He is in command of the four soldiers of the Prince of Monaco, and having not a sou to lose he looks on while other men ruin themselves. The occupation diverts him. And yet I had administered his estate well. But he cared nothing for the land. No one cares for the land any more.”
“Not you?”
“Oh, I! I have walked these woods so long that I know every tree of them. I used to walk here so much with my daughter when she was a little girl.”
The memory of his daughter visibly obsessed him. Was it that he wished to remind me of her brilliant marriage? Hardly: because he seemed, as I have said, so utterly free from snobbery.
We found ourselves in the dwelling rooms, and he pointed to a portrait.
“When she used to run the country with me she was not so pale and thin.”
I recognised her pallor, a bloodlessness which the artist’s palette had not flattered. In the sumptuous ball dress in which she was tricked out her bare arms and shoulders seemed to embarrass her. One felt that they were cold, and almost looked to see the goose flesh. To this impression of discomfort the eyes added an impression of timidity, almost of fear. For a moment I thought that it was a sort of ecstasy which held her thus rigid—had I indeed not seen her almost shivering, listening to the air from Amadis? Examining the portrait more closely I attributed the expression to fear—excessive modesty or secret wretchedness, a mystery now unfathomable, one which the artist had either penetrated or unconsciously revealed. She reminded one of those portraits of Spanish Infantas whose youth seems stifled by etiquette and tight lacing. Presently I discovered another resemblance.
By way of showing some degree of sympathy, I asked:
“You lost her so early: of what malady did she die?”
“No one knows.”
The tone of the reply was so full of pain that I involuntarily coupled his enigma with that of the portrait.
Just then I discovered the small Italian picture which the steward had mentioned, and hastened to ask for a better light upon it. It was an Annunciation, somewhat dark in tone, but surprisingly delicate, and easily to be attributed to the school of da Vinci. The subject was treated in the manner of that Ufizzi Annunciation in Florence in which people have found the special mark and stamp of the master’s style. The angel has just delivered his message: he has spoken, and now he bends the knee before the future mother of God. How touching she is in her surprise, her modesty and embarrassment! She crosses her hands upon her breast, as if to hold in check a heart that would leap from its resting place. She cannot refuse so high an honour, yet she feels herself unworthy; she is happy; and yielding under the burden of divine love she offers to God her readiness to endure the suffering that is to come.
I stood long before this picture, deeply moved by it: it was so perfect, so full of grace. Then a resemblance began to force itself upon me. The countenance of Mme. Cernay incontestably recalled that emotion, that modest embarrassment. She might have posed long ago for that portrait of the Virgin. There was the same tender grace, the same elongation of the throat, the same slimness and even the same light in the startled eyes. I remarked the fact aloud.
“My son-in-law bought this canvas because of the resemblance of which you speak,” said M. Mairieux.
“It is striking.”
“No doubt.”
And the steward turned his head towards his trees, as if under the influence of a sadness which he would fain hide from me, and which it was not for me to fathom.
By a refined delicacy, and as if anticipating probable comments, he took pains as we descended the stairs to dwell upon the generosity of his son-in-law, which I might have questioned on seeing that he himself retained his subordinate functions.
“We do not live in the chateau, my wife and I, though M. Cernay has begged us to do so. Why should we change our way of life? In this great building I should not feel at ease as in our lodge: we should need too large a household. And he won’t let me render the accounts of the estate to him; he pretends that the revenues are so small and hard to collect. He gave me my horse Zeno, which is of Farbeo pedigree, strong and sturdy as I like a horse to be. Did you not see him as I came in from my ride?”
“You had come in before my arrival.”
“Would you like to see him in his box?”
Condescendingly I accompanied him to the stable and admired the hind quarters of an ill-tempered brown beast which seemed more than willing to kick me. His owner calmed him with cajoling words, as a personage accustomed to flattery.
“There is not a gentler animal,” he assured me. “When I am on Zeno’s back, and in the Maiden’s Wood, I let myself live in my memories.”
In friendly wise he detailed his present pleasures. No doubt his country instincts would have found satisfaction in the monotonous administration of the estate, but for the tragedy caused in his peaceful existence by the untimely death of his daughter. A question came to my lips.
“Madame Cernay left no child?”
“Yes, indeed, a daughter, Dilette,” he answered. “Our little Dilette. My son-in-law entrusts her to us in the summer. In winter she needs more sunshine than we can give her here, on account of the trees. She will soon go away with her father. It is not a cheerful thought. See! There she is!”
A child of six or seven years, with long hair flying, was at the moment crossing the greensward. Lightly she skipped along, her feet hardly touching the ground, like a bird learning to fly. The moment she saw me she ran away. My host smiled, approving and disapproving at once.
“She is shy,” he said, “as her mother was.”
I was about to take my leave, when he earnestly begged me to come into the house.
“Madame Mairieux would be charmed to receive you,” he said.
I excused myself to the best of my ability, pleading the early hour, my bicycle costume. He would not let me off, and I perceived from his kindly pertinacity that a scolding would be his lot should he permit his wife to be defrauded of a visit—a rare event in these parts, no doubt. I was therefore admitted to the presence of Mme. Mairieux, who, I assumed, had been watching me, not without some ill-humour, from the window, since we found her at that early hour all tricked out in silk and lace; unless, indeed it might be her Sunday garb she had on. She was certainly endowed with charm and Conversational ability, though the charm was a bit affected and the conversation that of the fashion papers and the women’s magazines. I at once made a distinction in favour of her husband, though he kept silence and appeared to be dominated by her. She talked intimately of “Raymond,” and, not without a certain satisfaction, of the chateau in which they might live whenever it pleased them so to do.
“But M. Mairieux detests luxury and even comfort. And M. Mairieux must be heard too, for he will hear no one.”
