Peter Ibbetson Part 28

"Ah," I said, "you were still a great lady--an English d.u.c.h.ess!"

I could not endure the thought of that happy twelvemonth with that b.e.s.t.i.a.l duke! I, sober, chaste, and clean--of all but blood, alas!--and a condemned convict!

Oh, Mr. Ibbetson, you must make no mistake about _me_! I was never intended by nature for a d.u.c.h.ess--especially an English one. Not but what, if dukes and d.u.c.h.esses are necessary, the English are the best--and, of course, by dukes and d.u.c.h.esses I mean all that upper-ten-thousand in England which calls itself 'society'--as if there were no other worth speaking of. Some of them are almost angelic, but they are not for outsiders like me. Perpetual hunting and shooting and fis.h.i.+ng and horseracing--eating, drinking, and killing, and making love--eternal court gossip and t.i.ttle-tattle--the Prince--the Queen--whom and what the Queen likes, whom and what she doesn't!--tame English party politics--the Church--a Church that doesn't know its own mind, in spite of its deans, bishops, archbishops, and their wives and daughters--and all their silly, solemn sense of social rank and dignity!

Endless small-talk, dinners, and drums, and no society from year's end to year's end but each other! Ah, one must be caught young, and put in harness early, to lead such an existence as that and be content! And I had met and known _such_ men and women with my father! They _were_ something to know!

There is another society in London and elsewhere--a freemasonry of intellect and culture and hard work--_la haute boheme du talent_--men and women whose names are or ought to be household words all over the world; many of them are good friends of mine, both here and abroad; and that society, which was good enough for my father and mother, is quite good enough for me.

I am a republican, Mr. Ibbetson--a cosmopolite--a born Bohemian!

_"'Mon grand pere etait rossignol; Ma grand mere etait hirondelle!"_

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Look at my dear people there--look at your dear people! What waifs and strays, until their s.h.i.+p comes home, which we know it never will! Our fathers forever racking their five wits in the pursuit of an idea! Our mothers forever racking theirs to save money and make both ends meet!... Why, Mr. Ibbetson, you are nearer to the _rossignol_ than I am.

Do you remember your father's voice? Shall I ever forget it! He sang to me only last night, and in the midst of my harrowing anxiety about you I was beguiled into listening outside the window. He sang Rossini's _'Cujus Animam.'_ He _was_ the nightingale; that was his vocation, if he could but have known it. And you are my brother Bohemian; that is _yours!_ ... Ah, _my_ vocation! It was to be the wife of some busy brain-worker--man of science--conspirator--writer--artist--architect, if you like; to fence him round and s.h.i.+eld him from all the little worries and troubles and petty vexations of life. I am a woman of business _par excellence_--a manager, and all that. He would have had a warm, well-ordered little nest to come home to after hunting his idea!

"Well, I thought myself the most unhappy woman alive, and wrapped myself up in my affection for my much-afflicted little son; and as I held him to my breast, and vainly tried to warm and mesmerize him into feeling and intelligence, Gogo came back into my heart, and I was forever thinking, 'Oh, if I had a son like Gogo what a happy woman I should be!'

and pitied Madame Pasquier for dying and leaving him so soon, for I had just begun to dream true, and had seen Gogo and his sweet mother once again.

"And then one night--one never-to-be-forgotten night--I went to Lady Gray's concert, and saw you standing in a corner by yourself; and I thought, with a leap of my heart, 'Why, that must be Gogo, grown dark, and with a beard and mustache like a Frenchman!' But alas, I found that you were only a Mr. Ibbetson, Lady Cray's architect, whom she had asked to her house because he was 'quite the handsomest young man she had ever seen!'

"You needn't laugh. You looked very nice, I a.s.sure you!

