CHAPTER XVI
IT was Surdon who had spoken. He seemed not less perturbed than I was. I took him in hand with an excitement which may easily be imagined.
“Patrick here!” I cried. “How do you know that?”
“I’ve seen him.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“And since this morning couldn’t you....”
“I’ve followed him, monsieur, and I can assure you that I haven’t wasted my time.”
“Out with it! Tell me what you know. The whole thing is awful.”
“Yes, monsieur, awful.”
“I shall kill him.”
“Of course, that would be the best thing to do, for there’s no question that he isn’t chasing you.”—The worthy Surdon dared not make any allusion to “madame”—“This Patrick assumed that you would be passing through Venice. He’s been expecting you here for the last three weeks. And since you came here he has pretty well lost his head.”
“Oh, come, he has done that before, Surdon. But tell me everything you know down to the least detail.”
“Well, it’s like this. I was brushing your clothes this morning when I happened to put my nose out of a window, and caught sight of a man in a gondola staring with such persistence at our windows that I stopped my work. He did not see me. To come to the point—his eyes were fixed on madame’s room.”
“Was madame out?” I inquired breathlessly.
“No, monsieur, she was getting ready to go out, and you were waiting for her in the hall. Just then I recognized Patrick, and I continued to watch his game.”
“Do you know if madame saw him?”
“I don’t know. I can’t be positive. The gondola stopped for a moment, then having changed its course turned down towards the lagoon. I rushed out of the hotel just as you were leaving it with madame, and had the luck to reach the bend of the Riva degli Schiavoni as Patrick’s gondola rounded the point. I took a gondola and followed him. My intention was to find out where he was staying. For hours he dragged me about to impossible and apparently uninteresting places. Finally he landed at the Grand Hotel where I was told that he had taken a room with the windows on the ground floor—I mean on a level with the water of the Grand Canal opposite Santa Maria della Salute.”—At the mention of this church I gave another start.—“The servant who waits upon him had no objection to give me certain particulars which, for that matter, show Patrick as the laughing-stock of the staff at the Grand Hotel....
“It seems, monsieur, that during the last four days he has regularly shut himself up in his room between five and seven o’clock after ordering a light meal for two persons to be served on a small round table.”
“A meal for two persons between five and seven o’clock!” I exclaimed, feeling a shiver pass through me from head to foot.
“Just so, monsieur. The servant has to lay two places, and the beauty of it is that no one has ever seen our man enter his room with another person, while he is always seen to come out alone. And yet this servant hasn’t the least doubt that two persons sit down to this small round table and partake of the meal which has been served. It’s a mystery which amuses every one, though Patrick doesn’t appear to be aware of it, for he never speaks to a soul. He is generally looked upon as eccentric and even slightly mad. Most sensible people are of opinion that he is playing a part with himself and living upon past recollections.... Good Lord, how pale you are! Perhaps I made a mistake to tell you all this. It would have been better to keep it from you that he was here.”
“No, Surdon, you were quite right. You are a sharp and faithful servant. But, tell me, when did you leave the Grand Hotel?”
“Just now, monsieur.”
“What about Patrick?”
“I left him shut up in his room as usual at this time.”
I looked at my watch which shook in my hand.
“That’s true,” I said. “This is the hour for his meal. Wait for me in this gondola, Surdon. I shall be back soon.”
I hastened to the hotel in a state of agitation which bordered on frenzy. I was unnerved, be it understood, less by the evidence which Surdon brought me of Patrick’s renewed efforts to secure control of Cordélia’s O, than by the apparent willingness with which my beloved consented to allow her polygon to be influenced by this most dangerous of tempters. The mere thought of it made me shake with fever, but could I doubt the truth when I recalled what had passed that very day between Cordélia and me? She had spoken in the most natural terms of her visit to the church of Santa Maria della Salute, and then perceiving, from my look of amazement, that her polygon had chattered too freely, she at once enjoined it to be silent, blushing to the roots of her hair.
Not long before when she observed something abnormal passing between us, she threw her arms round my neck and cried: “Save me, Hector, save me!” but now she seemed to display only a certain embarrassment for having allowed the secret of a psychic condition to be discovered which ought to have been kept from me; the secret of another existence which she considered perhaps that I was unworthy to share, and which, in any case, no longer gave her a fright seeing that her O, after reflection, made no such request as: “Take me away!”
Was it not another who now took her away wherever he wished, if not with her complete assent—for in my delirium I strove to be just—at least with very little opposition from her? The pity of it! No, she made very little resistance, or else she would have warned me and cried aloud: “He has come back, the thief—the man who stole my love!”
