“Helas!” I sighed gently, and smiled. “Pauvre Gessonex!”
“And you?” he demanded eagerly.
A vision of a pure, pale, proud face, set like a classic cameo, in a frame of golden hair, and lightened into life by the steady brilliancy of two calm star-splendid eyes, flashed suddenly across my mind almost against my will, and I replied, half dreamily —
“One woman I know both fair and wise, and also — I think — good.”
“You think!” laughed Gessonex, with a touch of wildness in his manner. “You only think! — you do not fear! Yes! — I say fear! Fear her, mon ami, if she is truly good, — for as sure as death the time will come when she will shame you! There is no man pure enough to look upon the face of an innocent woman, and not know himself to be at heart a villain!”
I smiled again. What foolish fancies the fellow had to be sure! He rambled on more or less incoherently, — while I sank deeper and deeper into a maze of indolent reverie. I was roused at last, however, by the respectful appeals of the tired garçon, who mildly suggested that we should now take our leave, as it was past midnight, and they were desirous of closing the café. I got up sleepily, paid the reckoning, tipped our yawning attendant handsomely, and walked, or rather reeled out of the place arm in arm with my companion, who, as soon as he found himself in the open street exposed once more to the furious rain which poured down as incessantly as ever, fell to rating the elements in the most abusive terms.
“Sacré diable!” he exclaimed. “What abominable weather! — Entirely unsuited to the constitution of a gentleman! Only rats, cats, and toads should be abroad on such a night, — and yet I — I, André Gessonex, the only painter in France with any genius, am actually compelled to walk home! What vile injustice! You, mon cher Beauvais, are more fortunate — God, or the gods, will permit you to drive! The fiacre is at your service for one franc, twenty centimes, — the voiture de place for two francs fifty! Which will you choose? — though the hour is so late that it is possible the brave cocher may not be forthcoming even when called.”
And he swaggered jauntily to the edge of the curbstone and looked up and down the nearly deserted street, I watching him curiously the while. An odd calmness possessed me, — some previously active motion in my brain seemed suddenly stopped, — and I was vaguely interested in trifles. For instance, there was a little pool in a hollow of the pavement at my feet, and I found myself dreamily counting the big raindrops that plashed into it with the force of small falling pebbles; — then, a certain change in the face of Gessonex excited my listless attention, — his eyes were so feverishly brilliant that for the moment their lustre gave him a sort of haggard dare-devil beauty, that though wild and starved and faded, was yet strangely picturesque. I studied him coldly for a little space, — then moved close up to him and slipped a twenty-franc piece into his hand. His fingers closed on it instantly.
“Drive home yourself, mon cher, if you can get a carriage,” I said. “As for me I shall walk.”
“Let the rich man trudge while the beggar rides!” laughed Gessonex, pocketing his gold coin without remark, — he would have considered any expression of gratitude in the worst possible taste. “That is exactly what all the disappointed folk here below expect to do after death, Beauvais! — to ride in coaches and six round Heaven and look down at their enemies walking the brimstone, miles in Hell! What a truly Christian hope, is it not? And so you will positively invite another drenching? Bien! — so then will I, — I can change my clothes when I get home!” Unfortunate devil! — he had no clothes to change, — I knew that well enough! His road lay in an entirely different direction from mine, so I bade him good night.
“You are a different man now, Beauvais, are you not?” he said, as he shook hands. “The ‘green fairy’ has cured you of your mind’s distemper?”
“Was my mind distempered?” I queried indifferently, wondering as I spoke why the lately incessant pulsation in my brain was now so stunned and still. “I forget! — but I suppose it was! Anyhow, whatever was the matter with me, I am now quite myself again.” He laughed wildly.