"Well, Mr. Ibbetson, although you were not Gogo, you became suddenly so interesting to me that I never forgot you--you were never quite out of my mind. I wanted to counsel and advise you, and take you by the hand, and be an elder sister to you, for I felt myself already older than you in the world and its ways. I wanted to be twenty years older still, and to have you for my son. I don't know _what_ I wanted! You seemed so lonely, and fresh, and unspotted from the world, among all those smart worldlings, and yet so big and strong and square and invincible--oh, so strong! And then you looked at me with such sincere and sweet and chivalrous admiration and sympathy--there, I cannot speak of it--and then you were _so_ like what Gogo might have become! Oh, you made as warm and devoted a friend of me at first sight as any one might desire!

"And at the same time you made me feel so self-conscious and shy that I dared not ask to be introduced to you--I, who scarcely know what shyness is.

"Dear Giulia Grisi sang '_Sedut' al Pie d' un' Salice,' and that tune has always been a.s.sociated in my mind with your tongue ever since, and always will be. Your dear mother used to play it on the harp. Do you remember?

"Then came that extraordinary dream, which you remember as well as I do: _wasn't_ it a wonder? You see, my dear father had learned a strange secret of the brain--how in sleep to recall past things and people and places as they had once been seen or known by him--even unremembered things. He called it 'dreaming true,' and by long practice, he told me, he had brought the art of doing this to perfection. It was the one consolation of his troubled life to go over and over again in sleep all his happy youth and childhood, and the few short years he had spent with his beloved young wife. And before he died, when he saw I had become so unhappy that life seemed to have no longer any possible hope of pleasure for me, he taught me his very simple secret.

"Thus have I revisited in sleep every place I have ever lived in, and especially this, the beloved spot where I first as a little girl knew _you_!"

That night when we met again in our common dream I was looking at the boys from Saindou's school going to their _premiere communion_, and thinking very much of you, as I had seen you, when awake, a few hours before, looking out of the window at the 'Tete Noire;' when you suddenly appeared in great seeming trouble and walking like a tipsy man; and my vision was disturbed by the shadow of a prison--alas! alas!--and two little jailers jingling their keys and trying to hem you in.

My emotion at seeing you again so soon was so great that I nearly woke.

But I rescued you from your imaginary terrors and held you by the hand.

You remember all the rest.

I could not understand why you should be in my dream, as I had almost always dreamed true--that is, about things that _had_ been in my life--not about things that _might_ be; nor could I account for the solidity of your hand, nor understand why you didn't fade away when I took it, and blur the dream. It was a most perplexing mystery that troubled many hours of both my waking and sleeping life. Then came that meeting with you at Cray, and part of the mystery was accounted for, for you were my old friend Gogo, after all. But it is still a mystery, an awful mystery, that two people should meet as we are meeting now in one and the same dream--should dovetail so accurately into each other's brains. What a link between us two, Mr. Ibbetson, already linked by such memories!

After meeting you at Cray I felt that I must never meet you again, either waking or dreaming. The discovery that you were Gogo, after all, combined with the preoccupation which as a mere stranger you had already caused me for so long, created such a disturbance in my spirit that--that--there, you must try and imagine it for yourself.

Even before that revelation at Cray I had often known you were here in my dream, and I had carefully avoided you ... though little dreaming you were here in your own dream too! Often from that little dormer-window up there I have seen you wandering about the park and avenue in seeming search of _me_, and wondered why and how you came. You drove me into attics and servants' bedrooms to conceal myself from you.

It was quite a game of hide-and-seek--_cache-cache_, as we used to call it.

But after our meeting at Cray I felt there must be no more _cache-cache_; I avoided coming here at all; you drove me away altogether.

Now try to imagine what I felt when the news of your terrible quarrel with Mr. Ibbetson burst upon the world. I was beside myself! I came here night after night; I looked for you everywhere--in the park, in the Bois de Boulogne, at the Mare d'Auteuil, at St. Cloud--in every place I could think of! And now here you are at last--at last!

Hus.h.!.+ Don't speak yet! I have soon done!

Six months ago I lost my poor little son, and, much as I loved him, I cannot wish him back again. In a fortnight I shall be legally separated from my wretched husband--I shall be quite alone in the world! And then, Mr. Ibbetson--oh, _then_, dearest friend that child or woman ever had--every hour that I can steal from my waking existence shall henceforward be devoted to you as long as both of us live, and sleep the same hours out of the twenty-four. My one object and endeavor shall be to make up for the wreck of your sweet and valuable young life. 'Stone walls shall not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage!' [And here she laughed and cried together, so that her eyes, closing up, squeezed out her tears, and I thought, "Oh, that I might drink them!"]