Her O and her polygon were now in league to conceal this ignominy from me. For after all, the nervous fluid, to use Dr. Thurel’s words, is not strongly united to the body in certain subjects—and obviously Cordélia was among these—yet it is impossible to lure it far from its visible focus, the body, without producing a certain amount of suffering which in Cordélia’s case formerly caused her to resist, while now she accepted it. Cordélia was failing me, for she was now accepting her suffering. It was a dreadful thought, a thought beyond all bearing.
These tragic considerations did not enter my mind, as may be imagined, only as the result of inferences which I drew from the scene with Cordélia that morning, but from my memory of various other little scenes of this kind which had impressed me less, because they were of less importance, but which now acquired their full significance, and that, too, from the first hour of our arrival in Venice.
Still, it was the terrible thought that during the last few days she had asked me to let her take a short rest before dressing for dinner, that made me mount the stairs four at a time, for the request, perhaps, concealed a subterfuge intended to keep me away during the great secret of the polygonal promenade.
Everything that Surdon had told me about Patrick’s curious behavior at the Grand Hotel at that hour, merely strengthened the infernal idea which led to my accusing Cordélia of a veritable crime, the crime of premeditation, whereas it may have been simply a coincidence; but jealousy invariably goes to extremes and never feels satisfied unless it has multiplied its torments by some new supposition.
When out of breath I reached our rooms, however, I clung for a while to a last hope, the hope of discovering Cordélia standing before the glass putting the finishing touches to her evening toilet; but unfortunately the door of her room was locked and it was in vain that I shook it with all my strength.
“Cordélia! Cordélia!” I shouted, but there was no reply. I bent down and looked through the keyhole, and I saw her lying at full length on a sofa near the window in the rigid posture which had so greatly perturbed me at Vascoeuil.
I could not restrain a yell of fury and, clenching my fists and grinding my teeth, I ran to join Surdon in the gondola.
“As quickly as you can to the Grand Hotel,” I ordered.
The gondola took us there in a few minutes. As we drew near, Surdon pointed to a window which was lit up on the right of the principal entrance, for at this time of the year it grew dark early.
“There you are,” he said.
I at once propelled the gondola forward so that we hugged the foot of the wall and became merged in its shadow. We did not make the least sound.
When the gondola stopped under the window, I stood up and managed without difficulty to hold on to a small cornice, resting my elbow on the stone embrasure of the window. The latter was partly opened. I could thus both see and hear.
My excitement had reached its height, and I shall not attempt to describe it. Moreover, it is not difficult to conceive what passed through my mind from that moment, and the feelings with which I was stirred by the spectacle which I alone could understand, and from which I alone was to suffer.
The two covers on the small round table which occupied the center of the room were close together; the two chairs were side by side. In one of them Patrick was seated, leaning over the other in an attitude of sentimental tenderness, while his face, like the face of a mournful cat, wore an expression of peace, not to say bliss, which made me long to rush into the room and box his ears. But I restrained myself.
A chandelier which shed a soft light on persons and things stood on the table. Why do I say “persons”? I observed only Patrick, and as to Cordélia, I failed to perceive her in spite of my concentrated will and strained attention. I would have given, at that moment, everything that I possessed to be able to see with the same facility as Patrick, who was assuredly caressing the exquisite outlines of Cordélia’s astral figure.
O those eyes like the eyes of a mournful cat, calm and content, while I was seething with excitement at the window!
How was it that I had the power to control my impulse?... I wanted to know more.... And now I listened, for as he stretched out his hand to take an apple from the fruit-dish and place it on Cordélia’s plate, he began to speak:
“A union of minds begets sympathy, and from this sympathy is born real love, compared with which the other is but the blind instrument of nature in the fulfilment of its essential functions.”
I shall remember that sentence for the rest of my life.
“The bond which unites us, O Cordélia”—he used the words “O Cordélia” and I felt as if my heart were being pierced with a sword—“the bond which unites us recognizes no impediment; nothing can restrain it, nothing can shatter it; it can penetrate walls, traverse space, set time at defiance. It partakes of the divine essence,” and so on and so forth.
I could not repeat everything that he said in this strain while peeling a pear which he shared with her—I mean the half of which he laid on the plate beside his own.
I must confess that his gestures perplexed me more than his speechifying. To me it was unendurable that he should lean over the next chair, and I experienced an uncanny feeling as I saw him lift a glass of wine to his lips which he had previously placed in space on his right on a level with a mouth, which had, perhaps also drunk from it.
“The wretches are drinking out of the same glass,” I muttered between my teeth. “Don’t mind me!”
