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THE STORY OF ANDR? CORN?LIS

On these sheets of paper I will draw a true picture of my destiny, for I can catch only glimpses of it in the blurred mirror of my thoughts. And when the pages are covered with my scrawl I will burn them. But the thing will have taken form, and existed before my eyes, like a living being. I shall have thrown a light upon the chaos of horrible recollections which bewilder me. I shall know what my strength really is. Here, in this room where I came to the final resolution, it is only too easy for me to remember. To work, then! I pass my word to myself that I will set down the whole.

Let me remember? I have the sense of having trodden a sorrowing way during many years, but what was my first step in the blood-spotted pathway of pain? Where ought I to take up the tale of the slow martyrdom, whose last stage of torture I have reached to-day? I know not, for my feelings are like those lagoon-worn shores on which one cannot tell where sea begins or ends; vague places, sand and water, whose uncertain outline is constantly changing and being formed anew; regions without bounds. Nevertheless these places are drawn upon the map, and we may depict our feelings also by reflection, and after the manner of analysis. The reality is ever shifting about. How intangible it is, always escaping our eager grasp! The enigma of enigmas is to know the exact moment at which a wound gapes in the heart, one of those wounds which in mine have never closed. In order to simplify everything, and to keep myself from sinking into that torpor of reverie which steals over me like the influence of opium, I will divide my task into events, marking first the precise fact which was the primal and determining cause of all the rest--the tragic and mysterious death of my father. Let me endeavour to recall the emotion by which I was overwhelmed at that time, without mixing with it anything of what I have since understood and felt.

I was nine years old. It was in 1864, in the month of June, at the close of a warm afternoon. I was at my studies in my room as usual, having come in from the Lyc?e Bonaparte, and the outer shutters were closed. We lived in the Rue Tronchet, in the seventh house on the left, coming from the church. Three highly-polished steps led to the little room, prettily furnished in blue, within whose walls I passed the last happy days of my life. Everything comes back to me. I was seated at my table, dressed in a black overall, and engaged in writing out the tenses of a Latin verb. All of a sudden I heard a cry, followed by a clamour of voices; then rapid steps trod the corridor outside my room. Instinctively I rushed to the door and came against a servant, who was pale, and had a roll of linen in his hand. I understood the use of this afterwards. At the sight of me he exclaimed:

"Ah! M. Andr?, what an awful misfortune!"

Then, regaining his presence of mind, he said:

"Go back into your room--go back at once!"

Before I could answer, he caught me up in his arms, placed me on the upper step of my staircase, locked the door of the corridor, and walked rapidly away.

"No, no," I cried, flinging myself against the door, "tell me all; I will, I must know." No answer. I shook the lock, I struck the panel with my clenched fists, I dashed my shoulder against the door. Then, sitting upon the lowest step, I listened, in an agony of fear, to the coming and going of people outside, who knew of "the awful misfortune," but what was it they knew? Child as I was, I understood the terrible signification which the servant's exclamation bore under the actual circumstances. Two days previously, my father had gone out after breakfast, according to custom, to the place of business which he had occupied for over four years, in the Rue de la Victoire. He had been thoughtful during breakfast, indeed for some months past he had lost his accustomed cheerfulness. When he rose to go, my mother, myself, and one of the frequenters of our house, M. Jacques Termonde, a fellow student of my father's at the ?cole de Droit, were at table. My father left his seat before breakfast was over, having looked at the clock, and inquired whether it was right.

"Are you in such a hurry, Corn?lis?" asked Termonde.

"Yes," answered my father, "I have an appointment with a client who is ill--a foreigner--I have to call on him at his hotel to procure important papers. He is an odd sort of man, and I shall not be sorry to see something of him at closer quarters. I have taken certain steps on his behalf and I am almost tempted to regret them."

And, since then, no news! In the evening of that day, when dinner, which had been put off for one quarter of an hour after another, was over, and my father, always so methodical, so punctual, had not come in, mother began to betray her uneasiness, and could not conceal from me that his last words dwelt in her mind. It was a rare occurrence for him to speak with misgiving of his undertakings! The night passed, then the next morning and afternoon, and once more it was evening. My mother and I were once more seated at the square table, where the cover laid for my father in front of his empty chair, gave, as it were, form to our nameless dread. My mother had written to M. Jacques Termonde, and he came--after dinner. I was sent away immediately, but not without my having had time to remark the extraordinary brightness of M. Termonde's blue eyes, and usually shone coldly in his thin face. He had fair hair and a light beard. So children take note of small details, which are speedily effaced from their minds, but afterwards reappear, at the contact of life, just as certain invisible marks come out upon paper held to the fire. While begging to be allowed to remain I was mechanically observing the hurried and agitated turning and returning of a light cane--I had long coveted it--held behind his back in his beautiful hands. If I had not admired the cane so much, and the fighting Centaurs on its handle--a fine piece of work--this symptom of extreme disturbance might have escaped me. But, how could M. Termonde fail to be disturbed by the disappearance of his best friend? Nevertheless, his voice, which made all his phrases melodious, was calm.