I turned toward M. Mairieux, who made no protest. Possibly he was endowed with that gentleness possessed by obstinate folk, who quietly escape from everything that does not accord with their pleasure. The want of harmony between the pair was patent, but, contrary to first appearances, the reins of government were in the husband’s hands.
Mme. Mairieux confirmed the report of M. Cernay’s approaching arrival. “He always comes for All Saints’ Day,” she said.
And when for the second time I spoke of my visit to the graveyard she asked me if I did not deem her daughter’s tombstone very mean. She would have desired a larger monument, a colonade, a broken vase, a weeping angel; at least something that might be seen from a distance and would speak of grief.
“No, no,” interposed M. Mairieux, “a stone is enough.”
My leave-taking was quite a ceremony. I was about to occupy quarters in the neighbourhood, at the hunting lodge of Sylve-Benite, where I was to find my baggage. I promised to return and renew my acquaintance with M. Cernay, who was to be duly informed of my proximity. Just as I was bestriding my machine, little Dilette again crossed the court on the run, her long hair floating upon the breeze like wings. With this vision before me I turned my back upon the chateau of the Maiden of the Wood.
Was this in Savoy? In Dauphine? I have forgotten to say. But what does it matter? I recall to mind a ballad with the recurring refrain:
Was it in Brittany? Was it in Ireland?Perhaps in the land of the King of Thule.
Was it in Brittany? Was it in Ireland?Perhaps in the land of the King of Thule.
Was it in Brittany? Was it in Ireland?Perhaps in the land of the King of Thule.
Was it in Brittany? Was it in Ireland?
Perhaps in the land of the King of Thule.
If I am not more definite every one will think it was in Savoy!
One evening about five o’clock as I came in from the chase, a hare in my game bag, a fine fatigue in my legs and my stomach empty down to my heels, I found an urchin awaiting me at Sylve. He was the bearer of a pressing letter from Mme. Mairieux, begging me to dine with her on the sudden and unannounced arrival of her son-in-law. Between Sylve Benite and the Maiden of the Wood there are two good leagues. In case of need one can cover three-quarters of the distance on the bicycle by a bad road, which shakes one to pieces, and I should greatly have preferred to be spared such a night march, and remain peacefully in my lair, where the soup was already simmering over the fire. But an inexplicable impulse of curiosity or vanity urged me to visit Raymond Cernay—the victor of Bethany.
“Very well, I will go,” said I to the small messenger. “Go on ahead. I will change my clothes and overtake you with my machine.”
He smiled with a knowing air, for he was riding an old nag which it might not be easy to distance. In fact, I did not see him again. When I descended the avenue the chateau with its cloister was half buried in obscurity, lighted at but a single window. I rang at the lodge: which on the other hand was resplendent with light. I had put on my most elegant hunting suit, but I regretted the lack of formality when I saw Mme. Mairieux in great pomp of toilette and her husband ill at ease in a frock coat which he must have exhumed with difficulty from the wardrobe in which it had been buried. I was beginning to dread M. Cernay’s dinner coat, when I was informed with no little embarrassment that he would not be of the party.
“He begs you to excuse him,” explained Mme. Mairieux. “An indisposition. The long journey—”
The steward, more sincere, came out with the truth:
“He desires to be alone. He always shuts himself up thus the first few days. I told my wife how it would be.”
“And your granddaughter,” I asked. “Will she hide again?”
“Dilette? She was here just now. She ran away when she saw you. She was afraid of you. Faces frighten her, but danger, never.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“In her usual place I’ll wager, perched upon the cloister wall, waiting for some adventure to come to pass—an apparition of angels, or the arrival of a knight on horseback. Wait a little: perhaps I can persuade her to come.”
M. Mairieux returned with the fugitive, whom he had succeeded in taming. The grandfather and grandchild had no doubt come to understand one another by their walks in the forest together. I looked more closely at the child, of whom I had barely caught a glimpse on my first visit. Her hair, golden at the ends of the curls, paler blond on her head, fell unconfined far down her back. She was small and slight with legs and arms of no size at all, and yet her slightest motion revealed the easy play, the facile grace of the swift runner. Her dark eyes, at once limpid and deep, like still water pools, encircled by shade, the transparency of which serves no purpose, were wide open, and far too shy for the eyes of a child. Had her mother transmitted to her some of that mysterious fear that haunted her?
I paid systematic court to this little girl of six and a half years. At coffee she handed me sugar, remembered to remove my empty cup, and shortly after she was perched upon my knee. Proud indeed I was of the conquest.
“It is surprising,” remarked Mme. Mairieux, somewhat disconcerted by the importance which I attached to the incident.
But her husband was unreservedly delighted with my attentions to Dilette. As for Dilette, she would not go to bed. Only a scolding could detach her from the place to which I had enchained her with stories.
“You’ll tell me some more, won’t you, Sir?”
“Surely.”
“Stories with afraid in them?”
We parted the best friends in the world.
* * *
Two days later, passing that way, gun on shoulder, I perceived her slim little figure in the part of the avenue that leads to the graveyard. It stood out sharply against the sunlit arch. She was kicking her feet through the dead leaves, which rose as it were in a wave before her. All the golden autumn was pouring itself in light upon the child, and all unknowingly she adapted herself to it, miraculously. When she saw me she darted to one side and would have hidden behind the oaks. I called to her, reassuringly:
“Dilette, don’t you know me?”
She stopped at the sound of my voice: in two or three leaps, like a young greyhound, she was beside me.
“Have you run away, Dilette?”
“No, papa is over there with flowers.”
“With flowers?”
“Yes, that he is taking to mamma.”
“And you?”
“I got tired of it. So he told me to go back.”
“All alone?”
“This is our place, and I know it all.”
She gravely led me toward the chateau when it appeared that I was minded to join Cernay.
“We mustn’t disturb papa. He doesn’t like any one to talk to him when he is there.”
“Very well, let us go.”
