Part Six
Some petty annoyance to which I had been subjected by one of the prisonauthorities had kept me awake for a little while after I had gone tobed, so that when at last I awoke in "Magna sed Apta," and lay on mycouch there (with that ever-fresh feeling of coming to life in heavenafter my daily round of work in an earthly jail), I was conscious thatMary was there already, making coffee, the fragrance of which filledthe room, and softly humming a tune as she did so--a quaint, original,but most beautiful tune, that thrilled me with indescribable emotion,for I had never heard it with the bodily ear before, and yet it was asfamiliar to me as "God save the Queen."
As I listened with rapt ears and closed eyes, wonderful scenes passedbefore my mental vision: the beautiful white-haired lady of my childishdreams, leading a small _female_ child by the hand, and that child wasmyself; the pigeons and their tower, the stream and the water-mill; thewhite-haired young man with red heels to his shoes; a very fine lady,very tall, stout, and middle-aged, magnificently dressed in brocadedsilk; a park with lawns and alleys and trees cut into trim formalshapes; a turreted castle--all kinds of charming scenes and people ofanother age and country.
"What on earth is that wonderful tune, Mary?" I exclaimed, when she hadfinished it.
"It's my favorite tune," she answered; "I seldom hum it for fear ofwearing away its charm. I suppose that is why you have never heard itbefore. Isn't it lovely? I've been trying to lull you awake with it.
"My grandfather, the violinist, used to play it with variations of hisown, and made it famous in his time; but it was never published, andit's now forgotten.
"It is called 'Le Chant du Triste Commensal,' and was composed by hisgrandmother, a beautiful French woman, who played the fiddle too; butnot as a profession. He remembered her playing it when he was a childand she was quite an old lady, just as I remember _his_ playing it whenI was a girl in Vienna, and he was a white-haired old man. She used toplay holding her fiddle downward, on her knee, it seems; and alwaysplayed in perfect tune, quite in the middle of the note, and withexcellent taste and expression; it was her playing that decided hiscareer. But she was like 'Single-speech Hamilton,' for this was the onlything she ever composed. She composed it under great grief andexcitement, just after her husband had died from the bite of a wolf, andjust before the birth of her twin-daughters--her only children--one ofwhom was my great-grandmother."
"And what was this wonderful old lady's name?"
"Gatienne Aubery; she married a Breton squire called Budes, who was a_gentilhomme verrier_ near St. Prest, in Anjou--that is, he madeglass--decanters, water-bottles, tumblers, and all that, I suppose--inspite of his nobility. It was not considered derogatory to do so;indeed, it was the only trade permitted to the _noblesse_, and one hadto be at least a squire to engage in it.
"She was a very notable woman, _la belle Verriere_, as she was called;and she managed the glass factory for many years after her husband'sdeath, and made lots of money for her two daughters."
"How strange!" I exclaimed; "Gatienne Aubery! Dame du Brail--Budes--thenames are quite familiar to me. Mathurin Budes, Seigneur de Monhoudeardet de Verny le Moustier."
"Yes, that's it. How wonderful that you should know! One daughter,Jeanne, married my greatgrandfather, an officer in the Hungarian army;and Seraskier, the fiddler, was their only child. The other (so like hersister that only her mother could distinguish them) was called Anne, andmarried a Comte de Bois something."
"Boismorinel. Why, all those names are in my family too. My father usedto make me paint their arms and quarterings when I was a child, onSunday mornings, to keep me quiet. Perhaps we are related by blood,you and I."
"Oh, that would be too delightful!" said Mary. "I wonder how we couldfind out? Have you no family papers?"
_I_. "There were lots of them, in a horse-hair trunk, but I don't knowwhere they are now. What good would family papers have been to me?Ibbetson took charge of them when I changed my name. I suppose hislawyers have got them."
_She_. "Happy thought; we will do without lawyers. Let us go round toyour old house, and make Gogo paint the quarterings over again for us,and look over his shoulder."
Happy thought, indeed! We drank our coffee and went straight to my oldhouse, with the wish (immediate father to the deed) that Gogo should bethere, once more engaged in his long forgotten accomplishment ofpainting coats of arms.
It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and we found Gogo hard at work at asmall table by an open window. The floor was covered with old deeds andparchments and family papers; and le beau Pasquier, at another table,was deep in his own pedigree, making notes on the margin--an occupationin which he delighted--and unconsciously humming as he did so. The sunnyroom was filled with the penetrating soft sound of his voice, as aconservatory is filled with the scent of its flowers.
By the strangest inconsistency my dear father, a genuine republican atheart (for all his fancied loyalty to the white lily of the Bourbons), awould-be scientist, who in reality was far more impressed by a cleverand industrious French mechanic than by a prince (and would, I think,have preferred the former's friendship and society), yet took both apleasure and a pride in his quaint old parchments and obscurequarterings. So would I, perhaps, if things had gone differently withme--for what true democrat, however intolerant of such weakness inothers, ever thinks lightly of his own personal claims to aristocraticdescent, shadowy as these may be!
He was fond of such proverbs and aphorisms as "noblesse oblige," "bonsang ne sait mentir," "bon chien chasse de race," etc., and had eveninvented a little aphorism of his own, to comfort him when he was extrahard up, "bon gentilhomme n'a jamais honte de la misere." All of whichsayings, to do him justice, he reserved for home consumptionexclusively, and he would have been the first to laugh on hearing themin the mouth of any one else.
Of his one great gift, the treasure in his throat, he thought absolutelynothing at all.
"Ce que c'est que de nous!"
