“Silvion — dead!” she muttered, “dead! — and I never knew! No warning given — no message — no spirit-voice in the night to tell me — Oh no! — God would not be so cruel! Dead! — and — murdered! Ah no!” and her accents rose to a shrill wail— “it cannot be true! — it cannot! Gaston Beauvais, it was not you who spoke — it was some horrid fancy of my own! — you did not say it — you could not say it—”
She stopped, panting for breath. My blood burned as I looked at her, — in her agony and terror she was so beautiful! How wild and brilliant were those lovely eyes! — I took a fierce delight in pricking her on to such adorable frenzy!
“I said, Pauline, what I will say again, that your lover Silvion Guidèl is dead, and that it was I who killed him! Without a weapon, too, — with these hands alone! — and yet see! — there is no blood upon them!”
I held them out to her, — she craned her neck forward and looked at them strangely, with a peering horror in her eyes that seemed to make them fixed and glassy. Then a light flashed over her face — her lips parted in a shrill scream.
“Murderer!” she cried, clapping her hands wildly, “murderer! You have confessed — you shall atone! You shall die for your crime — I will have justice! au secours! au secours!”
I sprang upon her swiftly — I covered her mouth — I grasped her slim throat and stifled her shrieks.
“Silence, fool!” I whispered hoarsely. “I told you I would kill you if you screamed. Another sound, another movement, and I will keep my word. What are you shouting for? — what do you want with justice? There is no such thing, either in earth or heaven! Silvion Guidèl is dead and buried, but who can prove that he was murdered? He was buried as a suicide. If I tell you I killed him, I can tell others a different story, and your denunciation of me will seem mere hysterical raving! Be still!” Here, as I felt her swaying unsteadily beneath my touch, I took my hands from her mouth and throat and let her go. She tottered and sank down on the pavement, shuddering in every limb, and crouching there, moaned to herself like a sick and suffering child. I waited a minute or two, listening. Had any one heard her scream? I half expected some officious gendarme to appear, and inquire what was the matter, — but no! — nothing disturbed the dark stillness but the roar of passing traffic and the plash of the slow rain. Satisfied at last that all was safe, I turned to her once more, this time with something of derision.
“Why do you lie there?” I asked her— “you were warmer in my arms a few moments ago! I have stolen the kisses your Silvion left on those pretty lips of yours, — you did well to keep them from the touch of other men, — they were reserved for me! Fragrant as roses I found them, but somewhat cold! But you must wish to hear news of Silvion, — let me tell you of him. You were right, — he did come to Paris.”
She made no reply, but rocked herself to and fro, still shivering and moaning.
“There is a pretty nook near Suresnes” — I went on. “The trees there have sheltered and hidden the shame of your love many and many a time! There are grassy nooks, and the birds build their nests to the sound of their own singing, — the river flows softly, and in the early morning when the bells are ringing for mass, the scene is fair enough to tempt even a prude to wantonness. Are you weeping? Ah! — we always grow sentimental over the scene of our pleasantest sins! We love the spot, — we are drawn to it by some fatal yet potent fascination, and after an interval of absence, we return to it with a lingering fond desire to see it once again. Yes, I know! — Silvion Guidèl knew, — and even so, he, in good time returned.”
Still no answer! Still the same shuddering movement and restless moaning.
