“I have a package for you,” he said to me, as we entered the house.
An envelope, left by his son-in-law, bore my name with a note. It contained the two notebooks. I hesitated a long time before publishing them, but the conquest of the air has claimed so many victims now, that no one will recognise Raymond Cernay. I have suppressed or modified what might have designated him too clearly. He did give me that melancholy record for myself alone. If he could not make clear his intentions, they nevertheless appear in this legacy. If I have overstepped them, I do not believe that I have hurt his memory. The admission of a mistake is so noble and so rare a thing, in the life of a human being, that, perhaps Raymonde’s radiancy may light up other hearts now unmindful, proud or frivolous.
With the notebooks there were also some loose sheets covered with figures and drawings, which I submitted to a constructor of aeroplanes. They appertained to a device for automatic lateral stability that should revolutionise the science of aviation. Unfortunately the notes are worthless, being embryonic and incomplete.
On one of the sheets I came across a peculiar expression: “The face of the world changes.” I believed this to be one of Cernay’s reflections, after a daring flight, when from his position in the air the earth seemed to become smaller and smaller and finally disappear completely. But in a volume of Bossuet’s “Meditations on the Gospel,” which M. Mairieux showed me as the most precious souvenir of his daughter, I reread that same phrase, underscored by Mme. Cernay. So one must take it in its mystic meaning of splendid isolation. I inferred from it a posthumous and closer union in eternal love.
* * *
That evening, a little before dinner, I was seated in our favourite place on the cloister wall, with Dilette, who did not forget to ask me for a story.
“Tell me about Lord Burleigh,—please!”
But I no longer dared repeat that story. Too many recollections clung to it, like the ivy on the tombstone in the cemetery. I was searching my memory for another, when I heard the little girl repeating to me almost word for word the end, which she had learned by heart:
“Then he said, Put on her simple woollen dress. That is the one she liked. And then she will lie in peace.—”
THE END.