Gogo was coloring the quarterings of the Pasquier family--_la maisonde Pasquier_, as it was called--in a printed book (_Armorial General duMaine et de l'Anjou_), according to the instructions that were givenunderneath. He used one of Madame Liard's three-sou boxes, and the tintsleft much to be desired.
We looked over his shoulder and read the picturesque old jargon, whichsounds even prettier and more comforting and more idiotic in French thanin English. It ran thus--
"Pasquier (branche des Seigneurs de la Mariere et du Hirel), party de 4pieces et coupe de 2.
"Au premier, de Herault, qui est de ecartele de gueules et d'argent.
"Au deux, de Budes, qui est d'or au pin de sinople.
"Au trois, d'Aubery--qui est d'azur a trois croissants d'argent.
"Au quatre, de Busson qui est d'argent au lyon de sable arme couronne etlampasse d'or," And so on, through the other quarterings: Bigot, Epinay,Malestroit, Mathefelon. And finally, "Sur le tout, de Pasquier qui estd'or a trois lyons d'azur, au franc quartier ecartele des royames deCastille et de Leon."
Presently my mother came home from the English chapel in the RueMarboeuf, where she had been with Sarah, the English maid. Lunch wasannounced, and we were left alone with the family papers. With infiniteprecautions, for fear of blurring the dream, we were able to find whatwe wanted to find--namely, that we were the great-great-grandchildrenand only possible living descendants of Gatienne, the fair glassmakerand composer of "Le Chant du Triste Commensal."
Thus runs the descent--
Jean Aubery, Seigneur du Brail, married Anne Busson. His daughter,Gatienne Aubery, Dame du Brail, married Mathurin Budes, Seigneur deVerny le Moustier et de Monhoudeard.
--------------------------^--------------------------/
Anne Budes, Dame de Jeanne Budes, Dame du Verny le Moustier, married Brail et de Monhoudeard, Guy Herault, Comte married Ulric de Boismorinel. Seraskier.
Jeanne Francois Herault de Otto Seraskie
r, violinist, Boismorinel married married Teresa Pulci. Francois Pasquier de la Mariere.
Jean Pasquier de la Mariere Johann Seraskier, M.D., married Catherine married Laura Desmond. Ibbetson-Biddulph.
Pierre Pasquier de la Mariere Mary Seraskier, Duchess of (_alias_ Peter Ibbetson, Towers. convict).
We walked back to "Magna sed Apta" in great joy, and there we celebratedour newly-discovered kinship by a simple repast, out of _my_ repertoirethis time. It consisted of oysters from Rules's in Maiden Lane, whenthey were sixpence a dozen, and bottled stout (_l'eau m'en vient a labouche_); and we spent the rest of the hours allotted to us that nightin evolving such visions as we could from the old tune "Le Chant duTriste Commensal," with varying success; she humming it, accompanyingherself on the piano in her masterly, musician-like way, with one hand,and seeing all that I saw by holding my hand with the other.
By slow degrees the scenes and people evoked grew less dim, and wheneverthe splendid and important lady, whom we soon identified for certain asGatienne, our common great-great-grandmother, appeared--"la belleverriere de Verny le Moustier"--she was more distinct than the others;no doubt, because we both had part and parcel in her individuality, andalso because her individuality was so strongly marked.
And before I was called away at the inexorable hour, we had the supremesatisfaction of seeing her play the fiddle to a shadowy company ofpatched and powdered and bewigged ladies and gentlemen, who seemed totake much sympathetic delight in her performance, and actually, even, ofjust hearing the thin, unearthly tones of that most original andexquisite melody, "Le Chant du Triste Commensal," to a quite inaudibleaccompaniment on the spinet by her daughter, evidently Anne Herault,Comtesse de Boismorinel (_nee_ Budes), while the small child Jeanne deBoismorinel (afterwards Dame Pasquier de la Mariere) listened withdreamy rapture.
And, just as Mary had said, she played her fiddle with its bodydownward, and resting on her knees, as though it had been an undersized'cello. I then vaguely remembered having dreamed of such a figure when asmall child.
Within twenty-four hours of this strange adventure the practical andbusiness-like Mary had started, in the flesh and with her maid, for thatpart of France where these, my ancestors, had lived, and within afortnight she had made herself mistress of all my French family history,and had visited such of the different houses of my kin as were still inexistence.
The turreted castle of my childish dreams, which, with the adjacentglass-factory, was still called Verny le Moustier, was one of these. Shefound it in the possession of a certain Count Hector du Chamorin, whosegrandfather had purchased it at the beginning of the century.
He had built an entirely new plant, and made it one of the firstglass-factories in Western France. But the old turreted _corps de logis_still remained, and his foreman lived there with his wife and family.The _pigeonnier_ had been pulled down to make room for a shed with asteam-engine, and the whole aspect of the place was revolutionized; butthe stream and water-mill (the latter a mere picturesque ruin) werestill there; the stream was, however, little more than a ditch, some tenfeet deep and twenty broad, with a fringe of gnarled and twisted willowsand alders, many of them dead.
It was called "Le Brail," and had given its name to mygreat-great-grandmother's property, whence it had issued thirty milesaway (and many hundred years ago); but the old Chateau du Brail, themanor of the Auberys, had become a farm-house.
The Chateau de la Mariere, in its walled park, and with its beautiful,tall, hexagonal tower, dated 1550, and visible for miles around, was nowa prosperous cider brewery; it is still, and lies on the high-road fromAngers to Le Mans.
