The Crystal City Under the Sea (3 page)

“My dear friend,” said he, at last, vexed in his turn by this behaviour, “your cold bath appears to me to have had a most unfortunate effect upon your temper. You are not ill, but you are very sulky. If I bore you, say so. I will go away. It is very simple.”

He turned towards the door. At this, René appeared to make an effort to rouse himself from his dejection.

“Patrice! Stephen!” called he, “Don’t be angry. Come back. You know I am glad to see you. You have no need that I should throw myself into your arms to prove that, I think.”

“Confound it! There is a slight difference between throwing your arms around my neck, and giving me such a reception as this, you must own.” Rene sighed afresh, shaking his head in a lugubrious fashion.

“Come, let us begin all over again. What on earth is the matter with you, with your sighs and your head-shakings? One would think that you concealed some terrible secret. Have you discovered a conspiracy among the monsters of the deep, or have you heard the sirens sing at the bottom of the sea, and care for nothing but their music?”

To the doctor’s great surprise, a deep flush suffused René’s pale face, and his eyes brightened, while a smile leaped to his lips. The two friends waited a moment, in silence, looking one another in the face.

“Well, explain yourself, I beg,” said the doctor, at length, crossing his arms on his breast.

Rene reassumed his dejected attitude.

“What would be the use?” said he, in a tone of lassitude; “you would not believe me.”

“Why?”

“Because, if I spoke, it would be to tell you of such improbable things, so ridiculous, you would never believe me. And you would be right, no doubt, if it were not for one irrefutable proof; one material proof.”

“A proof of what?”

“Of what happened to me.”

“Where? When? How? You are enough to provoke a saint with your reticence. I have a very good mind to shake you!”

Rene remained silent a moment. Then he took a resolution.

“Here, feel my pulse,” said he. “Have I any feverish symptoms?”

“Not a shadow of fever. A cool skin, and a pulse as steady as mine.”

Look at me. Do I look scared? Is my forehead burning? Do I look like a man demented, under the influence of delirium?”

“Not the least in the world. You are like a fine lad, a friend of mine, the prey of an unaccountable mood, but in possession of all his faculties.”

“Then, whatever I tell you, will you believe it?”

“If you swear to me that you speak seriously, I will believe it without a doubt,”

“I give you my word of honour that what I am going to tell you is strictly true. And yet, I hesitate.”

“Well, go along. I never knew any one so suspicious.”

“You have never known me in circumstances such as I am now placed in. Stephen, you are my dearest friend; almost my elder brother. I would not deceive you, would I? Besides, to what end? What I am going to tell you is true. It is incomprehensible, but it is true. I would rather keep to myself the secret of this strange adventure, and I had resolved never to speak of it to any one, certain of not being believed. But here you are? You question me, and I have such a habit of telling you everything that happens to me that, on my soul, I will risk it. Who knows? Perhaps, between us, we may arrive at some plausible theory, at some practical conclusion.”

Intensely puzzled by this preamble, not less than by the serious and deeply affected expression of the midshipman’s face, the doctor took a seat by the bedside, and prepared to listen. R-ene, leaning on his elbow, with a dreamy look fixed on something visible to himself alone, began his story in these words:

“You have not forgotten the circumstances I was placed in when I was washed overboard, on that Monday, the 19th of October. We were in a cyclone, running N. N. E., with a tremendous sea on, and the first thing you all knew was that a huge wave carried me and the gun away with it. Doubtless, a search was made for me, and the vessel was stopped, to wait for me. I know what is the usual thing to do at such times, and, at the moment, I fully expected to be picked up.”

The doctor signified by a gesture that all that had been done.