"To-morrow," he said, "I will have every inquiry made, if Corn?lis has not returned; but he will come back, and all will be explained. Depend on it, he went away somewhere on business he told you of, and left a letter for you to be sent by a commissionaire who has not delivered it."

"Ah!" said my mother, "you think that is possible?"

How often, in my dark hours, have I recalled this dialogue, and the room in which it took place--a little salon, much liked by my mother, with hangings and furniture of some foreign stuff striped in red and white, black and yellow, that my father had brought from Morocco; and how plainly have I seen my mother in my mind's eyes, with her black hair, brown eyes, and quivering lips. She was as white as the summer gown she wore that evening. M. Termonde was dressed with his usual correctness, and I remember well his elegant figure. It makes me smile when people talk of presentiments. I went off perfectly satisfied with what he had said. I had a childish admiration for this man, and hitherto he had represented nothing to me but treats and indulgence. I attended the two classes at the Lyc?e with a relieved heart. But, while I was sitting upon the lower step of my little staircase, all my uneasiness revived. I hammered at the door again, I called as loudly as I could; but no one answered me, until the good woman who had been my nurse came into my room.

"My father!" I cried, "where is my father?"

"Poor child, poor child," said nurse, and took me in her arms.

She had been sent to tell me the truth, but her strength failed her. I escaped from her, ran out into the corridor, and reached my father's bedroom before any one could stop me. Ah! upon the bed lay a form covered by a white sheet, upon the pillow a bloodless, motionless face, with fixed, wide-open eyes, for the lids had not been closed; the chin was supported by a bandage, a napkin was bound around the forehead; at the bed's foot knelt a woman, still dressed in her white summer gown, crushed, helpless with grief. These were my father and my mother. I flung myself upon her, and she clasped me passionately, with the piercing cry, "My Andre, my Andr?!" In that cry there was much intense grief, in that embrace there was such frenzied tenderness, her heart was then so big, that it warms my own even now to think of it. The next moment she rose and carried me out of the room, that I might see the dreadful sight no more. She did this easily, her terrible excitement had doubled her strength. "God punishes me!" she said over and over again. She had always been given, by fits and starts, to mystical piety. Then she covered my face, my neck, and my hair with kisses and tears. May all that we suffered, the dead and I, be forgiven you, poor mother, for the sincerity of those tears at that moment. In my darkest hours, and when the phantom was there, beckoning to me, your grief pleaded with me more strongly than his plaint. Because of the kisses of that moment I have always been able to believe in you, for those kisses and tears were not meant to conceal anything. Your whole heart revolted against the deed that bereaved me of my father. I swear by the anguish which we shared in that moment, that you had no part in the hideous plot. Ah, forgive me, that I have felt the need even now of affirming this. If you only knew how one sometimes hungers and thirsts for certainty--ay, even to the point of agony.

When I asked my mother to tell me all about the awful event, she said that my father had been seized with a fit in a hackney carriage, and that as no papers were found upon him, he had not been recognised for two days. Grownup people are too ready to think it is equally easy to tell lies to all children. Now, I was a child who pondered long in my thoughts over things that were said to me, and by means of putting a number of small facts together, I came to the conviction that I did not know the whole truth. If my father's death had occurred in the manner stated to me, why should the man-servant have asked me, one day when he took me out to walk, what had been said to me about it? And when I answered him, why did he say no more, and, being a very talkative person, why had he kept silence ever since? Why, too, did I feel the same silence all around me, sitting on every lip, hidden in every look? Why was the subject of conversation constantly changed whenever I drew near? I guessed this by many trifling signs. Why was not a single newspaper left lying about, whereas, during my father's lifetime, the three journals to which we subscribed were always to be found on a table in the salon? Above all, why did both the masters and my schoolfellows look at me so curiously, when I went back to school early in October, four months after our great misfortune? Alas! it was their curiosity which revealed the full extent of the catastrophe to me. It was only a fortnight after the reopening of the school, when I happened to be playing one morning with two new boys; I remember their names, Rastonaix and Servoin, now, and I can see the fat cheeks of Rastonaix and the ferret face of Servoin. Although we were outdoor pupils, we were allowed a quarter of an hour's recreation indoors, between the Latin and English lessons. The two boys had engaged me on the previous days for a game of ninepins, and when it was over, they came close to me, and looking at each other to keep up their courage, they put to me the following questions, point-blank:

"Is it true that the murderer of your father has been arrested?"