The old forest of Boismorinel, that had once belonged to the family ofHerault, was still in existence; charcoal-burners were to be found inits depths, and a stray roebuck or two; but no more wolves andwild-boars, as in the olden time. And where the old castle had been nowstood the new railway station of Boismorinel et Saint Maixent.
LA BELLE VERRIERE]
Most of such Budes, Bussons, Heraults, Auberys, and Pasquiers as werestill to be found in the country, probably distant kinsmen of Mary'sand mine, were lawyers, doctors, or priests, or had gone into trade andbecome respectably uninteresting; such as they were, they would scarcelyhave cared to claim kinship with such as I.
But a hundred years ago and more these were names of importance in Maineand Anjou; their bearers were descended for the most part from youngerbranches of houses which in the Middle Ages had intermarried with allthere was of the best in France; and although they were looked down uponby the _noblesse_ of the court and Versailles, as were all theprovincial nobility, they held their own well in their own country;feasting, hunting, and shooting with each other; dancing and fiddlingand making love and intermarrying; and blowing glass, and growing richerand richer, till the Revolution came and blew them and their glass intospace, and with them many greater than themselves, but few better. Andall record of them and of their doings, pleasant and genial people asthey were, is lost, and can only be recalled by a dream.
Verny le Moustier was not the least interesting of these old manors.
It had been built three hundred years ago, on the site of a still oldermonastery (whence its name); the ruined walls of the old abbey were (andare) still extant in the house-garden, covered with apricot and pear andpeach trees, which had been sown or planted by our common ancestresswhen she was a bride.
Count Hector, who took a great pleasure in explaining all the pasthistory of the place to Mary, had built himself a fine new house inwhat remained of the old park, and a quarter of a mile away from theold manor-house. Every room of the latter was shown to her; old woodpanels still remained, prettily painted in a by-gone fashion; olddocuments, and parchment deeds, and leases concerning fish-ponds,farms, and the like, were brought out for her inspection, signed bymy grandfather Pasquier, my great-grandfather Boismorinel, and ourgreat-great-grandmother and her husband, Mathurin Budes, the lord ofVerny le Moustier; and the tradition of Gatienne, _la belle Verriere_(also nicknamed _la reine de Hongrie_, it seems) still lingered in thecounty; and many old people still remembered, more or less correctly,"Le Chant du Triste Commensal," which a hundred years ago had been ineverybody's mouth.
She was said to have been the tallest and handsomest woman in Anjou, ofan imperious will and very masculine character, but immensely popularamong rich and poor alike; of indomitable energy, and with a finger inevery pie; but always more for the good of others than her own--atypical, managing, business-like French woman, and an exquisitemusician to boot.
Such was our common ancestress, from whom, no doubt, we drew our love ofmusic and our strange, almost hysterical susceptibility to the power ofsound; from whom had issued those two born nightingales of ourrace--Seraskier, the violinist, and my father, the singer. And, strangeto say, her eyebrows met at the bridge of her nose just like mine, andfrom under them beamed the luminous, black-fringed, gray-blue eyes ofMary, that suffered eclipse whenever their owners laughed or smiled!
During this interesting journey of Mary's in the flesh, we met everynight at "Magna sed Apta" in the spirit, as usual; and I was made toparticipate in every incident of it.
We sat by the magic window, and had for our entertainment, now theVerrerie de Verny le Moustier in its present state, all full of modernlife, color, and sound, steam and gas, as she had seen it a few hoursbefore; now the old chateau as it was a hundred years ago; dim andindistinct, as though seen by nearsighted eyes at the close of a gray,misty afternoon in late autumn through a blurred window-pane, with busybut silent shadows moving about--silent, because at first we could nothear their speech; it was too thin for our mortal ears, even in thisdream within our dream! Only Gatienne, the authoritative and commandingGatienne, was faintly audible.
Then we would go down and mix with them. Thus, at one moment, we wouldbe in the midst of a charming old-fashioned French family group ofshadows: Gatienne, with her lovely twin-daughters Jeanne and Anne, andher gardeners round her, a
ll trailing young peach and apricot treesagainst what still remained of the ancient buttresses and walls of theAbbaye de Verny le Moustier--all this more than a hundred years ago--thepale sun of a long-past noon casting the fainter shadows of these faintshadows on the shadowy garden-path.
Then, presto! Changing the scene as one changes a slide in amagic-lantern, we would skip a century, and behold!
Another French family group, equally charming, on the self-same spot,but in the garb of to-day, and no longer shadowy or mute by any means.Little trees have grown big; big trees have disappeared to make placefor industrious workshops and machinery; but the old abbey walls havebeen respected, and gay, genial father, and handsome mother, and lovelydaughters, all pressing on "la belle Duchesse Anglaise" peaches andapricots of her great-great-grandmother's growing.
For this amiable family of the Chamorin became devoted to Mary in a veryshort time--that is, the very moment they first saw her; and she neverforgot their kindness, courtesy, and hospitality; they made her feel infive minutes as though she had known them for many years.
I may as well state here that a few months later she received fromMademoiselle du Chamorin (with a charming letter) the identical violinthat had once belonged to _la belle Verriere_, and which Count Hectorhad found in the possession of an old farmer--the great-grandson ofGatienne's coachman--and had purchased, that he might present it as aNew-year's gift to her descendant, the Duchess of Towers.