We installed ourselves upon the low cloister wall, Dilette with her legs swinging, I leaning against a pillar under the pendant sprays of the wild vines whose reddening leaves clambered over the arches.
“Now,” she said, “a story, quick!”
Rapidly I reviewed in mind my repertory of myths and legends, choosing from it a touching version by Tennyson of an ancient ballad. Do you know it perhaps? If not I must tell it to you too. Try to imitate Dilette and listen very quietly, for it is necessary to follow this story if you would understand what is to come in my book.
* * *
THE STORY
The eyes of the little shepherdess were fastened upon the picture which the poor painter who had lately come to the village was making at the edge of the forest. Upon a square of canvas no bigger thanthathe had put everything one could see,—or almost everything. How could he do it? It was wonderful!
He gave the last stroke of the brush, then turned and looked into her face as if he would like to carry it away with him. She was the prettiest and best girl in all the country-side.
“You are beautiful,” he said; “did you know it?”
She laughed gaily as if pleased.
“The fountain told me so,” she said.
“Did it tell you something else?”
“What else?”
“That you please me?”
And he added, softly: “Will you be my wife?”
She turned her face away, trembling with happiness, for she loved him secretly.
“Yes,” she murmured.
They were married in the village church. But before leading her to their home, a little thatched cottage on the edge of the wood, he turned toward the fields:
“Let us take a walk, while the sun shines,” he said; “we can go home when evening comes. Shall we go to the great castle, away over there? I have heard wonderful things about it. You have never seen it, have you?”
She smiled disdainfully.
“I would not exchange our little home for it,” she said.
But he asked again: “Don’t you want to see the castle?”
“I want whatever you want,” she said.
They went beyond the end of the parish and through the gate of a park into a long shady avenue of ancient oaks. Far away at the end of the avenue they could see the castle. Evening was coming on; the branches of the trees leaned kindly over them. The birds were singing, but they heard only their own hearts.
As they drew near the castle, the dogs came running out.
“I am afraid,” she said.
“With me?”
But the dogs barked joyfully and licked the young man’s hands.
“Why, they know you!” she said.
“I have been here sometimes,” he answered.
They went up the steps of rose-coloured marble.
“We may go in,” he said. “Visitors are allowed.”
They went in, and he showed her all the glories of the palace. While he was pointing out the beauty of the pictures and furniture, the convenience and luxury of the rooms, she was all the time thinking of the little white cottage among the trees. They would be going there soon. He had showed it to her the evening before, saying: “Here is the fireside where we shall warm ourselves when winter comes. It is small and mean, but love is enough for us, is it not?” Yes, love was enough. She would love him so tenderly that he would never think again of this fine castle, to which he had no right to bring her.
He saw that she was not noticing what he showed her.
“What are you thinking of?” he asked.
“Of you,” she said, simply.
They had reached the great drawing room, where there were windows upon all sides through which one could see the trees and fountains of the park. The sun was setting, and the mirrors reflected its last rays.
“It is getting late,” she whispered. “Shall we go home?”
He bowed low before her, smiling.
“This castle is yours, Madame.”
The vast room echoed with the young wife’s merry laugh.
“Mine!”
He replied gravely:
“Yes, yours. I am the Lord of Burleigh. All that I have is yours, with my heart.”
She turned pale and was obliged to lean against the wall, near the window. The view from it, at that sunset hour, was full of peaceful beauty. Far away, the little white cottage reflected the sunlight.
“Alas!” she murmured softly, as if her happiness was gone.
“I chose you before all others,” he went on, “because you are beautiful and good. And I wanted to win your love apart from my rank and fortune.”
Until then he had always said “thou” to her, as the country people did, but now he was saying “you.”
“Why did he so suddenly stop saying ‘thou,’” she whispered to herself. But not wishing to disappoint him, she smiled upon him sweetly, though with sadness.
She soon became mistress of herself, and acted as I was fitting in her new estate. But every evening when she was alone, she would stand weeping, at the window from which she could see the little white cottage among the trees.
“Ah,” she would think, “if only he were still the poor, proud artist who could put all the country-side upon a square of canvas, and bounded our horizon with his love of me!”
Soon she began to pine away. Not doctors, nor journeys to new places, nor amusements, nor all the attention and comforts that money could buy were to make her strong again. One summer evening, like that on which she had first come to the castle, she leaned her head against the window casing and closed her lovely eyes for ever.
“We cannot tell of what disease she died,” said the doctors.
“But I know,” said the Lord of Burleigh, bowed down with grief.
Then he called to her attendants: “Put her in her wedding gown. The simple woollen dress which she wore when she came Here, that she may rest in peace.”
* * *
I realise that this was hardly a story for a little girl of six or seven; a tale of disillusionment, rather; of use in discouraging the ambitious,—if the ambitious trouble themselves about the poets—teaching the beauty of a humble lot in an age when every one is envious of his neighbour and eager to push himself into the foreground. But a whole flood of questions and comments from Dilette explained and embellished it.What is an outskirt?A thatched cottage?An horizon?A doctor who does not understand sickness?etc.—
I admit, too, that the ending is sad enough, and that when Dilette demanded some changes, in particular a happier conclusion, I should have been willing to revive my heroine, if the angry man who intervened had given me time. I admit whatever you wish. But certainly all this did not warrant the scolding I received from Raymond Cernay, who had crept silently behind the cloister wall, and now sprang up so abruptly that he both frightened and shocked us.
“Leave that child alone, if you please!”
I am telling the exact truth: he spoke to me thus rudely. In a second I was on my feet, angry, and my face crimson. My first words challenged him without regard for politeness.
Now I ask you whether any man has a right to behave in this way to a person who is taking enough interest in his progeny to sit on top of a wall and teach her English ballads. Dilette, herself, although she did not dare say anything, suffered from the paternal injustice. Such a lack of courtesy, she realised, was not likely to help our future relations. Cernay turned to his daughter.
