CHAPTER XIX
O CORDÉLIA, you died by my hand! If I still live, be assured that it is by way of atonement. How often have I conjured up your image before the mortal remains of your heart! How often have I called to you! But you have never come to me!
For many days I was unable to add a word to these lines, and I remained, as it were, paralyzed by the inscrutable mystery of life and death, when one day the door of my cell was opened, and a man came in. It was Patrick. He was but the shadow of his former self.
I thrust myself before the urn which contained my beloved’s heart. He understood me and gave a bitter smile.
“Have no fear,” he said, “I leave it to you. What is her earthly heart to me? I possess her heart which is in Heaven.”
I rose to my feet staggering like a drunken man under his words which filled me with an agony of jealousy.
“What do you mean?” I asked hoarsely. “Do you still see Cordélia?”
He shook his head.
“Calm yourself, I do not see her,” he made answer. “She is too remote from us, and I have never believed in spirits of the dead revisiting this world. When I say that I possess her heart which is in Heaven, I mean that I did possess it. Death has deprived me of it,” he went on in somber, intense tones, “but death will restore it to me.”
“No more of that,” I exclaimed. “What has all this to do with me?”
“Well, if you look upon it in that light I don’t know why I am here.”
“Nor I.”
“I came to you, monsieur,” he said in a voice of wonderful dignity, “to ask you if you have any message for her, for she loved you sincerely—you too!”
“She loved me only,” I asserted, yet strangely perturbed by his manner and words.
He sighed and shook his head once more.
“You thought so, but that was impossible,” he objected gently, “otherwise she would still be of this world.”
“So it was you who killed her, or at least were responsible for her death? I always thought so!”
“It was you and I. It was both of us,” he declared in a tone of great dejection. “Yes, I, on my side, was to blame. I was too eager in my frenzy, in my longing for her spirit, in the love which consumed me for her ego, to separate her mind from her body, but you—you were too eager to separate her body from her mind. We were marching toward an inevitable catastrophe.”
His words struck me like a sword, and I did not interrupt him.
“It shows,” he went on, turning toward the door, “that we can only give happiness to a being of this world if we bring to her a well-balanced mind which we were unable to do. Had Cordélia met a little of you and a little of me, in one and the same man, she would have been happy; at least I like to think so. But where she is now her spirit needs only her mind. I am going to her!... Farewell, monsieur!”
I read this morning in the newspapers the announcement of Patrick’s death. It shall not be said that I allowed him to pursue Cordélia at his will. I hear her calling me: “Save me, Hector! Save me!”
I, too, intend to become a pure spirit, and the sooner to achieve my purpose, I shall make the same journey as Cordélia, and by the same route. Though Patrick set out first he will arrive too late. He will be deceived. The heart of Cordélia points the way that lies before me. The bullet will enter my heart at the same spot at which it pierced Cordélia’s heart. I shall breathe the same sigh which will lead me to the same point in space where she awaits me.... I am persuaded of it!...
Dear, dear, dear Cordélia!