It is now mine, alas! I cannot play it; but it amuses and comforts me tohold in my hand, when broad and wide awake, an instrument that Mary andI have so often heard and seen in our dream, and which has so often rungin by-gone days with the strange melody that has had so great aninfluence on our lives. Its aspect, shape, and color, every mark andstain of it, were familiar to us before we had ever seen it with thebodily eye or handled it with the hand of flesh. It thus came straightto us out of the dim and distant past, heralded by the ghost of itself!
* * * * *
To return. Gradually, by practice and the concentration of our unitedwill, the old-time figures grew to gain substance and color, and theirvoices became perceptible; till at length there arrived a day when wecould move among them, and hear them and see them as distinctly as wecould our own immediate progenitors close by--as Gogo and Mimsey, asMonsieur le Major, and the rest.
The child who went about hand in hand with the white-haired lady (whosehair was only powdered) and fed the pigeons was my grandmother, Jeannede Boismorinel (who married Francois Pasquier de la Mariere). It was herfather who wore red heels to his shoes, and made her believe she couldmanufacture little cocked-hats in colored glass; she had lived again inme whenever, as a child, I had dreamed that exquisite dream.
I could now evoke her at will; and, with her, many buried memories werecalled out of nothingness into life.
Among other wonderful things, I heard the red-heeled gentleman, M. deBoismorinel (my great-grandfather), sing beautiful old songs by Lulliand others to the spinet, which he played charmingly a rareaccomplishment in those days. And lo! these tunes were tunes that hadrisen oft and unbidden in my consciousness, and I had fondly imaginedthat I had composed them myself--little impromptus of my own. And lo,again! His voice, thin, high, nasal, but very sympathetic and musical,was that never still small voice that has been singing unremittingly formore than half a century in the unswept, ungarnished corner of my brainwhere all the cobwebs are.
"THAT NEVER STILL SMALL VOICE."]
And these cobwebs?
Well, I soon became aware, by deeply diving into my inner consciousnesswhen awake and at my daily prison toil (which left the mind singularlyclear and free), that I was full, quite full, of slight elusivereminiscences which were neither of my waking life nor of my dream-lifewith Mary: reminiscences of sub-dreams during sleep, and belonging tothe period of my childhood and early youth; sub-dreams which no doubthad been forgotten when I woke, at which time I could only remember thesurface dreams that had just preceded my waking.
Ponds, rivers, bridges, roads, and streams, avenues of trees, arbors,windmills and water-mills, corridors and rooms, church functions,village fairs, festivities, men and women and animals, all of anothertime and of a country where I had never set my foot, were familiar to myremembrance. I had but to dive deep enough into myself, and there theywere; and when night came, and sleep, and "Magna sed Apta," I couldre-evoke them all, and make them real and complete for Mary and myself.
That these subtle reminiscences were true antenatal memories was soonproved by my excursions with Mary into the past; and her experience ofsuch reminiscences, and their corroboration, were just as my own. Wehave heard and seen her grandfather play the "Chant du Triste Commensal"to crowded concert-rooms, applauded to the echo by men and women longdead and buried and forgotten!
Now, I believe such reminiscences to form part of the sub-consciousnessof others, as well as Mary's and mine, and that by perseverance inself-research many will succeed in reaching them--perhaps even moreeasily and completely than we have done.
It is something like listening for the overtones of a musical note; wedo not hear them at first, though they are there, clamoring forrecognition; and when at last we hear them, we wonder at our formerobtuseness, so distinct are they.
Let a man with an average ear, however uncultivated, strike the C lowdown on a good piano-forte, keeping his foot on the loud pedal. At firsthe will hear nothing but the rich fundamental note C.
But let him become _expectant_ of certain other notes; for instance, ofthe C in the octave immediately above, then the G immediately abovethat, then the E higher still; he will hear them all in time as clearlyas the note originally struck; and, finally, a shrill little ghostly andquite importunate B flat in the treble will pulsate so loudly in his earthat he will never cease to hear it whenever that low C is sounded.
By just such a process, only with infinitely more pains (and in the endwith what pleasure and surprise), will he grow aware in time of a dim,latent, antenatal experience that underlies his own personal experienceof this life.
We also found that we were able not only to assist as mere spectators atsuch past scenes as I have described (and they were endless), but alsoto identify ourselves occasionally with the actors, and cease for themoment to be Mary Seraskier and Peter Ibbetson. Notably was this thecase with Gatienne. We could each be Gatienne for a space (though neverboth of us together), and when we resumed our own personality again wecarried back with it a portion of hers, never to be lost again--astrange phenomenon, if the reader will but think of it, andconstituting the germ of a comparative personal immortality on earth.
At my work in prison, even, I could distinctly remember having beenGatienne; so that for the time being, Gatienne, a provincial Frenchwoman who lived a hundred years ago, was contentedly undergoing penalservitude in an English jail during the latter half of thenineteenth century.
A questionable privilege, perhaps.
But to make up for it, when she was not alive in me she could be broughtto life in Mary (only in one at a time, it seemed), and travel by railand steamer, and know the uses of gas and electricity, and read thetelegrams of "our special correspondents" in the _Times_, and taste hernineteenth century under more favorable conditions.
Thus we took _la belle Verriere_ by turns, and she saw and heard thingsshe little dreamed of a hundred years ago. Besides, she was made toshare in the glories of "Magna sed Apta."
And the better we knew her the more we loved her; she was a very niceperson to descend from, and Mary and I were well agreed that we couldnot have chosen a better great-great-grandmother, and wondered what eachof our seven others was like, for we had fifteen of these between us,and as many great-great-grandfathers.
Thirty great-great-grandfathers and great-great-grandmothers had made uswhat we were; it was no good fighting against them and the millions attheir backs.