“Go find your grandfather and say good-night to this gentleman who has been trying to entertain you.”
This pacified me somewhat, and still more the gracious good-night that Dilette purposely emphasised. When the child had gone, Cernay appeared to hesitate over his course; then he resolutely commenced a strange catechism, to which, I confess, I submitted with a bad grace, for his ridiculous injunction still rang in my ears.
“How do you know what happened?” he began.
“What do you mean?” I retorted.
“What happened in my home. Who told you?”
“I do not understand,” I answered.
“You understand very well—but the heroine of your story did not die as you said. Her husband killed her. Her husband, do you understand? But of course you know that—only you did not want to say so to my little girl. You were very wise—I was there, I heard every word—and I should not have allowed you to go on. One does not talk to a child about her mother’s unhappiness.”
My anger left me. Cernay was evidently crazy. He had suddenly imagined that he was Lord Burleigh. His experiments in aviation, which taxed too heavily his daring and presence of mind, possibly also, his disappointment and isolation, had unsettled his mind. In order not to provoke him, I decided to humour him.
“Follow me,” he commanded imperiously.
The prospect was not very reassuring. Night was falling and I did not care for a walk in the country with an individual who gave every evidence of being demented.
He led me, however, directly to the garden-like grave of Madame Cernay, whence the mingled fragrance of the flowers rose to us, though the gathering dusk obscured their colours. There, my companion became lost in his memories. Forgetting my presence and his own pride, he permitted at intervals a kind of wail of agony to escape him. Yet I was not greatly affected by this manifestation of despair, because, dreading some more dangerous happening, I devoted my attention to a close watch upon his movements. When he had grown calmer, he was to astonish me still more. We were walking back up the avenue through the night, when at last he decided to speak:
“I was at fault just now,” he said. “Forgive me. That story which you were telling my daughter—I don’t know where you found it.”
“In Tennyson,” I hastened to reply, in order to clear myself of my unknown offence.
“It caused me much pain.”
“You?” I asked.
“It is so much like my own,” he replied.
This, then, was the explanation of his distress. I had attributed it to madness but it was really only the expression of a protracted agony, of a secret that had been kept too long and was now perhaps ripe for confidence. He continued to accuse himself in broken phrases.
“It was I who killed her, do you understand? Some murderers are less cruel. They only strike once. They do not kill gradually, by a slow fire. She forgave me. And I—instead of expiating my crime, I am preparing to commit another. Oh, I hoped, I dared, to take up my life again. Since my return here, the past has gripped me, possessed me absolutely again, and I feel a savage pleasure in coming back to it—”
Without any farewell, he turned away, in what direction I could not tell. Night enveloped us. I lost sight of him almost immediately, and returned to my quarters at Sylve-Benite, surprised and dumbfounded by such an unexpected revelation, a revelation which the future was so strangely to fulfil.
* * *
After a farewell day of fairly good shooting I prepared to leave Sylve-Benite, despite the peace and quiet that I had enjoyed there, and I was collecting my luggage when Raymond Cernay called upon me. He charged up at a full gallop, on M. Mairieux’s horse, and the hardy animal must have been pushed beyond reason for he was badly blown. It was five or six days after our singular meeting. Cernay noticed my preparations and demanded abruptly:
“You are leaving.”
“As you see,” said I.
“Where are you going?”
“I am going home.”
“Is it necessary?”
“We must always go home in the end.”
“But nobody is waiting for you?”
“No, nobody.”
“Very well, then, I will take you with me.”
“Where?”
“To the chateau. You can stay there several days, as long as you wish. Your luggage is ready. Come.”
I was so far from expecting this invitation that I had myself thrown away all pretexts for declining. Nevertheless I was determined to refuse it, the more so on account of the peremptory way in which it was given, much as a millionaire with money to spare might throw down a little cash. “Come, now,” he seemed to say, “strap up your valise, you are wanted.” Without troubling my conscience, therefore, I invented some pressing obligations.
“But just now you did not mention any of those things,” he said.
“I had not thought, then,” I replied.
Raymond Cernay made an angry movement. Apparently he did not admit the possibility of the least opposition from any one, or possibly he was in a highly nervous condition.
“No, no, no,” he repeated, “you will come.”
“I am exceedingly sorry.”
“I wish it.”
I could not keep from smiling as I listened to him storming, ordering and commanding. He was ashamed of making an exhibition of his temper, and he changed his tone with a promptitude that amazed and touched me.
“Yes,” he said. “I am not yet chastened. Shall I ever be? It is not easy when one has taken the wrong turn from childhood. I always knew that I could satisfy every one of my whims, and so I could not endure opposition. Even misfortune does not always succeed in humbling us. You must excuse my brusqueness.”
Then he added, pleadingly:
“Won’t you come with me. They are waiting for you, M. and Mme. Mairieux, and Dilette especially. Dilette wants you. She asks every one for stories, stories like yours. I cannot tell them to her; I have never learned them.”
“Ah, Dilette wants me.”
He dwelt upon his daughter’s wishes, until out of respect to my wild little friend, whom I was proud to have conquered, I permitted myself to be convinced, or rather to be carried off, for we left without delay, he on Zeno and I on my bicycle. My luggage would be sent for. That evening I was installed in the chateau.
* * *
I sincerely believe that my arrival there was a pleasure to every one. The atmosphere pervading the chateau was troubled with mists which the presence of a stranger might perhaps succeed in dissipating. I am not speaking only of Dilette, who bounded to welcome me like a dog wild with joy, but also of M. and Mme. Mairieux, who despite their long life together had neither feelings nor opinions in common, and above all of Raymond Cernay, who, to all appearances was not in a state of mental equilibrium. He had urged his daughter as a pretext to secure me, when in fact he sought assistance for himself.