“I met him there” — I pursued, — I was beginning to take a fantastic pleasure in my own narrative. “It was night, and the moon was shining. It must have looked different when you kept your secret trystes, — for you chose the freshest hours of the day, when all your friends and relatives believed you were praying for them at mass like the young saint you seemed to be — it was all sunshine and soft, wind for you, — but for me — well! the stars are but sad cold worlds in the sky, and the moon has a solemn face in spite of her associations with lovers, — and so I found there was something suggestive of death in the air when I chanced upon le beau Silvion! We spoke together; he had strange ideas of the possibility of mingling his love with his sworn duty to the Church, — indeed, he seemed to think that God would be on his side if he gave up his vocation altogether and returned to you. — Are you in pain that you keep up such a constant moaning? — But I soon convinced him that he was wrong, and that the Divine aid was always to be had for the right, providing the right was strong enough to hold its own! And for the nonce, this strong right found its impersonation in me. We did not quarrel, — there was no time for that. We said what we had to say and there an end. Life, — the life of a sensual priest — presented itself to me as a citadel to be stormed; — I attacked, he defended it. I had no weapon — neither had he, — my hands alone did the work of justice. For it must have been, justice, according to the highest religious tenets, else God would not have permitted it, and my strength would have been rendered useless by Divine interposition! Now in France they guillotine criminals, — in England they hang them, — in the East they strangle them — it is all one, so long as the business of breathing is stopped. I remembered this — and adopted the eastern method — it was hard work I can assure you, to strangle a man without rope or bowstring! — it took me time to do it, and it was difficult, — also, it was very difficult for him to die!”
“Oh God!” The cry was like the last exclamation wrung from a creature dying on the inquisitional rack of torture, — it was terrible, even to me, — and for a moment I paused, my blood chilled by that awful, despairing groan. But the demon within me urged on my speech again, and I resumed with an air of affected indifference.
“All difficulties come to an end, of course, like everything else — and his were soon terminated. He died at last. I flung his body in the Seine, — well, what now?” for she suddenly sprang erect, and stared at me with a curiously vague yet hunted look, like some trapped wild animal meditating an escape. “You must not leave me yet, — you have not heard all. So! — stand still as you are, — you look like a young tragic muse! — you are beautiful, — quite inspired! — I almost believe you are glad to know your betrayer is dead! I threw his body in the Seine, I tell you; and a little while afterwards I saw it in the Morgue!” — here I begun to laugh involuntarily. “I swear I should scarcely have known the Raffaelle-like Silvion again! Imagine those curved red lips that used to smile at shadows like another Narcissus, all twisted and blue! — think of the supple, straight limbs, livid and swollen to twice their natural size! — by Heaven, it was astonishing — amusing! — the grossest caricature of manhood, — all save the eyes. They remained true to the departed covetous soul that had expressed its base desires through them, — they still uttered the last craving of the wrenched-out life that had gone, ‘Love! — Love and Pauline!’”
As I said this I smiled. She stood before me like a stone image — so still that I wondered whether she had heard. Her hair had come unbound, and she fingered a tress of it mechanically.
“Love and Pauline!” I repeated, with a sort of satisfaction in the enunciation of the two words— “that is what those dead eyes said, — that is what my heart says now! — love, and Pauline! Silvion desired, and for a time possessed both, — at present it is my turn! For he is lost in the common fosse, among crowds of other self-slayers, — and you cannot find even his grave to weep over! Yet — strange to say — I have seen him many times since then—”
The passive form before me stirred and swayed like a slender sapling in a gust of wind — and a voice spoke hoarsely and feebly.
“Seen what? — seen whom?”
“Silvion!” I answered, — my brain suddenly darkening with phantasmal recollections as I spoke, — and, yielding to an involuntary sensation, I turned sharply round, just in time to percei
ve the figure of a priest outline itself dimly as though in pale phosphorescence against the dark corner of the narrow-built court where we stood. “There!” I cried furiously. “See you, Pauline? — There he is! — creeping along like a coward on some base errand! I have not killed him after all! There! — there! Look! He is beckoning you!”
She sprang forward, — her eyes blazing, her arms outstretched, her lips apart.
“Where? where?” she wailed. “Silvion! Silvion! Oh no, no! You torture me! — all is silence — blackness — death! Oh God — God! — is there no mercy!”
And suddenly flinging up her hands above her head, she broke into a loud peal of discordant delirious laughter and rushed violently past me out of the court. Horror or madness lent speed to her flight, for though I followed her close I could not get within touch of her. The rain and mist seemed to enfold her as she fled, till she looked like a phantom blown before me by the wind; — once in the open thoroughfare, one or two passengers stopped and stared after her as she ran, and after me too, doubtless; — but otherwise gave no heed to our headlong progress. Straight on she rushed, — straight to the Pont Neuf which on this wet and dreary night was vacant and solitary. I accelerated my steps, — I strained every nerve and sinew to overtake her, but in vain. She was like a leaf in a storm, — hurled onwards by temporary insanity, she seemed literally to have wings — to fly instead of to run — but half-way across the bridge, she paused. One flitting second — and she sprang on the parapet!
