by M. P. Shiel
could I get a nautical observation, andhaving at all times to go at low pressures for fear of tube and boilerweakness, crawling through tunnels, and stopping when total darknesscame on, we did not go fast, nor much cared to. Once, moreover, forthree days, and once for four, we were overtaken by hurricanes of suchvast inclemency, that no thought of travelling entered our heads, ouronly care being to hide our poor cowering bodies as deeply and darkly aspossible. Once I passed through a city (Adrianople) doubly devastated,once by the hellish arson of my own hand, and once by the earthquake:and I made haste to leave that place behind me.
Finally, three months and twenty-seven days from the date of theearthquake, having traversed only 900 odd English miles, I let go in theVenice lagoon, in the early morning of the 10th September, the lateensail and stone anchor of a Maltese _speronare_, which I had found, andpartially cleaned, at Trieste; and thence I passed up the Canalazzo in agondola. For I said to Leda: 'In Venice will I pitch my Patriarch tent.'
But to will and to do are not the same thing, and still furtherWestward was I driven. For the stagnant upper canals of this place arenow mere miasmas of pestilence: and within two days I was rolling withfever in the Old Procurazie Palace, she standing in pale wonderment atmy bed-side, sickness quite a novel thing to her: and, indeed, this wasmy first serious illness since my twentieth year or thereabouts, when Ihad over-worked my brain, and went a voyage to Constantinople. I couldnot move from bed for some weeks, but happily did not lose my senses,and she brought me the whole pharmacopoeia from the shops, from which tochoose my medicines. I guessed the cause of this illness, though not asign of it came near her, and as soon as my trembling knees could bearme, I again set out--always Westward--enjoying now a certain luxury intravelling compared with that Turkish difficulty, for here were notwisted metals, more and better engines, in the cities as many goodpetrol motors as I chose, and Nature markedly less savage.
I do not know why I did not stop at Verona or Brescia, or some otherneighbourhood of the Italian lakes, since I was fond of water: but Ihad, I think, the thought in my head to return to Vauclaire in France,where I had lived, and there live: for I thought that she might likethose old monks. At all events, we did not remain long in any place tillwe came to Turin, where we spent nine days, she in the house oppositemine, and after that, at her own suggestion, went on still, passing bytrain into the valley of the Isere, and then into that of the WesternRhone, till we came to the old town of Geneva among some very greatmountains peaked with snow, the town seated at the head of a long lakewhich the earth has made in the shape of the crescent moon, and like themoon it is a thing of much beauty and many moods, suggesting a creatureunder the spell of charms and magics. However, with this idea ofVauclaire still in my head, we left Geneva in the motor which hadbrought us at four in the afternoon of the 17th May, I intending toreach the town called Bourg that night about eight, and there sleep, soto go on to Lyons the next morning by train, and so, by the Bordeauxroute, make Vauclaire. But by some chance for which I cannot to thishour account (unless the rain was the cause), I missed the chart-road,which should have been fairly level, and found myself on mountaintracks, unconscious of my whereabouts, while darkness fell, and awindless downpour that had a certain sullen venom in its superabundancedrenched us. I stopped several times, looking about for chateau,chalet, or village, but none did I see, though I twice came upon railwaylines; and not till midnight did we run down a rather steep pass uponthe shore of a lake, which, from its apparent vastness in the moonlessobscurity, I could only suppose to be the Lake of Geneva once again.About two hundred yards to the left we saw through the rain a largepile, apparently risen straight out of the lake, looking ghostly livid,for it was of white stone, not high, but an old thing of complicatedwhite little turrets roofed with dark red candle extinguishers, andoddities of Gothic nooks, window slits, and outline, very like afanciful picture. Round to this we went, drowned as rats, Leda sighingand bedraggled, and found a narrow spit of low land projecting into thelake, where we left the car, walked forward with the bag, crossed asmall wooden drawbridge, and came upon a rocky island with a number ofthick-foliaged trees about the castle. We quickly found a small openportal, and went throughout the place, quite gay at the shelter,everywhere lighting candles which we found in iron sconces in the ratherqueer apartments: so that, as the castle is far seen from the shores ofthe lake, it would have appeared to one looking thence a place suddenlypossessed and haunted. We found beds, and slept: and the next day itturned out to be the antique Castle of Chillon, where we remained fivelong and happy months, till again, again, Fate overtook us.
