The Bells of Bruges by Georges Rodenbach

Author:Georges Rodenbach [Rodenbach, Georges]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781909232051
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

ACTION

I

High above the world! Joris clung on to the cry, saying it out loud, writing it on the blank air before him, so to speak. He repeated it to himself like an order, like an appeal for help with which he could save himself. It had always been his motto, the cry of joy to rally himself, the end of his sufferings, bursting from among them like water from among the rocks.

After the terrible scene and the departure of Godelieve, he was at a loss what to do.

The following days the house seemed dead to him. It had sunk into silence. All the comings and goings, the sound of steps and of voices had ceased. It was like a house where someone has died and one remains silent, afraid even to walk. The room where the final confrontation had taken place was left as it was: the floor strewn with debris, the mirror split by the wide wound which was continuing to deepen, slashing the pale glass with a mortal blow.

No one had gone in there, it remained closed, the door locked and boarded up. It was truly the room of a dead person, at the door of which we tremble, but do not dare to enter.

Barbara did not leave her apartments, took her meals there, confined, solitary, shunning society, in a state of nervous exhaustion. The discovery of the proof, finally in her hands, her fit of anger, her wild excess, Godelieve’s flight, leaving the next day, at dawn, without seeing her, all that had left her nerves twisted and tangled, like rigging in a storm.

Now her acute irritability was replaced by infinite lethargy. She was no longer prickly and irascible. She curled up in corners, shivering like a sick animal, her blood sluggish and cold. She wandered along the corridors, up and down the stairs, pallid, her face streaked with tears. Sometimes, when she happened to meet Joris in the course of her wanderings, her irritation would return momentarily, expressing itself in some violent, coarse word she threw at him like a stone. But her strength was gone, she only threw the one stone, as if night were falling and her thirst for vengeance too weary.

Joris, too, isolated himself, avoided her, no longer feeling anything more than indifference. Whether deliberately or through illness, she had caused him too much suffering. He even found it impossible to repress a feeling of resentment since, incapable of making him happy, she had wrecked his last, dear love which had been a balm to him, a new beginning. What consolation could he find now that he was alone again? How could he forget Godelieve, who had gone out of his life? She had loved him and yet she had left. It was irrevocable. At first he had made enquiries. No one knew where she had found refuge. Perhaps she had not entered the Beguinage in Diksmuide, as she had said, but had settled in some other town, from where she would call him soon.

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