“Good! I am glad of that! As for me, I am never myself, — I am always somebody else! Droll, is it not? The fact is” — and he lowered his voice to a confidential whisper— “I have had a singular experience in my life, — altogether rare and remarkable. I have killed myself and attended my own funeral! Yes, truly! Candles, priests, black draperies, well-fed long-tailed horses, — toute la baraque, — no sparing of expense, you understand? My corpse was in an open shell — I have a curious objection to shut-up coffins — open to the night it lay, with the stars staring down upon it — it had a young face then, — and one might easily believe that it had also had fine eyes. I chose white violets for the wreath just over the heart, — they are charming flowers, full of delicately suggestive odour, do you not find? — and the long procession to the grave was followed by the weeping crowds of Paris. ‘Dead!’ they cried. ‘Our Gessonex! the Raphael of France!’ Oh, it was a rare sight, mon ami! — Never was there such grief in a land before, — I wept myself for sympathy with my lamenting countrymen! I drew aside till all the flowers had been thrown into the open grave, — for I was the sexton, you must remember! — I waited till the cemetery way deserted and in darkness — and then I made haste to bury myself — piling the earth over my dead youth close and fast, levelling it well, and treading it down! The Raphael of France! — There he lay, I thought — and there he might remain, so far as I was concerned — he was only a genius, and as such was no earthly use to anybody. Good-bye and good riddance, I said, as I hurried away from that graveyard and became from henceforth somebody else! And do you know I infinitely prefer to be somebody else? — it is so much less troublesome!”
These strange, incoherent sentences coursed off his lips with impetuous rapidity — his voice had a strained piteous pathos in it mingled with scorn, — and the intense light in his eyes deepened to a sort of fiery fury from which I involuntarily recoiled. His appellation of “mad” painter never seemed so entirely suited to him as now. But, mad or not mad, he was quick enough to perceive the instinctive shrinking movement I made, and laughing again, he again shook my hand cordially, lifted his battered hat with an assumption of excessive gentility, and breaking into the most high-flown expressions of French courtesy, bade me once more farewell. I watched him walking along in his customary half-jaunty, half-tragic style till he had disappeared round a corner like a fantastic spectre vanishing in a nightmare, and then — then, as though a flash of blinding fire had crossed my sight, it suddenly became clear to my mind what he had done for me! As I realized it I could have shouted aloud in the semi-delirium of feverish intoxication that burnt my brain! That subtle flavour — clinging to my palate — that insidious fluid creeping drop by drop through my veins — I knew what it was at last! — the first infiltration of another life — the slow but sure transfusion of a strange and deadly bitterness into my blood, which once absorbed, must and would cling to me for ever! Absintheur! I had heard the name used, sometimes contemptuously, sometimes compassionately, — it meant, — oh! so much! — and like charity, covered such a multitude of sins! On what a fine hair’s-breadth of chance or opportunity one’s destiny hangs after all! To think of that miserable André Gessonex being an instrument of Fate seemed absurd! — a starved vaurien and reprobate — a mere crazed fool! — and yet — yet — my casual meeting with him had been fore-doomed! — it had given the Devil time to do good work, — to consume virtue in a breath and conjure up vice from the dead ashes — to turn a feeling heart to stone — and to make of a man a fiend!
XIII.