“Unfortunately, or, rather, fortunately,—for if I had been unluckily fished up then, I should have missed an unheard of spectacle, — in falling, an irresistible impulse made me curl my legs and arms round the breech of the gun. The mass of steel was ingulfed in the water, and carried me down by its weight. In a moment, I felt the absurdity of what I was doing, and tried to relax my hold, in order to rise to the surface. Then I lost consciousness. So far, nothing remarkable happened. Once, I felt I was almost rescued, but instinctively I clung to my gun, which cut through the water like a flash of lightning. My last lucid thought was that I had come to the surface, and was floating like a dead fish. It is all linked together in my memory; I see now what happened. I see the plunge into the water, I feel the cold of the steel in my arms, and the loss of breath, caused by the rapid dive. Then, for the second time, I lost consciousness. How long did it last? Who will ever know? Where was I? What was this place; this never to be forgotten scene?”

The officer paused a moment, a far-off look in his eyes, and his face pale.

“When I recovered my senses,” resumed he, “I was lying on a soft couch. Just at first I was unable to open my eyes; thought came back to me, but slowly; I heard, but without being able to understand what was going on around me, voices speaking in a language unknown to me. At first I lay in a sort of vague languor — a reverie. The voices ceased. Suddenly memory returned, and I thought to myself: ‘I must have fallen into the water; I was suffocated. Some one has fished me out.’ I opened my eyes with difficulty,—my eyelids were as heavy as lead,—expecting to find myself in the ship’s hospital, with you bending over me on one side, brushes and flannels in hand, and my good Kermadec on the other, busy rubbing his officer. And I remember wondering which of our fellows had taken my place on the watch. Instead of the hospital, instead of your faces, this is what I saw: I was lying in the middle of a spacious grotto, the walls of which seemed made of red coral, of the most exquisite shade. A silvery light fell from the roof, displaying a bed of ivory covered with a thick purple texture, as soft as velvet to the touch. Under my head were piled up cushions made of precious stuffs, curiously embroidered.

“The floor of the grotto was covered with the finest sand; and here and there spread magnificent carpets. Ivory seats of antique form wore disposed here and there; also an embroidery-frame of smooth ivory with an unfinished piece of embroidery in it; and a lyre of pale tortoise-shell resting on a pile of rumpled cushions, as if it had been thrown down in haste. In a basket made of rushes I saw wools of faded colours; a roll of papyrus, open. I lay there, bewildered, looking about me, wondering what world I had wandered into, when a sweet voice, as clear as crystal, suddenly uttered an exclamation, I turned my head quickly. How shall I describe to you what I saw? A young girl and an old man stood beside my couch, and appeared to have entered from an inner grotto at the head of the bed. The old man, tall, almost gigantic, was stately in the extreme. He wore round his brow a gold fillet; his long beard covered his breast with snowy waves. Draped in a voluminous mantle of white woollen material, enriched with a border of coloured embroidery, he looked like an antique statue come to life. As to the young girl, I never saw anything so beautiful. She seemed to me a sort of ethereal being, made of the same sort of light as that shed from the roof of the grotto,—tall, upright, slender as a reed. She was clothed in a soft tunic of pale green, the colour of the waves, as you sometimes see them at sunrise. Her fair hair, held back from her face with strings of pearls, fell, in a silken mass, to her feet- Her pure brow was crowned with a garland of sea-weed, and in her clear eyes I thought I saw the spirit of the ocean, herself. She looked at me, then pointing to me with her slim finger, she pronounced a short phrase. The old man replied. I made an effort to hear them, but I could understand nothing they said. If my recollection of the classics, — hazy enough, I must own, —does not deceive me, the language they spoke in was Greek.