I was in such “good training” by the psychic phenomena of which I had been the victim since my wedding-day, and also by the scientific explanations to which I had listened, and by that which I still saw, that nothing could surprise me, and the impossibility for an astral body to swallow the material substance of a meal did not occur to me at first. It was not until I had seen for myself that the wine was entirely drunk by Patrick, and the food on Cordélia’s plate conveyed in the end to his plate, that I gave up this absurdly fantastic idea, which shows once more that the mind deflected from its accustomed groove easily loses all sense of proportion, and is ready to open the door to every form of self-deception; and my delusion at that cruel moment when others beside myself might likewise have lost their common sense, was to believe in the reality of this fallacy—of this farce which was being played between Patrick and Cordélia’s astral body when under his influence. The real truth was that they provided themselves with the vision and delight of a little dinner for two in this room, but the person who was in fact eating it could only be Patrick.
And as he drank wine for two, which seemed to me to be tokay, he looked less like a mournful cat, and began to talk nonsense which was not without a touch of humor.
As it happened he spoke of the material limits which his magnetic power encountered.
“It is a pity,” he said, “that I cannot attract your body here as I can attract your sensibility, but that is a miracle, for all we know, which psychic science, which is still in its infancy, may achieve in the near future. See what has already been done in the matter of table turning. The day when those idiots—I am referring to official experts—cease to laugh at these phenomena, we shall not be far from discovering the method which will enable the unseen mind to control visible matter. On that day we shall learn something that Newton did not know, namely, that gravitation is a variable quantity in space.[1]
“That reminds me of a rather amusing story that old Surdon used to tell, my dear Cordélia”—how it hurt me to hear him say “My dear Cordélia!”—“He said ‘I can make this table jump out of the window when and as I please. One day two friends were taking their coffee on it. I commanded the table to move. It remained motionless. When they left I lectured the table. Do you know what it said in reply? “They are such fools!”’”
Whereupon Patrick began to laugh, and I seemed to hear Cordélia laugh as well. Their gaiety disturbed me more than their gloom of a few minutes before. Suddenly they stopped laughing, and began to converse in complete silence.
I was absolutely convinced of it.
They were talking and understanding each other. It is generally recognized that subjects and mediums and persons who have it in them to control the mind can converse among themselves without the aid of sounds, by the mere power of suggestion, and communion. When Patrick spoke from the throat it was done over and above his psychic power, from habit, and possibly to give himself the illusion to which, whatever he may have said, he seemed to set store, of Cordélia’s bodily presence beside him in his room, but the use of his voice was unnecessary. He was now speaking to her with the voice of the mind.
And there could be no doubt that Cordélia was answering him, for it must not be assumed that I was witnessing, in this extraordinary and loathsome seance, a monologue. Far from it. But when Patrick used his ordinary voice there were pauses which were undoubtedly furnished with Cordélia’s answers. Patrick’s remarks which followed were a sufficient proof of it.
I was more or less aware of what was passing, but now they were conversing in silence. What were they saying? Why was Patrick bending over her with his right arm resting on the back of her chair?... I could perceive a tremulous movement of his arm....
Suddenly he raised his head and said aloud: “It is unfair of me to reproach heaven for not giving you to me body and soul, because your soul is mine and I have the best part of your body.” And then he took his glass in his left hand without moving his right hand which still shook as it lay on the back of Cordélia’s chair, and exclaimed: “I have tasted your lips, O Cordélia. I have tasted your life. I drink to our longing for everlasting love!”
He had no sooner poured the glass of wine down his throat than I sprang into the room.
It seemed that I was literally foaming with rage. He himself said so afterwards, and it was, in truth, quite possible, for my patience which my restless and insidious curiosity had held in check, was exhausted, and I was overcome with fury.
I rushed up to them and cried:
“I’m thirsty too. Aren’t you going to invite me?”
He stood up and thrust himself in my path as though to shield her.
“How clumsy you are! You have wounded her,” he murmured, stooping to pick up a knife which, when I darted to the table had fallen to the floor.
“What do you mean—‘wounded her?’” I said excitedly.
“Calm yourself, monsieur,” he returned with characteristic English coolness. “Indeed, it’s nothing, though it might have been serious. Let this be a lesson to you. Another time, don’t forget to knock at the door or the window.” He spoke in a tone which set me beside myself.
“It shall never happen again,” I said hoarsely, casting a glance in the direction of Cordélia’s chair.
“Oh, you may finish what you were saying,” he interrupted with a gesture of encouragement. “We are alone. She is no longer here.”
“Well, monsieur, what I wish to say is simply this—there are two of us here, which is one too many.”
“That’s my opinion, monsieur,” he acquiesced, “but it’s not I who am in the way.”
“We shall see about that—to-morrow!”
“Just as you please.”
I had nothing more to say to him that day, and I turned towards the window, but he opened the door for me, and we bowed to each other with perfect propriety.