I WENT home that night, not to sleep but to dream, — to dream, with eyes wide open and senses acutely conscious. I knew I was in my own room and on my own bed, — I could almost count the little gradations of light in the pale glow flung by the flickering night-lamp against the wall and ceiling, — I could hear the muffled “tick-tick” of the clock in my father’s chamber next to
mine, — but though these every-day impressions were distinct and fully recognizable, I was still away from them all, — far far away in a shadowy land of strange surprises and miraculous events, — a land where beauty and terror, ecstasy and horror, divided the time between them. I was a prey to the most singular physical sensations; — that curious numbed stillness in my brain, which I had previously felt without being able to analyze, had given place to a busy, swift palpitating motion like the beat of a rapid pendulum, — and by degrees, as this something swung to and fro, its vibrations seemed to enter into and possess every part of my body. My heart bounded to the same quick time, my nerves throbbed — my blood hurled itself, so to speak, through my veins like a fierce torrent, — and I lay staring at the white ceiling above me, and vaguely wondering at all the sights I saw, and the scenes in which I, as a sort of disembodied personality, took active part without stirring! Here, for instance, was a field of scarlet poppies, — I walked knee-deep among them, inhaling the strong opium-odour of their fragile leaves, — they blazed vividly against the sky, and nodded drowsily to and fro in the languid wind. And between their brilliant clusters lay the dead! — bodies of men with ghastly wounds in their hearts, and fragments of swords and guns in their stiffening hands, while round about them were strewn torn flags and broken spears. A battle has been lately fought, I mused as I passed, — this is what some folks call the “field of honour,” and Might has gotten the victory over Right, as it ever does and as it ever will! And the poppies wave, and the birds sing, — and the men who have given their lives for truth and loyalty’s sake lie here to fester in the earth forgotten, — and so the world wags on from day to day and hour to hour, and yet people prate of a God of Justice!... What next in the moving panorama of vision? — what next? The sound of a sweet song sung at midnight! and lo! the moon is there, full, round, and warm! — grand grey towers and palaces rise about me on all sides, — and out on that yellow-glittering water rests one solitary gondola, black as a floating hearse, yet holding light! She, that fair siren in white robes, with bosom bare to the amorous moon-rays, — she, with her wicked laughing eyes and jewel-wreathed tresses, — is she not beautiful wanton enough for at least one hour’s joy! Hark! — she sings, — and the tremulous richness of her silver-toned mandoline quivers in accord with her voice across the bright dividing wave!
“Que mon dernier souffle, emporté
Dans les parfums du vent d’été
Soit un soupir de volupté!
Qu’il vole, papillon charmé
Par l’attrait des roses de mai
Sur les lèvres du bien-aimé!”
I listen in dumb rapt ecstasy, — when all at once the moon vanishes, — a loud clap of thunder reverberates through earth and heaven, — the lightning glitters aloft, and I am alone in darkness and in storm. Alone, — yet not alone, — for there, gliding before me in aerial phantom-shape, I see Pauline! — her thin garments wet, — her dark locks dank and dripping, — her blue eyes fixed and lustreless — but yet, she smiles! — A strange sad smile! — she waves her hand and passes; — I strive to follow, but some imperative force holds me back, — I can only look after her and wonder why those drops of moisture cling so heavily to her gown and hair! She disappears! — good! — Now I am at peace again, — I can watch to my heart’s content those little leaping flames that sparkle round me in lambent wreaths of exquisitely brilliant green, — I can think!...
No sooner did this idea of thought force itself upon me than it became an urgent and paramount necessity — and I strove to steady that whirling, buzzing wheel in my brain, and compass it to some fixed end, but it was like a perpetually shaken kaleidoscope, always forming itself into a new pattern before one had time to resolve the first. Though this was odd and in a manner confusing, it did not distress me at all, — I patiently endeavoured to set my wits in order with that peculiar pleasure many persons find in arranging a scientific puzzle, — and by degrees I arrived at a clear understanding with myself and gained a full comprehension of my own intentions. And now my intelligent perception became as exact and methodical as it had been before erratic and confused, — I found I had acquired new force, — new logic, — new views of principle, — and I was able to turn over quite quietly in my mind Pauline de Charmilles’ dishonour. Yes! — dishonour was the word — there was no other — and for her sin she had not the shadow of an excuse. And Silvion Guidèl was a liar and traitor, — he justly merited the punishment due to such canaille. What a fool I had been to entertain for a moment the idea of forgiveness!
— what a piece of wretched effeminacy it would be on my part, to actually put up with my own betrayal and aid to make my betrayers happy! Such an act might suit the rôle of a saint, — but it would not suit me. I was no saint, — I was a deeply wronged man, — and was I to have no redress for my wrong?
The more I dwelt upon this sense of deadly injury, the more my inward resentment asserted itself and gathered strength, and I laughed aloud as I remembered what a soft-hearted weakling I had been before, — before I had learned the wisdom of absinthe! Oh, wonderful elixir! — it had given me courage, ferocity, stern resolve, relentless justice! — and the silly plan I had previously devised for the benefit of the two miserable triflers who had made so light of my love and honour, was now completely altered and — reversed! Glorious absinthe! What is it the poet sings? —
“Avec l’absinthe, avec le feu
On peut se divertir un peu
Jouer son rôle en quelque drâme!”