For the first few days he monopolized me. The emptiness or the bitterness of his life he lightened with fishing, shooting, riding, and walking. He had long since retired from all intercourse with other men. Hitherto his unhappiness, his mechanical studies, his experiments and his flights had sufficed to interest him. Now, however, yielding to his old taste for society, or perhaps simply to the thousand and one charms and attractions of everyday life, which does not long permit us to defy it, he felt the need of a companion and sought one. His daughter he surrounded with an almost passionate affection, yet he did not know how to talk with her as one talks with a child. He recognised this and left her, not without sorrow, to M. Mairieux, who understood both the child’s bursts of confidence and her reserve. I noticed, not without surprise, the respect that Cernay showed his father-in-law, though he exhibited too such embarrassment in the older man’s presence that of his own accord he kept out of his way.
I soon believed that I had found the explanation of his character. Out of conjugal loyalty he imposed upon himself each year one month of solitude in this dwelling in the heart of the woods, and little by little the solitude became intolerable to him. Boredom preyed upon him, he turned about in his prison like a tiger in a cage. I supplied him with a diversion. He was faithful to the grief in his heart, to his abiding love. But, then, what can one expect? He did not know how to feast upon his sorrow, how to satiate himself with it. Few people do. Introspection had played but a small part in his life. His days had been consumed by the need of physical activity. Within him a similar fever had devoured that tender affection which was most dear to him, and he was grief-stricken at his helplessness to fan its ashes into flame.
Thus I analysed his restlessness. I deceived myself thoroughly, it afterwards appeared; but how could I then have perceived its complex causes?
* * *
In the course of our walks I noticed the minute and prolonged study that he invariably bestowed upon the sky before we started. He was skilled in interpreting the form and movements of the clouds; those cumuli, lying on the horizon like snow hills, would dissolve in rain; these parasites hanging upon the summits of the mountains heralded a storm. I saw him sniff the air, examining it, one might say, as a hunter studies the depths of the woods and inhales their odour, or a fisherman scrutinises the mysteries of the water.
“It is the enemy,” he confided to me one day. “It is invisible and formidable. Before attacking it, we must try to understand it.”
I knew that he was thinking of his flying machines, and while we walked on to a neighbouring pond, I questioned him about the origin of his sudden interest in aviation.
“It is no sudden interest,” he explained. “I have always loved the conquest of space. The same motor drives the automobile and the aeroplane. Is not the rudder for the air much like that which steers a sailboat at sea? One grows out of the other. But what does the sensation of speed amount to, compared with the satisfaction of springing free from the soil and attaining true liberty at last? And the field is infinite.”
I listened without interrupting him, knowing that he was interested only in his own visions.
“Shedid not dissuade me when I thought of it before.” (He did not mention his wife more directly.) “To her, work was the glory of man. ‘I am afraid,’ she said to me, ‘but I will pray. A woman can afford to be afraid.’The other, at Rheims, always cried to me to go higher.”
What other? I abandoned any attempt to understand this unexplained allusion. On several previous occasions I had questioned his incoherent remarks. This time it was better not to interrupt him.
“After I lost her, I endured days of agony. I should have been glad to punish myself, to scourge myself.”
Again I found trembling on his lips the same confession of some mysterious guilt which had come when he heard “The Lord of Burleigh.” Here was the secret that tormented him. After a moment’s hesitation he went on:
“Even in the greatest suffering, the desire for life keeps its power. It seemed to me that danger would bring me nearer to her and at the same time in danger there is an exaltation which carries you one does not know where. Perhaps my vocation, as you call it, is due to that. Some old investigations and scientific studies had prepared me for it. I have perfected somewhat the work of others, but I have not yet invented anything. My merit is unimportant. Do not exaggerate it. Only good luck and a certain audacity have enabled me to attain interesting results. Ah, if I could discover some automatic way to assure lateral stability, that would be another story.”
Our path ended in the reeds along the bank of the pond. He cast loose the boat that was moored there, and I took the oars, while he steered. After we had pushed off, he continued:
“The monoplane which I use I have named for her, but nobody knows it. Very soon I shall not have the right to do so.”
Why would he not have the right?
I inquired about his experiments in altitude.
“I must fly high,” he replied. “It is an irresistible fascination, a necessity. Above my two wings, I possess the infinite. The air surrounds me, bathes me, caresses me, as this water does our boat. I forget the noise of the motor, the buzzing of the propeller. Energy clamours within me. My wings shift about, like extended arms, to ensure control. A horseman is no more one with his living mount than I am with my machine. I experience a new calm, a peace like that of religion. She is with me, she does not speak, she smiles. She is no longer a victim of the fear that paralysed her on earth. It is just as if I were carrying her to her heaven. I am quite sure that I shall never again cause her any harm. As long as my flight lasts, I am scarcely a separate being from her. Between my suspended life and her invisible one, there is no longer anything but a thin veil.—But we fly too seldom. The machines need incessant repairing.”
In the very act of describing his sensations to me, he had forgotten me. It was to himself, rather than to me, that he continued:
“Some wood and linen, a little steel, and a few wires, and you have an arrow with which to cleave the air. It is not complicated. And yet, how much study, how much preparation and effort in order to fly a few hours, a few hours without touching earth, while we do not take the trouble to learn to know a soul which trusts itself to us, which would carry us equally high in life, if we understood it.”
Expressed though it was in incoherent phrases, his exaltation won me, and I begged him some day to take me with him. But he refused with unexpected violence.
“Do not ask me that. I have never carried a single passenger. My solitude is necessary to me, the comforting solitude of space. The Rheims woman asked me to take her. She wished to drive away theother. Ah, I used to think that some day I would break my wings while in full flight. It would have been a good end, and so easy, nothing but the cutting of a rope. Nobody would have suspected. But it is impossible. It would mean betraying the machine, allowing a false suspicion to rest upon it. It can play false: the man it carries—no.”