“Pauline!” I cried “Wait! Pauline!”
She never turned her head, — she raised her hands to heaven and clasped them as though in supplication, — then — she threw herself forward as swiftly as a bird pinioning its way into space. One small, dull splash echoed on the silence, — she was gone! I reached the spot a moment after she had vanished, — I leaned over the parapet, — I peered down into the gloomy water; — nothing there! Nothing but blank stillness — blank obscurity!
“Pauline!” I muttered. “Little Pauline!”
Then, as I strained my sight over the monotonous width of the river, I saw a something lift itself into view, — a woman’s robe blew upwards and outwards like a dark, wet sail — it swirled round once — twice — thrice, — and then it sank again!... My teeth chattered, — I clung to the stone parapet to prevent myself from falling. And yet a horrible sense of amusement stirred within me, — the satirical amusement of a fiend! —— it seemed such a ludicrous thing to consider that, after, all, this weak, fragile child had escaped me, — had actually gone quietly away where I could not, dared not follow!
“Pauline!? I whispered. “Tell me, — what is death like? Is it easy? Do you know anything about love down there in the cold? Remember my kisses were the last on your lips, — mine, not Silvion’s! God Himself cannot undo that! — all Eternity cannot alter that! They will burn you in hell, they will taint you in heaven, those kisses of mine, Pauline! They will part you from Silvion! — ah! — there is their chief est sting-! You shall not be with him, — I say you shall not!” — and I almost shrieked, as the idea flashed across my perverted brain that perhaps after all the poets were right, and that lovers who loved and were faithful, met in the sight of a God who forgave them their love and were happy together for ever. “May the whole space of heaven keep you asunder! — may the fire of God’s breath sow the whirlwind between you — may you wander apart and alone, finding paradise empty, and all immortality worthless and wearisome — every kiss of mine on your lips be a curse, Pauline — a curse by which I shall claim your spirit hereafter!”
Gasping for articulate speech, the wild imprecation left my lips without my realizing my own utterance; I was giddy and faint, — my temples throbbed heavily — the blood rushed to my brain, — the sky, the trees, the houses, the bridge rushed round and round me in dark whirling rings. All at once my throat filled with a cold sense of suffocation, — tears flooded my eyes, and I broke into a loud sob of fiercest agony.
“Pauline! Pauline!” I cried to the hushed and dreary waters, “I loved you! You broke my heart! You ruined my life! You made me what I am! Pauline! Pauline! I loved you!”
The wind filled my ears with a dull roaring noise, — something black and cloudy seemed to rise palpably out of the river and sway towards me, — the pale, stern face of Silvion Guidèl came between me and the murky skies, — and with a faint groan, and a savouras of blood in my mouth, I lost my hold on thought and action and reeled down into utter darkness, insensible.
XXXII.