True enough! “Jouer son rôle en quelque drâme!” Why not? All things are possible to Absinthe, — it can accomplish more marvellous deeds than its drinkers wot of! It can quench pity — freeze kindness, — kill all gentle emotions, and rouse in a man the spirit of a beast of prey! The furious passions of a savage, commingled with the ecstasies of a visionary wake together at its touch, and he who drains it deeply and often, becomes a brute-poet, a god-centaur, — a thing for angels to wonder at, and devils to rejoice in; — and such an one am I! Who is there living that can make me regret a single evil deed I have committed, or prove to me at all satisfactorily that my deeds are evil? No one! Whosoever has Absinthe for his friend and boon companion has made an end of conscience, and for this blessing at least, should thank the dreadful unseen gods! And, while we are about it, let us not forget to thank the fine progressive science of to-day! For we have learnt beyond a doubt, — have we not? that we are merely physical organizations of being, — that we have nothing purely spiritual or God-born in us, — and thus, this Conscience that is so much talked about, is nothing after all but a particular balance or condition of the grey pulpy brain-matter. Moreover, it is in our own power to alter that balance! — to reverse that condition! — and this once done, shall we not be more at peace? Knowing the times to be evil, why should we weary ourselves with striving after imaginary good? The mind that evolves high thought and plans of lofty action, is deemed more or less crazed, — it is fevered, — exalted, — foolishly imaginative, — so say the wiseacres of the world, who with bitter words and chill satire make a jest of their best poets and martyrize their noblest men. Come, then, O ye great dreamers of the better life! — come, sweet singers of divine things in rhythm! — come, ye passionate musicians who strive to break open the gates of heaven with purest sound! — come, teachers, thinkers, and believers all! — re-set the wrong and silly balance of your brains, — reverse the inner dial of your lives, as I have done! — steep your fine feelings in the pale-green fire that enflâmes the soul, — and make of yourselves absintheurs, — the languid yet ferocious brutes of Paris, whose ferocity born of poison, yet leaves them slaves!
The night of wakeful vision past, I arose from my bed, — I reeled back as it were out of a devil’s shadow-land, and faced God’s morning unafraid. It was the day of my father’s expected return from England, — and I surveyed myself curiously in the mirror to see if there was anything noticeably strange or unsettled in my looks. No! — my own reflection
showed me nothing but a rather pale countenance, and pretematurally brilliant eyes. I dressed with more than usually punctilious care, and while I took my early coffee, wrote the following lines to Silvion Guidèl: —
“I know all! To your treachery there can he but one answer. I give you to-day to make your preparations, — to-morrow, at whatever time and place I shall choose, of which I will inform you through my seconds, you will meet me, — unless, as is possible, you are coward as well as liar.
“GASTON BEAUVAIS.”
I sealed this, and with it in my hand, sallied forth to the house of the Curé, M. Vaudron. The day was chill and cloudy, but the rain had entirely ceased, and the lately boisterous wind had sunk to a mere cold breeze. I walked leisurely; — my mind was so thoroughly made up as to my course of action, that I felt no more excitement about the matter. The only thing that amused me now and then, and forced a laugh from me as I went, was the remembrance of that absurd idea I had indulged in on the previous night, — namely, that of actually pardoning the vile injury done to me, and exerting myself to make the injuring parties happy! That would be playing Christianity with a vengeance! What a ridiculous notion it now seemed! — and yet I had felt so earnestly about it then, that I had even shed tears to think of Pauline’s wretchedness!
Well! — it was a weakness, — and it was past! — and I arrived at M. Vaudron’s abode in a perfectly placid and vindictively settled humour. The good Curé owned one of those small houses with gardens which, in Paris or near it, are getting rarer every year, — a cottage-like habitation, with a moss-green paling set entirely round it, and two neatly-trimmed flower-beds adorning the grass-plat in front. I knocked at the door, — and old Margot opened it. Her sharp beady black eyes surveyed me with complete astonishment at first — she was evidently cross about something or other, for her smile was not encouraging.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 22) Page 216