“Meanwhile, the old man came towards me/placed his hand on my forehead, on my heart, and felt my pulse, just as you would have done, my dear Stephen. The young girl, leaning on his shoulder, turned her ravishing face towards me, with an expression half curious, half mocking. I felt that my modern uniform, with its gold lace, and my leather boots, must have had a pitiful effect on this royal couch. You cannot imagine how mean and shabby I felt in the midst of all this luxury, this fairy, archaic, fantastic magnificence. However, my host and hostess continued conversing beside my couch; and by their looks and their gestures I saw that they were speaking of me. The old man looked more and more grave; several times he raised his hand towards the roof of the grotto. It seemed to me that the young girl asked something; playfully, at first; then, getting almost angry. Her charming brow darkened; she frowned, and her limpid eyes flashed. The old man, without troubling himself at this display of anger, signified ‘no’ with his head in a severe manner. At last, releasing himself gently, but firmly, from the young girl who clung to him, he walked to an ivory coffer, took from it a gold cup, and began to concoct a beverage. The young girl stayed by my side. She watched the old man for a few moments, with her eyelids drooping, biting her lips with a look of anger, which, by the way, in no wise detracted from her beauty; then, all at once, with a charmingly mutinous movement of the head, she smiled, drew nearer to me, and, rapidly slipping a ring on my finger, made a sign common, it seems, to all countries. She laid her finger on her smiling lips; then, running to the cushions piled up near the embroidery-frame, she posed on them like a swallow, and, taking the lyre in her arms, began a song I can never forget.

“Oh, that crystal voice! that strange, unreal music! that fantastic and yet delicious melody! You spoke just now of the song of the sirens, my dear Stephen,—what siren ever sang as mine did then? Looking at her, listening to her, I felt myself living in an unknown world. A singular joy, mixed with a nameless melancholy, suffused my whole being. I could have wished to listen to it forever, or to die, listening to it. The tears rose to my eyes involuntarily; I was transported, and yet I was sad.

“She looked at me, while shedding these exquisite notes across the grotto, and it seemed to me that the rays of her eyes brought the fantastic notes to me. Opposite to her, one of the walls appearing to be of glass, I could distinguish a light-green, like that of the seawater; I got a glimpse of large bodies passing one another in this transparent wall, attracted, retained like myself, by the magic song. Unable longer to endure inaction, I raised myself on my couch, when the old man, returning noiselessly to my side, laid his hand heavily on my shoulder, and offered me a cup of chased gold, filled with a beverage with an aromatic odour.

“I was about to refuse it, when, at a word from the old man, the young girl rose, came towards me as lightly as a shadow, and, with a smile on her lips, offered me the cup. I drank it at a draught. The beverage was of a peculiar but very agreeable taste. No sooner had I swallowed it than I fell back on my cushions as if paralyzed. The young girl began to sing again. Everything whirled round me, — the grotto, its inhabitants, its furniture, the great, strange fishes which passed to and fro near the transparent wall. I fancied I saw the faces of friends bending over my couch, — yours, my mother’s, Hélène’s, — I shut my eyes to escape from the sensation of vertigo. The crystal voice seemed to die away in the distance. Once more I lost consciousness.

“When I came to myself the morning sun was sparkling on the waves. I was alone. An imperceptible speck in the midst of the vast blue. Firmly lashed to an empty barrel, I floated at random in mid-Atlantic. I spent two days and two nights like that, in a state between waking and sleeping, tortured by heat and thirst during the day, my limbs stiff and cold by night. I should have died without being able to move if a French mail-boat from La Plata had not chanced to pick me up. They brought me here, took care of me, and I should have been well, I believe, long before now, if I had not been devoured with a longing which you will easily understand, and

René receiving the ring.

which consumes me like a burning fever, to see my young Undine again.”

Doctor Patrice listened, at first with surprise, and then with uneasiness, to the midshipman’s strange story. Nothing was more natural than that he should, under the influence of a hallucination, caused by fever, exposure to the sun’s rays, thirst, and faint-ness, have dreamed of all these adventures; but, that he persisted in the hallucination, and that he, in good faith, believed all that he said, was a very serious matter, and inspired him with grave fears as to his mental condition. At first, trying to laugh him out of it, and then speaking very seriously to him, Patrice exerted himself to bring his young friend to a more rational state of mind. But all in vain; René refused to abate an inch of anything he had said. He had seen the grotto, the old man, the young girl, and, what was more, he was firmly resolved to see them again.