* * * * *
The morning after our coming, we had breakfast--our last mealtogether--on the first floor in a pentagonal room approached from alower level by three little steps. In it is a ponderous oak tablepierced with a multitude of worm eaten tunnels, also three mighty highbacked chairs, an old oak desk covered still with papers, arras on thewalls, and three dark religious oil paintings, and a grandfathers clock:it is at about the middle of the chateau, and contains two small, butdeep, three faced oriels, in each face four compartments with whitestone shafts between, these looking south upon shrubs and the rocky edgeof the island, then upon the deep blue lake, then upon another tinyisland containing four trees in a jungle of flowers, then upon the shoreof the lake interrupted by the mouths of a river which turned out to bethe Rhone, then upon a white town on the slopes which turned out to beVilleneuve, then upon the great mountains back of Bouveret and St.Gingolph, all having the surprised air of a resurrection justcompleted, everything new washed in dyes of azure, ultramarine, indigo,snow, emerald, that fresh morning: so that one had to call it the bestand holiest place in the world. These five old room walls, and oakfloor, and two oriels, became specially mine, though it was reallycommon ground to us both, and there I would do many little things. Thepapers on the desk told that it had been the _bureau_ of one R.E. Gaud,'_Grand Bailli_,' whose residence the place no doubt had been.
She asked me while eating that morning to stay here, and I said that Iwould see, though with misgiving: so together we went all about thehouse, and finding it unexpectedly spacious, I consented to stop. Atboth ends are suites, mostly small rooms, infinitely quaint and cosy,furnished with heavy Henri Quatre furniture and bed draperies; and thereare separate, and as it were secret, spiral stairs for exit to each: sowe decided that she should have the suite overlooking the length of thelake, the mouths of the Rhone, Bouveret and Villeneuve; and I shouldhave that overlooking the spit of land behind and the little drawbridge,shore cliffs, and elmwood which comes down to the shore, giving at onepoint a glimpse of the diminutive hamlet of Chillon; and, that decided,I took her hand in mine, and I said:
'Well, then, here we stay, both under the same roof--for the first time.Leda, I will not explain why to you, but it is dangerous, so much sothat it _may_ mean the death of one or other of us: deadly, deadlydangerous, my poor girl. You do not understand, but that is the fact,believe me, for I know it very well, and I would not tell you false.Well, then, you will easily comprehend, that this being so, you mustnever on any account come near my part of the house, nor will I comenear yours. Lately we have been very much together, but then we havebeen active, full of purpose and occupation: here we shall be nothing ofthe kind, I can see. You do not understand at all--but things are so. Wemust live perfectly separate lives, then. You are nothing to me, really,nor I to you, only we live on the same earth, which is nothing at all--amere chance. Your own food, clothes, and everything that you want, youwill procure for yourself: it is perfectly easy: the shores are crowdedwith mansions, castles, towns and villages; and I will do the same formyself. The motor down there I set apart for your private use: if I wantanother, I will get one; and to-day I will set about looking you up aboat and fishing tackle, and cut a cross on the bow of yours, so thatyou may know yours, and never use mine. All this is very necessary: youcannot dream how much: but I know how much. Do not run any risks inclimbing, now, or with the mo
tor, or in the boat ... little Leda ...'
I saw her under-lip push, and I turned away in haste, for I did not carewhether she cried or not. In that long voyage, and in my illness atVenice, she had become too near and dear to me, my tender love, my deardarling soul; and I said in my heart: 'I will be a decent being: I willturn out trumps.'
* * * * *
Under this castle is a sort of dungeon, not narrow, nor very dark, inwhich are seven stout dark-grey pillars, and an eighth, half-built intothe wall; and one of them which has an iron ring, as well as the groundaround it, is all worn away by some prisoner or prisoners once chainedthere; and in the pillar the word 'Byron' engraved. This made meremember that a poet of that name had written something about thisplace, and two days afterwards I actually came upon three volumes of thepoet in a room containing a great number of books, many of them English,near the Grand