I laid down the oars. He had already abandoned the rudder, and we drifted with the current. Seated in the back of the boat, he stared down at our wake. Thoughts of death or madness accompanied us like sombre birds. From that moment I began to alter my opinion of the intensity of his memories, in which remorse for some crime showed itself clearly.
We returned almost in silence. I had not dared to question him and he was absorbed in himself.
* * *
The next day I waited in vain for him to take the walk which we had planned. He did not leave his room until the luncheon bell rang, and at table uttered nothing but a few insignificant remarks. Without Dilette, with whom I talked and laughed, and M. and Mme. Mairieux, who took their meals at the chateau while their son-in-law was there, we should not have exchanged twenty sentences during the whole luncheon.
* * *
In the afternoon he again isolated himself, and on the succeeding days I saw no more of him. Did he avoid me because he thought he had told me too much, too much and not enough? At first I believed this to be the case, and without making any explanations, I informed Mairieux that I was about to leave. Of what use was it to remain?
“No,” he urged, “do not affront him that way.”
“He would not notice my absence,” I said.
“Listen,” replied M. Mairieux. “For one or two weeks last year he was so depressed that he moved me to pity. Besides, your company will be welcome to us. Wait, I beg of you.”
“But what does he do all day?” I asked.
We were talking in the carriage road. Raymond Cernay’s apartments consisted of three adjoining rooms on the second story, a library, a study, and a bedroom. The autumn days were so mild that the large bay window of the study was open and we could see him seated at a table, with his head between his hands. He was reading or studying. A ray of light came to me—he disappeared in order to work the better on his monoplanes.
“Calculations?” I asked M. Mairieux.
“I don’t think so.”
In spite of myself, the secret of this man’s life tormented, I was about to say haunted, me. Why at our first meeting had he imagined himself to be the Lord of Burleigh whose wife could not live outside of her own environment? What was there connected with Mme. Cernay for which he blamed himself? Why did he insist upon punishment for some unknown crime or crimes which nobody but he suspected?
* * *
I fell into the habit of spending the end of each day at the pavilion in order to escape from the morose atmosphere of the chateau. One evening it happened that Mme. Mairieux began to speak freely of her daughter and with deep emotion. Sympathising with her grief, I tried to console her:
“At least she was happy,” I murmured.
“Was she not?” the good lady replied quickly. “Her husband gave her such a beautiful life, Paris, society, luxury, entertainments, everything that one cares for at her age. It is true that she was not as fond of that sort of thing as most young women are. According to my ideas, she was a little too quiet and serious. It was pleasure, nevertheless, especially after this desert of The Sleeping Woods.”
“Thisdesertpleased her,” interrupted M. Mairieux, who did not like this statement.
“Perhaps the change was too abrupt,” I suggested.
“Oh, no. She never complained of it, and surely she would have told me. In whom would she confide, if not in her mother? I knew her so well, the dear child.”
Her husband was obviously and unmistakably growing irritated. He tried to change the subject, but she would have none of it.
“During her long illness Raymond was perfect to her,” she persisted. “He came here with her, he gave up all his own affairs, he called in the most celebrated physicians, and now, on top of it all, he accuses himself of not having been a sufficiently devoted husband. To us, who saw him at the time, it is simply madness.”
She had reached this point in her eulogy of her son-in-law, when M. Mairieux left the room. I believed that I understood the meaning of his departure: he was protesting silently against his wife’s praises.
* * *
Cernay’s seclusion led me to frequent the park with the steward and Dilette. M. Mairieux, little by little, as he watched the child skipping ahead and then running back to us like a young greyhound travelling over the same road two or three times, fell into the habit of conjuring up before me an earlier childhood, that of his daughter. He never spoke to me of Mme. Cernay, but constantly of little Raymonde. I learned every detail of her life up to the age of fourteen or fifteen. Beyond that there was silence.
His memories kept time with Dilette’s actions. One morning, as she bent over a colchicum, he asked:
“Why don’t you pick it?”
“It is better there in the grass, grandpa,” she said.
This reply seemed to me to affect him beyond measure.
“Raymonde,” he explained, “loved flowers in the same way, and never plucked them. She thought them lovelier growing on their stems in the fields. No one could ever get a bouquet from her. It is odd, don’t you think?”
But the oddity brought tears to his eyes. At other times he spoke of other characteristics.
“I had taken her into the forest at sunset,” he said once. “How old was she? Probably Dilette’s age. The leaves were nearly all gone, it was this time of year. In front of us the tree trunks partly blocked our view of the sun’s red disc. She stretched her little arms towards the disappearing orb and when it had completely vanished, I found her dear face so sad that I began to apologise. ‘I can’t stop the sun, my darling,’ I said. ‘It is a great pity, grandpa,’ she replied with a sigh. Ah, it was a sigh that would break your heart! Would you believe it? That evening I envied Joshua. As a matter of fact, I had as good reason as he for working a miracle. The laughter of a little girl is the dew which refreshes our years. A child who does not laugh seems to be reproaching the one who gave it life.”
On this topic he was never silent; now, it was Raymonde’s inborn love for all things, or again, of her running along the forest paths and her abrupt halts, as if she saw some one coming, her charming combination of trust and fear.
“She was so timid, so shy,” he said, “that we even determined to send her to boarding school near by, in a convent in the city, in order that contact with companions might accustom her to everyday life. You have no idea of the ceremony that took place before she left. She wished to say good-bye to all the rooms in the house as if they were persons of flesh and blood, and to certain favoured trees and to Stop, the dog, and my horse, and the whole farmyard. She was not absent long. At the end of three days she ran away. She had to climb over a wall, topped with iron spikes. A little of her dress stayed there. Moreover she lost her hat and did not go back to look for it. In this condition she passed through the city somewhat ashamed of her appearance; and ran off at full speed from an old gentleman who began to question her. Once out in the country she was reassured. The city faces did not trouble her any more and those of the peasants gave her confidence, as though she were on familiar ground. So she came back to us on foot, just before nightfall. Have you noticed at the side of the gate a single birch, planted there by chance? It was much smaller then. Raymonde’s first act was to go to this friend and embrace it. From a distance I thought a little pauper girl was coming up the avenue. Stop was already licking her hands, and even her cheeks. And in this beggar I recognised my own daughter.”
