Chapter III: Part I: The Sleeping Woods (2)

“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 the _other_. 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.”

“This _desert_ pleased 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.