Which of them all, strong, but gentle and shy, and hating the verysight of blood, yet saw scarlet when
he was roused, and thirsted for theblood of his foe?
Which of them all, passionate and tender, but proud, high-minded, andchaste, and with the world at her feet, was yet ready to "throw her capover the windmills," and give up all for love, deeming the worldwell lost?
* * * * *
That we could have thus identified ourselves, only more easily andthoroughly, with our own more immediate progenitors, we felt certainenough. But after mature thought we resolved to desist from any furtherattempt at such transfusion of identity, for sacred reasons ofdiscretion which the reader will appreciate.
But that this will be done some day (now the way has been made clear),and also that the inconveniences and possible abuses of such a facultywill be obviated or minimized by the ever-active ingenuity of mankind,is to my mind a foregone conclusion.
It is too valuable a faculty to be left in abeyance, and I leave theprobable and possible consequences of its culture to the reader'simagination--merely pointing out to him (as an inducement to cultivatethat faculty in himself) that if anything can keep us well within thethorny path that leads to happiness and virtue, it is the certainty thatthose who come after us will remember having been ourselves, if only ina dream--even as the newly-hatched chicken has remembered in its egg theuse of eyes and ears and the rest, out of the fulness of its longantenatal experience; and more fortunate than the helpless human infantin this respect, can enter on the business and pleasures of its brief,irresponsible existence at once!
* * * * *
Wherefore, oh reader, if you be but sound in mind and body, it mostseriously behooves you (not only for the sake of those who come afteryou, but your own) to go forth and multiply exceedingly, to marry earlyand much and often, and to select the very best of your kind in theopposite sex for this most precious, excellent, and blessed purpose;that all your future reincarnations (and hers), however brief, may bemany; and bring you not only joy and peace and pleasurable wondermentand recreation, but the priceless guerdon of well-earned self-approval!
For whoever remembers having once been you, wakes you for the nonce outof--nirvana, shall we say? His strength, his beauty, and his wit areyours; and the felicity he derives from them in this earthly life is foryou to share, whenever this subtle remembrance of you stirs in hisconsciousness; and you can never quite sink back again into--nirvana,till all your future wakers shall cease to be!
It is like a little old-fashioned French game we used to play at Passy,and which is not bad for a dark, rainy afternoon: people sit all roundin a circle, and each hands on to his neighbor a spill or alucifer-match just blown out, but in which a little live spark stilllingers; saying, as he does so--
_"Petit bonhomme vit encore!"_
And he, in whose hand the spark becomes extinct, has to pay forfeit andretire--"Helas! petit bonhomme n'est plus! ... Pauv' petit bonhomme!"
Ever thus may a little live spark of your own individual consciousness,when the full, quick flame of your actual life here below isextinguished, be handed down mildly incandescent to your remotestposterity. May it never quite go out--it need not! May you ever be ableto say of yourself, from generation to generation, "Petit bonhomme vitencore!" and still keep one finger at least in the pleasant earthly pie!
And, reader, remember so to order your life on earth that the memory ofyou (like that of Gatienne, la belle Verriere de Verny le Moustier) maysmell sweet and blossom in the dust--a memory pleasant to recall--tothis end that its recallings and its recallers may be as numerous asfilial love and ancestral pride can make them....
And oh! looking _backward_ (as _we_ did), be tender to the failings ofyour forbears, who little guessed when alive that the secrets of theirlong buried hearts should one day be revealed to _you_! Their faults arereally your own, like the faults of your innocent, ignorant childhood,so to say, when you did not know better, as you do now; or willsoon, thanks to
_"Le Chant du Triste Commensal!"_
* * * * *
Wherefore, also, beware and be warned in time, ye tenth transmitters ofa foolish face, ye reckless begetters of diseased or puny bodies, withhearts and brains to match! Far down the corridors of time shallclub-footed retribution follow in your footsteps, and overtake you atevery turn! Most remorselessly, most vindictively, will you be aroused,in sleepless hours of unbearable misery (future-waking nightmares), fromyour false, uneasy dream of death; to participate in an inheritance ofwoe still worse than yours--worse with all the accumulated interest oflong years and centuries of iniquitous self-indulgence, and poisoned bythe sting of a self-reproach that shall never cease till the last ofyour tainted progeny dies out, and finds his true nirvana, and yours, inthe dim, forgetful depths of interstellar space!
* * * * *
And here let me most conscientiously affirm that, partly from my keensense of the solemnity of such an appeal, and the grave responsibility Itake upon myself in making it; but more especially in order to impressyou, oh reader, with the full significance of this apocalyptic andsomewhat minatory utterance (that it may haunt your finer sense duringyour midnight hours of introspective self-communion), I have done mybest, my very best, to couch it in the obscurest and most unintelligiblephraseology I could invent. If I have failed to do this, if I haveunintentionally made any part of my meaning clear, if I have oncedeviated by mistake into what might almost appear like sense--merecommon-sense--it is the fault of my half-French and wholly imperfecteducation. I am but a poor scribe!
Thus roughly have I tried to give an account of this, the mostimportant of our joint discoveries in the strange new world revealed tous by chance. More than twenty years of our united lives have beendevoted to the following out of this slender clew--with what surprisingresults will, I trust, be seen in subsequent volumes.
We have not had time to attempt the unravelling of our English ancestryas well--the Crays, and the Desmonds, the Ibbetsons, and Biddulphs,etc.--which connects us with the past history of England. The farther wegot back into France, the more fascinating it became, and theeasier--and the more difficult to leave.