And now I will leave you. I am a weak and loving woman, and must not stay by your side till I can do so without too much self-reproach.

And indeed I feel I shall soon fall awake from sheer exhaustion of joy.

Oh, selfish and jealous wretch that I am, to talk of joy!

"I cannot help rejoicing that no other woman can be to you what I hope to be. No other woman can ever come _near_ you! I am your tyrant and your slave--your calamity has made you mine forever; but all my life--all--all--shall be spent in trying to make you forget yours, and I think I shall succeed."

"Oh, don't make such dreadful haste!" I exclaimed. "Am _I_ dreaming true? What is to prove all this to me when I wake? Either I am the most abject and wretched of men, or life will never have another unhappy moment. How am I to _know_?'

"Listen. Do you remember 'Parva sed Apta, le pet.i.t pavilion,' as you used to call it? That is still my home when I am here. It shall be yours, if you like, when the time comes. You will find much to interest you there. Well, to-morrow early, in your cell, you will receive from me an envelope with a slip of paper in it, containing some violets, and the words 'Parva sed Apta--a bientot' written in violet ink. Will that convince you?"

"Oh yes, yes!"

"Well, then, give me your hands, dearest and best--both hands! I shall soon be here again, by this apple-tree; I shall count the hours.

Good-bye!" and she was gone, and I woke.

I woke to the gaslit darkness of my cell. It was just before dawn. One of the warders asked me civilly if I wanted anything, and gave me a drink of water.

I thanked him quietly, and recalled what had just happened to me, with a wonder, an ecstasy, for which I can find no words.

No, it had _not_ been a _dream_--of that I felt quite sure--not in any one single respect; there had been nothing of the dream about it except its transcendent, ineffable enchantment.

Every inflexion of that beloved voice, with its scarcely perceptible foreign accent that I had never noticed before; every animated gesture, with its subtle reminiscence of both her father and her mother; her black dress trimmed with gray; her black and gray hat; the scent of sandal-wood about her--all were more distinctly and vividly impressed upon me than if she had just been actually, and in the flesh, at my bedside. Her tones still rang in my ears. My eyes were full of her: now her profile, so pure and chiselled; now her full face, with her gray eyes (sometimes tender and grave and wet with tears, sometimes half closed in laughter) fixed on mine; her lithe sweet body curved forward, as she sat and clasped her knees; her arched and slender smooth straight feet so delicately shod, that seemed now and then to beat time to her story....

And then that strange sense of the transfusion of life at the touching of the hands! Oh, it was _no dream_! Though what it was I cannot tell....

I turned on my side, happy beyond expression, and fell asleep again--a dreamless sleep that lasted till I was woke and told to dress.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "MY EYES WERE FULL OF HER."]

Some breakfast was brought to me, and _with it an envelope, open, which contained some violets, and a slip of paper, scented with sandal-wood, on which were written, in violet ink, the words--

"Parva sed Apla--a bientot!

Tarapatapoum."_

I will pa.s.s over the time that elapsed between my sentence and its commutation; the ministrations and exhortations of the good chaplain; the kind and touching farewells of Mr. and Mrs. Lintot, who had also believed that I was Ibbetson's son (I undeceived them); the visit of my old friend Mrs. Deane ... and her strange pa.s.sion of grat.i.tude and admiration.

I have no doubt it would all be interesting enough, if properly remembered and ably told. But it was all too much like a dream--anybody's dream--not one of _mine_--all too slight and flimsy to have left an abiding remembrance, or to matter much.

In due time I was removed to the jail at----, and bade farewell to the world, and adapted myself to the conditions of my new outer life with a good grace and with a very light heart.

The prison routine, leaving the brain so free and unoccupied; the healthy labor, the pure air, the plain, wholesome food were delightful to me--a much-needed daily mental rest after the tumultuous emotions of each night.