While he was narrating this memorable Odyssey, M. Mairieux straightened up, he seemed to grow younger, and he smiled. He threw out his leg and walked like a dancing master explaining a step. Then suddenly he fell back into his former attitude, as though ashamed of his spirit. He was recovering from the past a little of its lost happiness.
“And how lovely she was at fifteen! Like a ray of golden light, you understand. Curls of changing shades, a fresh complexion of that unsullied white that actually shines, and eyes which it did one good to look at, because you would never imagine that there could be any so pure. There was a little terror in my love for her. She seemed too delicate, too sensitive, and yet I would not have wished her less so. I felt that she would never be happy. I feared for her beforehand. Oh, how right I was!”
The last reflection, which escaped involuntarily from his lips, appeared to upset him completely. It coincided too well with the painful allusions of Raymond Cernay not to strike me forcibly. M. Mairieux did not agree with his wife about the conjugal felicity of their daughter. There was a secret here, which a few days later I was destined to learn under tragic circumstances.
* * *
Bad weather followed the last of the Autumn sunshine. We were prisoners of the rain. A dense fog hid the forest from our sight, and the atmosphere of the chateau became unbearable.
Raymond Cernay, buried in his study like an alchemist in his laboratory, occasionally passed like a ghost through a corridor or sat at the table without recognising us, his gaze lost in space. Dilette, not daring to raise her eyes to him, implored my protection. M. and Mme. Mairieux, being in accord on nothing, maintained protracted silences. I determined to take refuge in flight, but the tragedy anticipated me.
On the day of which I speak, we were together in the drawing-room after luncheon, sitting almost in silence, like a family whose scattered members have re-assembled in anticipation of a funeral and await the coming of death. The child once more insisted on a story from me, and I protested that I did not know any more. Cernay, who had not yet opened his mouth, descended from his tower of ivory:
“And the Lord of Burleigh?”
“I have already told that.”
But Dilette clapped her hands, and insisted so long and so hard that I began over again the story of the Lord of Burleigh. I attempted to introduce a variation, generously permitting the heroine to recover, but Cernay shocked his daughter by objecting. When I had finished, he asked in a sarcastic voice:
“And what happened then to your Lord of Burleigh?”
What was the purpose of this embarrassing question?
“I don’t know,” I answered at random. “I suppose he went on living.”
“Yes,” he announced, in a tone of utter despair that I can still hear. “Yes, one lives.”
He rose from his arm-chair at the corner of the hearth, where a fire was sputtering—one of those fires of half-dried wood which char, cry, and smoke. He paced the room two or three times, his pace growing quicker and quicker. His irregular gait and the fixed expression on his face impressed and worried us. Moreover we heard distinctly phrases not intended for us but referring to my story.
“He lived—He forgot the evil he had done—Perhaps he married again.”
Then, with sudden decision, he rushed to the door and disappeared. We looked at each other wearily. Some moments later we saw him rush bare-headed through the rain and wind, down the avenue of oaks, and disappear in the direction of the forest.
We found nothing more to say until Dilette went out to play. Then Mme. Mairieux assumed an air of importance and favoured us with this news:
“Listen to me, I know something. He is really going to marry again. He is already engaged.”
“How do you know,” demanded her husband.
“I read it in the society announcements two days ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did not want to give you pain. I was waiting for him to announce it.”
“Do you know the name of his fiancée?”
“Mlle. Simone de R—. A good family. It is quite right. He is still so young, he is so rich, so prominent, so much sought after. During that week at Rheims the papers did not talk of anybody but him.”
“It is not right,” replied M. Mairieux drily.
And we relapsed into silence in spite of the desire that possessed Mme. Mairieux to excuse and to justify her son-in-law, to whom, whether from indulgence or admiration, she conceded every privilege.
I had instantly connected this information with the obscure allusions to “The Woman at Rheims” and “the other” which had escaped from Raymond Cernay when he had been previously disturbed that day at the pond. Nowadays even young girls are famous and the name of Mlle. Simone de R— was not unknown to me. I had met her two or three times, a tall woman, the effect of height being increased by her way of carrying herself, supple, muscular, possessed of the grace that strength gives, devoted to sport, and a champion at tennis or perhaps polo—I no longer remember exactly—which brought her the honour of having her picture in the illustrated weeklies. She went steadily on her way without coquetry but with the thirst for conquest which is the mark of the new generation. I could easily imagine their introduction at Rheims, she conquered by the boldness of the aviator, he attracted, despite the past, to this beautiful and frank being, who breathed life and promised victory.
Two or three hours passed before Raymond Cernay returned, exhausted and drenched, but not calm. The insane look on his face terrified us, as he passed by without noticing our presence.
When the bell rang for dinner he did not come down. Going up to his apartment in search of him, I had great difficulty in securing his attention. When I did obtain a reply, it was a flat refusal. Without him the meal was lugubrious, and Mme. Mairieux was quick to withdraw with little Dilette. When we were alone, M. Mairieux confided his fears to me.
“I believe I understand him,” he said. “Since his return the past has gripped him again. There are some memories one cannot betray. If you only knew! ... Well, he has not made up his mind about this new marriage. He is tormented, crushed. And it is right that he should be.”
Then, either through a deliberate effort at compassion or from an inherent goodness that was stronger than all his bitterness, he added:
“His agitation to-night alarms me. You have seen his eyes. He must be watched.”