What an unexampled experience has been ours! To think that we haveseen--actually seen--_de nos propres yeux vu_--Napoleon Bonapartehimself, the arch-arbiter of the world, on the very pinnacle of hispride and power; in his little cocked hat and gray double-breastedovercoat, astride his white charger, with all his staff around him, justas he has been so often painted! Surely the most impressive,unforgettable, ineffaceable little figure in all modern history, andclothed in the most cunningly imagined make-up that ever theatricalcostumier devised to catch the public eye and haunt the public memoryfor ages and ages yet to come!
It is a singularly new, piquant, and exciting sensation to stare inperson, and as in the present, at bygone actualities, and be able toforetell the past and remember the future all in one!
To think that we have even beheld him before he was first consul--slimand pale, his lank hair dangling down his neck and cheeks, if possiblemore impressive still as innocent as a child of all that lay before him!Europe at his feet--the throne--Waterloo-St. Helena--the Iron EnglishDuke--the pinnacle turned into a pillory so soon!
_"O corse a cheveux plats, que la France etait belle Au soleil deMessidor!"_
And Mirabeau and Robespierre, and Danton and Marat and Charlotte Corday!we have seen them too; and Marie Antoinette and the fish-wives, and "thebeautiful head of Lamballe" (on its pike!) ... and watched the tumbrilsgo by to the Place du Carrousel, and gazed at the guillotine bymoonlight--silent and terror-stricken, our very hearts in our mouths....
And in the midst of it all, ridiculous stray memories of Madame Tussaudwould come stealing into our ghastly dream of blood and retribution,mixing up past and present and future in a manner not to be described,and making us smile through our tears!
Then we were present (several times!) at the taking of the Bastille, andindeed witnessed most of the stormy scenes of that stormy tim
e, with ourCarlyle in our hands; and often have we thought, and with many a heartylaugh, what fun it must be to write immortal histories, with never aneye-witness to contradict you!
And going further back we have haunted Versailles in the days of itssplendor, and drunk our fill of all the glories of the court ofLouis XIV!
What imposing ceremonials, what stupendous royal functions have we notattended--where all the beauty, wit, and chivalry of France, prostratewith reverence and awe (as in the very presence of a god), did loyalhomage to the greatest monarch this world has ever seen--while we satby, on the very steps of his throne, as he solemnly gave out his royalcommand! and laughed aloud under his very nose--the shallow, silly,pompous little snob--and longed to pull it! and tried to disinfect hisgreasy, civet-scented, full-bottomed wig with wholesome whiffs from anineteenth-century regalia!
Nothing of that foolish but fascinating period escaped us. Town, hamlet,river, forest, and field; royal palace, princely castle, and starvingpeasants' hut; pulpit, stage, and salon; port, camp, and marketplace;tribunal and university; factory, shop, studio, smithy; tavern andgambling-hell and den of thieves; convent and jail, torture-chamber andgibbet-close, and what not all!
And at every successive step our once desponding, over-anxious,over-burdened latter-day souls have swelled with joy and pride and hopeat the triumphs of our own day all along the line! Yea, even though wehave heard the illustrious Bossuet preach, and applauded Moliere in oneof his own plays, and gazed at and listened to (and almost forgiven)Racine and Corneille, and Boileau and Fenelon, and the goodLafontaine--those five ruthless persecutors of our own innocent Frenchchildhood!
And still ascending the stream of time, we have hobnobbed with Montaigneand Rabelais, and been personally bored by Malherbe, and sat atRonsard's feet, and ridden by Froissart's side, and slummed withFrancois Villon--in what enchanted slums! ...
Francois Villon! Think of that, ye fond British bards and bardletsof to-day--ye would-be translators and imitators of thatnever-to-be-translated, never-to-be-imitated lament, the immortal_Ballade des Dames du Temps jadis_!
And while I speak of it, I may as well mention that we have seen themtoo, or some of them--those fair ladies _he_ had never seen, and who hadalready melted away before his coming, like the snows of yester year,_les neiges d'antan!_ Bertha, with the big feet; Joan of Arc, the goodLorrainer (what would she think of her native province now!); the verylearned Heloise, for love of whom one Peter Esbaillart, or Abelard (amore luckless Peter than even I!), suffered such cruel indignities atmonkish hands; and that haughty, naughty queen, in her Tower of Nesle,
_"Qui commanda que Buridan Fut jecte en ung Sac en Seine...."_
Yes, we have seen them with the eye, and heard them speak and sing, andscold and jest, and laugh and weep, and even pray! And I have sketchedthem, as you shall see some day, good reader! And let me tell you thattheir beauty was by no means maddening: the standard of femaleloveliness has gone up, even in France! Even _la tres sage Helois_ wasscarcely worth such a sacrifice as--but there! Possess your soul inpatience; all that, and it is all but endless, will appear in due time,with such descriptions and illustrations as I flatter myself the worldhas never bargained for, and will value as it has never valued anyhistorical records yet!
Day after day, for more than twenty years, Mary has kept a voluminousdiary (in a cipher known to us both); it is now my property, and in itevery detail of our long journey into the past has been set down.
Contemporaneously, day by day (during the leisure accorded to me by thekindness of Governor----) I have drawn over again from memory thesketches of people and places I was able to make straight from natureduring those wonderful nights at "Magna sed Apta." I can guarantee thecorrectness of them, and the fidelity of their likenesses; no doubttheir execution leaves much to be desired.