"And that he is to be guillotined?"

This occurred sixteen years ago, but I cannot now recall the beating of my heart at those words without horror. I must have turned pale, for the two boys, who had struck me this blow with the carelessness of their age--of our age--stood there disconcerted. A blind fury seized upon me, urging me to command them to be silent, and to hit them if they spoke again; but at the same time I felt a wild impulse of curiosity--what if this were the explanation of the silence by which I felt myself surrounded?--and also a pang of fear, the fear of the unknown. The blood rushed into my face, and I stammered out:

"I do not know."

The drum-tap, summoning us back to the schoolroom, separated us. What a day I passed, bewildered by my trouble, turning the two terrible sentences over and over again.

It would have been natural for me to question my mother; but the truth is, I felt quite unable to repeat to her what my unconscious tormentors had said. It was strange but true, that henceforth my mother, whom nevertheless I loved with all my heart, exercised a paralysing influence over me. She was so beautiful in her pallor, so beautiful and proud. No, I should never have ventured to reveal to her that an irresistible doubt of the story she had told me was implanted in my mind merely by the two questions of my schoolfellows; but, as I could not keep silence entirely and live, I resolved to have recourse to Julie, my former nurse. She was a little woman, fifty years of age, an old maid too, with a flat wrinkled face; but her eyes were full of kindness, and indeed so was her whole face, although her lips were drawn in by the loss of her front teeth, and this gave her a witch-like mouth. She had deeply mourned my father in my company, for she had been in his service before his marriage. Julie was retained specially on my account, and in addition to her the household consisted of the cook, the man-servant, and the chamber-maid. Julie put me to bed and tucked me in, heard me say my prayers, and listened to my little troubles. "Oh! the wretches!" she exclaimed, when I opened my heart to her and repeated the words that had agitated me so terribly. "And yet it could not have been hidden from you for ever." Then it was that she told me all the truth, there in my little room, speaking very low and bending over me, while I lay sobbing in my bed. She suffered in the telling of that truth as much as I in the hearing of it, and the touch of her dry old hand, with fingers scarred by the needle, fell softly on my curly head.

That ghastly story, which bore down my youth with the weight of an impenetrable mystery, I have found written in the newspapers of the day, but not more clearly than it was narrated by my dear old Julie. Here it is, plainly set forth, as I have turned and re-turned it over and over again in my thoughts, day after day, with the vain hope of penetrating it.

The day passed on, and towards night two housemaids entered the apartment of the foreign gentleman to prepare his bed. They passed through the salon without observing anything unusual. The traveller's luggage, composed of a large and much-used trunk and a quite new dressing-bag, were there. His dressing-things were arranged on the top of a cabinet. The next day, towards noon, the same housemaids entered the apartment, and finding that the traveller had slept out, they merely replaced the day-covering upon the bed, and paid no attention to the salon. Precisely the same thing occurred in the evening; but on the following day, one of the women having come into the apartment early, and again finding everything intact, began to wonder what this meant. She searched about, and speedily discovered a body, lying at full length underneath the sofa, with the head wrapped in towels. She uttered a scream which brought other servants to the spot, and the corpse of my father was removed from the hiding-place in which the assassin had concealed it. It was not difficult to reconstruct the scene of the murder. A wound in the back of the neck indicated that the unfortunate man had been shot from behind, while seated at the table examining papers, by a person standing close beside him. The report had not been heard, on account of the proximity of the weapon, and also because of the constant noise in the street, and the position of the salon at the back of the anteroom. Besides, the precautions taken by the murderer rendered it reasonable to believe that he had carefully chosen a weapon which would produce but little sound. The ball had penetrated the spinal marrow and death had been instantaneous. The assassin had placed new unmarked towels in readiness, and in these he wrapped up the head and neck of his victim, so that there were no traces of blood. He had dried his hands on a similar towel, after rinsing them with water taken from the carafe; this water he had poured back into the same bottle, which was found concealed behind the drapery of the mantelpiece. Was the robbery real or pretended? My father's watch was gone, and neither his letter-case nor any paper by which his identity could be proved was found upon his body. An accidental indication led, however, to his immediate recognition. Inside the pocket of his waistcoat was a little band of tape, bearing the address of the tailor's establishment. Inquiry was made there, in the afternoon the sad discovery ensued, and after the necessary legal formalities, the body was brought home.