We summoned his valet, Jean, and he admitted that the condition of his master seemed so serious to him that he had not slept for three nights. “M. Cernay,” he said, “was in the habit of immersing himself in his reading or writing until a late hour, and it was not until the early morning that he sought his bed. However, the library adjoined the study and it would be possible to observe him from there without his knowing anything about it.”
Preferring to retire late, I claimed the first watch and seated myself silently in the library, close to the communicating door, with a book in front of me to serve as a pretext in case I should be surprised. Outside the closed windows the silence of the country soon grew so marked that I could hear not only my own breathing, but the least movement on the other side of the thin partition which separated us, even the light touch of a sleeve against the arm of a chair. Without doubt he was reading at his table. From time to time I fancied I could catch the rustle of a page as he turned it over. Suddenly he pushed back his chair and began to pace the room with his irregular step. None of his actions escaped me—my ears took the place of my eyes. I was certain that he would open the door, and how was I then to explain my presence there? He stopped. I calculated that he must be in front of the window. Then he appeared to turn the bolt and throw open the glass wings. Only empty space was now in front of him. Anxiety paralysed me. I did not dare interfere; what if my interference should determine him! The few seconds of suspense were filled with agony. At last he left the threshold of the window, but without shutting it, and seated himself again at the table. I could not endure the situation any longer. I preferred to talk to him, to attempt to distract him, anything rather than abandon my reason to his unseen madness. With a great effort, for my legs seemed too weak for their task, I rose and went to the door. I knocked; he did not reply. A second time there was no response. Then I walked in.
At first I saw nothing but his back. A portfolio of documents lay open on the table, but he was not reading. Some white paper, covered with geometrical figures, was littered about, but he was not writing. He sat with his head erect, apparently absorbed in his thoughts. Then I perceived in a mirror the reflection of his face. Occasionally, in order to indicate that a sick man is doomed, we use the expression: “he has death in his face.” But a young man in perfect health—how can he bear this stamp? Nevertheless I perceived it clearly. There it was, unmistakable, obvious, threatening, and time stopped for me.
I remained motionless behind him as though hypnotised. To shake off the evil influence, I lowered my glance, and an object on the table, which I had not at first noticed, attracted my attention. I was not mistaken. He had a revolver within reach of his hand—and it seemed to me that his arm was reaching toward it.
It was no time to hesitate longer. I stepped abruptly and silently forward, and seized the weapon. Raymond Cernay shook his head like one who has received a blow, and remarked with astonishing indifference, as if he had just returned to life:
“What are you afraid of? That revolver is not loaded.”
Nevertheless I kept it in my hand, for I doubted him.
“If you don’t believe me,” he said again, “you can throw it out the open window. I know what I wish to do, and nothing will hinder me from doing it.”
Convinced then, I put the revolver back where I had taken it, and apologised, a little ashamed of my interference and ready to retire. But he stopped me.
“No, stay, I beg of you,” he said. “I have not yet decided. That can happen any minute.”
So I had not deceived myself about his determination after all. He continued in a manner that was both savage and enigmatic.
“What I do not want, what I will not have at any price, is to have my inexperience or my machine blamed some day. I have already killed that which I loved; I will not kill my work at the very moment I am perfecting it.”
I should have regarded these words as merely incoherent if, by one of those lucid intuitions which in exceptional circumstances guide us like some mysterious instinct, I had not instantly connected them with the less confused utterances of a few days before: “I used to think that some day I would break my wings while in full flight. It would have been a good end, and so easy. Nobody would suspect. But it is impossible. It would mean betraying the machine, allowing a false suspicion to rest upon it. It can play false; the man it carries—no.”
He was forearmed against death when its appeal would be most immediate, most alluring, most caressing; the revolver was there to put an end to the temptation if it should become irresistible. This reverence for a sacred work, which I had not expected from Raymond Cernay, formerly so fickle and so easily wearied, threw more light upon that which followed:
“A soldier goes on to the end.”
But the reason for it all still eluded me. Trembling under the domination of the raging fire that he struggled to restrain within him, he permitted himself fragmentary explanations, which the information imparted by Mme. Mairieux prepared me to comprehend:
“I am tormented by an intolerable situation—and there is no way out. I crush my victims under me as I go. I am about, you understand, to cause another misfortune.”
Believing that I had divined his meaning, I challenged him brusquely to greater frankness:
“Yes, you are divided between the old love and the new.”
He bent on me that madman’s look that no one faces willingly.
“No love will ever equal mine for Raymonde. No love will ever efface her memory from my life.”
I ceased to understand him. After a silence which I did not disturb, he continued:
“The week at Rheims was filled with shouts of applause, it was a veritable triumphal progress. You were not there, you cannot imagine it. The boldest hopes accompanied our flights. I had my share of glory. The intoxication of success which I had formerly been so eager to taste even in small measure, exaggerated and magnified now, went to my head and for the moment made me forget. I was introduced to this young girl, who shone with enthusiasm as the windows of an unknown city blaze in the sun. When I came to myself I was her fiancé. Do you know that the day of our marriage has been announced? It is set for next month. Since my return here, I have recognised my mistake. The days have passed; they are passing now, and I am still silent and they are waiting for me. But understand me, it is impossible, it would be monstrous.”
He addressed me with increasing violence, and I endeavoured to reassure him. Life holds us captive, I urged, in spite of ourselves. Youth has an aptitude for happiness which may be nothing more than the faculty of beginning over again. He stopped me.
“No, no, you don’t understand.”
Two manuscript portfolios were lying on the table, one open and the other closed. With a movement that seemed almost inspired, he suddenly picked them up and handed them to me.
“Here, read this,” he said. “You will understand then. You will learn that there are silent dramas more tragic than the bloodiest crimes. Now leave me. Good-bye till to-morrow. Oh, don’t fear for me. Your presence this evening has dissipated bad ideas.”
It was his secret that I was about to learn.