DULL grey lines with flecks of fire between them, — fire that radiated into all sorts of tints, — blue, green, red, and amber, — these were the first glimmerings of light on my sense of vision that roused me anew to consciousness. Vaguely, and without unclosing my eyes I studied these little points of flame as they danced to and fro on their neutral grey background; — then, a violent shivering fit seized me, and I stirred languidly into my wretched life once more. It was morning, — very early morning — and I was still on the Pont Neuf, lying crouched close to the parapet like any hunted, suffering animal. The mists of dawn hung heavily over the river, and a few bells were ringing lazily here and there for early mass. I struggled to my feet, — pushed my tangled hair from my eyes, and strove hard to realize what had happened. Little by little, I unravelled my knotted thoughts, and grasped at the central solution of their perplexity, — namely, this: Pauline was drowned! Pauline, — even she! — the little fairy thing that had danced and sung and flirted and prattled of her school at Lausanne and her love of ‘marrons glacés’ — even she had become a tragic heroine, wild as any Juliet or Francesca! How strange it seemed! — as the critics would say — how melodramatic! For we are supposed to be living in very common-place days, — though truly this is one of the greatest errors the modern wise-acres ever indulged in. Never was there a period in which there was so much fatal complexity of thought and discussion; never was there a time in which men and women were so prone to analyze themselves and the world they in habit with more pitiless precision and fastidious doubt and argument; and this tendency creates such strange new desires, such subtle comparisons, such marvellous accuracy of perception, such discontent, such keen yet careless valuation of life at its best, that more romances and tragedies are enacted now than Sophocles ever dreamed of. They are performed without any very great éclat or stage-effects, — for we latter-day philosophers hate to give grand names to anything, our chief object of study being to destroy all ideals, — hence, we put down a suicide to temporary insanity, a murder to some hereditary disposition, or wrong balance of molecules in the brain of the murderer, — and love and all the rest of the passions to a little passing heat of the blood. All disposed of quite quietly! Yet suicides are on the increase, — so are murders; and love and revenge and hatred and jealousy run on in their old predestined human course, caring nothing for the names we give them, and making as much havoc as ever they did in the days of Cæsar Borgia. To modern casuists, however, Pauline would but seem “temporarily insane” — and during that fit of temporary insanity she had drowned herself — voilà tout!
Any way she was dead; — that was the chief thing I had to realize and to remember, — but with its usual obstinacy my brain refused to credit it! The mists rose slowly up from the river — the church bells ceased ringing; a chill wind blew. I shuddered at the pure cold air — it seemed to freeze my blood. I looked abstractedly at the river, and my eyes lighted by chance on a long low flat building not far distant — the Morgue. Ah! Pauline, — if it were indeed she who had been “melodramatic” enough to drown — Pauline would be taken to the Morgue — and I should see her there, A little patience, — a day, perhaps two days, — and I should see her there!
Meanwhile, I was cold and tired and starved; I would go home, — home if I could walk there, — if my limbs were not too weak and stiff to support me. Oh, for a draught of Absinthe! — that would soon put fire into my veins and warm the numbness of my heart! I paused a moment, still gazing
at the dull water and the dull mists; then all at once a curious sick fear began to creep through me, — an awful premonition that something terrible was about to happen, though what it was I could not imagine. My heart began to beat heavily; — I kept my eyes riveted on the scene immediately opposite, for while the sensation I speak of mastered me, I dared not look behind. Presently I distinctly heard a low panting near me like the breathing of some heavy creature, — and my nervous dread grew stronger, For a moment I felt that I would rather fling myself into the Seine than turn my head! It was an absurd sensation, — a cowardly sensation; one that I knew I ought to control and subdue, and after a brief but painful contest with myself I gathered together a slight stock, not of actual courage but physical bravado, — and slowly, irresolutely looked back over my own shoulder, — then, unspeakably startled and amazed at what I saw, I turned my whole body round involuntarily and confronted the formidable beast that lay crouched there on the Pont Neuf, watching me with its sly green eyes and apparently waiting on my movements. A leopard of the forest at large in the heart of Paris! — could anything be more strange and hideously terrifying? I stared at it, — it stared at me! I could almost count the brown velvet spots on its tawny hide, — I saw its lithe body quiver with the pulsations of its quick breath, — and for some minutes I was perfectly paralyzed with fear and horror; — afraid to stir an inch! Presently, as I stood inert and terror-stricken, I heard steps approaching, and a labourer appeared carrying some tin cans which clinked together merrily, — he whistled as he came along, and seemed to be in cheerful humour. I watched him anxiously. What would he do, — what would he say when he caught sight of that leopard lying on the bridge, obstructing his progress? Onward he marched indifferently, — and my heart almost ceased to beat for a second as I saw him coming nearer and nearer to the horrible creature.... What! — was he blind? — Could he not see the danger before him? I strove to cry out, — but my tongue was like stiff leather in my mouth, — I could not utter a syllable; — and lo! — while my fascinated gaze still rested on him he had passed me! — passed apparently over or through the animal I saw and dreaded!
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 236