Both her task and mine (to the future publication of which thisautobiography is but an introduction) have been performed with theminutest care and conscientiousness; no time or trouble have beenspared. For instance, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew alone, which wewere able to study from seventeen different points of view, cost us noless than two months' unremitting labor.
As we reached further and further back through the stream of time, thetask became easier in a way; but we have had to generalize more, andoften, for want of time and space, to use types in lieu of individuals.For with every successive generation the number of our progenitorsincreased in geometrical progression (as in the problem of the nails inthe horseshoe) until a limit of numbers was reached--namely, the sum ofthe inhabitants of the terrestrial globe. In the seventh century therewas not a person living in France (not to mention Europe) who was not inthe line of our direct ancestry, excepting, of course, those who haddied without issue and were mere collaterals.
"THE MAMMOTH."]
We have even just been able to see, as in a glass darkly, the faintshadows of the Mammoth and the cave bear, and of the man who hunted andkilled and ate them, that he might live and prevail.
The Mammoth!
We have walked round him and under him as he browsed, and even _through_him where he lay and rested, as one walks through the dun mist in alittle hollow on a still, damp morning; and turning round to look (atthe proper distance) there was the unmistakable shape again, just thickenough to blot out the lines of the dim primeval landscape beyond, andmake a hole in the blank sky. A dread silhouette, thrilling our heartswith awe--blurred and indistinct like a composite photograph--merely the_type_, as it had been seen generally by all who had ever seen it atall, every one of whom _(exceptis excipiendis)_ was necessarily anancestor of ours, and of every man now living.
There it stood or reclined, the monster, like the phantom of anovergrown hairy elephant; we could almost see, or fancy we saw, theexpression of his dull, cold, antediluvian eye--almost perceive asuggestion of russet-brown in his fell.
Mary firmly believed that we should have got in time to our hairyancestor with pointed ears and a tail, and have been able to ascertainwhether he was arboreal in his habits or not. With what passionateinterest she would have followed and studied and described him! And I!With what eager joy, and yet with what filial reverence, I would havesketched his likeness--with what conscientious fidelity as far as my poorpowers would allow! (For all we know to the contrary he may have beenthe most attractive and engaging little beast that ever was, and farless humiliating to descend from than many a titled yahoo of thepresent day.)
Fate, alas, has willed that it should be otherwise, and on others, dulytrained, must devolve the delightful task of following up the clew wehave been so fortunate as to discover.
* * * * *
And now the time has come for me to tell as quickly as I may the storyof my bereavement--a bereavement so immense that no man, living or dead,can ever have experienced the like; and to explain how it is that I havenot only survived it and kept my wits (which some people seem to doubt),but am here calmly and cheerfully writing my reminiscences, just as if Iwere a famous Academician, actor, novelist, statesman, or generaldiner-out--blandly garrulous and well-satisfied with myself andthe world.
During the latter years of our joint existence Mary and I engrossed byour fascinating journey through the centuries, had seen little ornothing of each other's outer lives, or rather I had seen nothing ofhers (for she still came back sometimes with me to my jail); I only sawher as she chose to appear in our dream.
Perhaps at the bottom of this there may have been a feminine dislike onher part to be seen growing older, for at "Magna sed Apta" we werealways twenty-eight or thereabouts--at our very best. We had trulydiscovered the fountain of perennial youth, and had drunk thereof! Andin our dream we always felt even younger than we looked; we had thebuoyancy of children and their freshness.
Often had we talked of death and separation and the mystery beyond, butonly as people do for whom such contingencies are remote; yet in realitytime flew as rapidly for us as for others, although we were lesssensible of i
ts flight.
There came a day when Mary's exuberant vitality, so constantlyovertaxed, broke down, and she was ill for a while; although that didnot prevent our meeting as usual, and there was no perceptibledifference in her when we met. But I am certain that in reality she wasnever quite the same again as she had been, and the dread possibility ofparting any day would come up oftener in our talk; in our minds, onlytoo often, and our minds were as one.
She knew that if I died first, everything I had brought into "Magna sedApta" (and little it was) would be there no more; even to my body, everlying supine on the couch by the enchanted window, it she had woke bychance to our common life before I had, or remained after I had beensummoned away to my jail.
And I knew that, if she died, not only her body on the adjacent couch,but all "Magna sed Apta" itself would melt away, and be as if it hadnever been, with its endless galleries and gardens and magic windows,and all the wonders it contained.
Sometimes I felt a hideous nervous dread, on sinking into sleep, lest Ishould find it was so, and the ever-heavenly delight of waking there,and finding all as usual, was but the keener. I would kneel by herinanimate body, and gaze at her with a passion of love that seemed madeup of all the different kinds of love a human being can feel; even thelove of a dog for his mistress was in it, and that of a wild beast forits young.
With eager, tremulous anxiety and aching suspense I would watch for thefirst light breath from her lips, the first faint tinge of carmine inher cheek, that always heralded her coming back to life. And when sheopened her eyes and smiled, and stretched her long young limbs in thejoy of waking, what transports of gratitude and relief!
"WAITING"]
Ah me! the recollection!
* * * * *
At last a terrible unforgettable night arrived when my presentiment wasfulfilled.
I awoke in the little lumber-room of "Parva sed Apta," where the doorhad always been that led to and from our palace of delight; but therewas no door any longer--nothing but a blank wall....
I woke back at once in my cell, in such a state as it is impossible todescribe. I felt there must be some mistake, and after much time andeffort was able to sink into sleep again, but with the same result: theblank wall, the certainty that "Magna sed Apta" was closed forever, thatMary was dead; and then the terrible jump back into my prisonlife again.