And the murderer? The only data on which the police could proceed were soon exhausted. The trunk left by the mysterious stranger, whose name was certainly not Rochdale, was opened. It was full of things bought haphazard, like the trunk itself, from a bric-?-brac seller who was found, but who gave a totally different description of the purchaser from that which had been obtained from the concierge of the Imperial Hotel. The latter declared that Rochdale was a dark, sunburnt man with a long thick beard; the former described him as of fair complexion and beardless. The cab on which the trunk had been placed immediately after the purchase, was traced, and the deposition of the driver coincided exactly with that of the bric-?-brac seller. The assassin had been taken in the cab, first to a shop, where he bought a dressing-bag, next to a linendraper's, where he bought the towels, thence to the Lyons railway station, and there he had deposited the trunk and the dressing-bag at the parcels office. Then the other cab which had taken him, three weeks afterwards, to the Imperial Hotel, was traced, and the description given by the second driver agreed with the deposition of the concierge. From this it was concluded that in the interval formed by these three weeks, the assassin had dyed his skin and his hair, for all the depositions were in agreement with respect to the stature, figure, bearing, and tone of voice of the individual. This hypothesis was confirmed by one Jullien, a hairdresser, who came forward of his own accord to make the following statement:

I remember little of succeeding events. All was so trivial, insignificant, between that first vision of horror and the vision of woe which came to me two years later, that, with one exception, I hardly recall the intervening time. In 1864 my father died; in 1866 my mother married M. Jacques Termonde. The exceptional period of the interval was the only one during which my mother bestowed constant attention upon me. Before the fatal date my father was the only person who had cared for me; at a later period there was no one at all to do so. Our apartment in the Rue Tronchet became unbearable to us; there we could not escape from the remembrance of the terrible event, and we removed to a small hotel in the Boulevard de Latour-Maubourg. The house had belonged to a painter, and stood in a small garden which seemed larger than it was because other gardens adjoined ialk through my dreams for a time. Still, blood-kin are blood-kin, and Kafirs are Kafirs, and one day Fanie came over to see us again and we gave him coffee. He told us a story about a rooinek that bought a sheep, and the man gave him a dog in a sack, and he paid for it and went away, and we all laughed at it. He was very funny that day, and said that when he married he would choose an old woman who would die quickly and leave him all her farms. So it was late and dark before he up- saddled to go away.

"Well, he was gone a quarter of an hour when we heard hoofs, galloping, galloping, hard and furious, coming up the road. And as we opened the door a horse came over the wall and Fanie tumbled off it and came rushing in.

"We all screamed. He was white like ashes, and wet with sweat, and trembling so that he could not stand.

"'Fanie,' cried my sister, 'what is it?' and he groaned and put his face in his hands.

"'There was something behind me,' he said.

"'Something?' we all asked.

"'Yes,' he said. 'Something . . . dead I It followed me up here, and I could not get away from it, spur as hard as I would. I think it is a death-call.'

"Then we were all frightened, but we could not help wanting to hear more.

"'No,' said Fanie, 'I did not see it, nor hear it even, but I knew it was there.'

"'It was a sign,' said my mother, a very wise old woman. 'Let us all thank God.'

"So we thanked God on our knees, but I'm sure I don't know what for.

"Then Fanie told us all he knew, and that was just nothing. As he came to the kloof he was afraid of something in front of him. He said he felt like a man in grave-clothes. So he turned, and then the ... whatever it was . . . seemed to come after him; so he galloped and galloped as hard as the horse could lay hoof to the earth, and prayed till his heart nearly burst. And then, not knowing where he was going, he jumped the wall and came among us. We were all silent when he had told us.

"Then Oom Jan spoke. He was very old, and seldom said anything.

"'You have done murder!' he said.

"'If I talk till my mouth is stopped with dust I shall never be able to tell how cold I felt about the heart when I heard that. For the little picaninny came plain before my eyes, and oh! I was all full of pity for Fanie. I liked him well enough in those days.

"He stopped with us that night. He would not go away nor be alone, so he slept with my brothers, and held their hands and prayed half the night. In the morning they took him home on one of our horses, for his own was fit to die from the night's work.

"That was the last I ever saw of Fanie. It was as though he went from us to God. He kissed me on both cheeks when he went away; he kissed us all, but me first of all, and held both my hands. I think he must have liked me too,--don't you think so, Katje?" "'Yes," said Katje softly.

"He went down the road between my brothers with his head bent like an old man's, and I watched him out of sight, and I was very, very sorry for him. I don't think I cried, but I may have. He was a fine tall man.

"One night my brothers came in just as I was going to bed, and one stood in the door while the other whispered to my mother. She looked up and saw me standing there.

"'Go to bed,' she said.

"'What is it?' I asked.

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