This happened several times during the night, and when the morningdawned I was a raving madman. I took the warder who first came(attracted by my cries of "Mary!") for Colonel Ibbetson, and tried tokill him, and should have done so, but that he was a very big man,almost as powerful as myself and only half my age.
Other warders came to the rescue, and I took them all for Ibbetsons, andfought like the maniac I was.
When I came to myself, after long horrors and brain-fever and what not,I was removed from the jail infirmary to another place, where I am now.
I had suddenly recovered my reason, and woke to mental agony such as I,who had stood in the dock and been condemned to a shameful death, hadnever even dreamed of.
I soon had the knowledge of my loss confirmed, and heard (it had beencommon talk for more than nine days) that the famous Mary, Duchess ofTowers, had met her death at the ------ station of the MetropolitanRailway.
A woman, carrying a child, had been jostled by a tipsy man just as atrain was entering the station, and dropped her child onto the metals.She tried to jump after it but was held back, and Mary, who had justcome up, jumped in her stead, and by a miracle of strength and agilitywas just able to clutch the child and get onto the six-foot way as theengine came by.
She was able to carry the child to the end of the train, and was helpedonto the platform. It was her train, and she got into a carriage, butshe was dead before it reached the next station. Her heart, (which, itseems, had been diseased for some time) had stopped, and all was over.
So died Mary Seraskier, at fifty-three.
* * * * *
I lay for many weeks convalescent in body, but in a state of dumb, drytearless, despair, to which there never came a moment's relief, exceptin the dreamless sleep I got from chloral, which was given to me inlarge quantities--and then, the _waking_!
I never spoke nor answered a question, and hardly ever stirred. I hadone fixed idea--that of self-destruction; and after two unsuccessfulattempts, I was so closely bound and watched night and day that anyfurther attempt was impossible. They would not trust me with a toothpickor a button or a piece of common packthread.
I tried to starve myself to death and refused all solid food: but anintolerable thirst (perhaps artificially brought on) made it impossiblefor me to refuse any liquid that was offered, and I was tempted withmilk, beef-tea, port, and sherry, and these kept me alive....
* * * * *
I had lost all wish to dream.
At length, one afternoon, a strange, inexplicable, overwhelmingnostalgic desire came over me to see once more the Mare d'Auteuil--onlyonce; to walk thither for the last time through the Chaussee de laMuette, and by the fortifications.
It grew upon me till it became a torture to wait for bedtime, so franticwas my impatience.
When the long-wished-for hour arrived at last, I laid myself down oncemore (as nearly as I could for my bonds) in the old position I had nottried for so long; my will intent upon the Porte de la Muette, an oldstone gate-way that separated the Grande Rue de Passy from the entranceto the Bois de Boulogne--a kind of Temple Bar.
It was pulled down forty-five years ago.
I soon found myself there, just where the Grande Rue meets the Rue de laPompe, and went through the arch and looked towards the Bois.
It was a dull, leaden day in autumn; few people were about, but a gay_repas de noces_ was being held at a little restaurant on my right-handside. It was to celebrate the wedding of Achille Grigoux, thegreen-grocer, with Felicite Lenormand, who had been the Seraskiers'house-maid. I suddenly remembered all this, and that Mimsey and Gogowere of the party--the latter, indeed, being _premier garcon d'honneur_,on whom would soon devolve the duty of stealing the bride's garter, andcutting it up into little bits to adorn the button-holes of the maleguests before the ball began.
In an archway on my left some forlorn, worn-out old rips, broken-kneedand broken-winded, were patiently waiting, ready saddled and bridled, tobe hired--Chloris, Murat, Rigolette, and others: I knew and had riddenthem all nearly half a century ago. Poor old shadows of the long-deadpast, so life-like and real and pathetic--it "split me the heart" tosee them!
A handsome young blue-coated, silver-buttoned courier of the name ofLami came trotting along from St. Cloud on a roan horse, with a greatjingling of his horse's bells and clacking of his short-handled whip. Hestopped at the restaurant and called for a glass of white wine, andrising in his stirrups, shouted gayly for Monsieur et Madame Grigoux.They appeared at the first-floor window, looking very happy, and hedrank their health, and they his. I could see Gogo and Mimsey in thecrowd behind them, and mildly wondered again, as I had so often wonderedbefore, how I came to see it all from the outside--from another point ofview than Gogo's.
Then the courier bowed gallantly, and said, _"Bonne chance!"_ and wenttrotting down the Grande Rue on his way to the Tuileries, and thewedding guests began to sing: they sang a song beginning--
_"Il etait un petit navire, Qui n'avait jamais navigue_...."
I had quite forgotten it, and listened till the end, and thought it verypretty; and was interested in a dull, mechanical way at discoveringthat it must be the original of Thackeray's famous ballad of "LittleBillee," which I did not hear till many years after. When they came tothe last verse--
"_Si cette histoire vous embete, Nous allons la recommencer_,"
I went on my way. This was my last walk in dreamland, perhaps, anddream-hours are uncertain, and I would make the most of them, andlook about me.
I walked towards Ranelagh, a kind of casino, where they us
ed to giveballs and theatrical performances on Sunday and Thursday nights (andwhere afterwards Rossini spent the latter years of his life; then it waspulled down, I am told, to make room for many smart little villas).
In the meadow opposite M. Erard's park, Saindou's school-boys wereplaying rounders--_la balle au camp_--from which I concluded it was aThursday afternoon, a half-holiday; if they had had clean shirts on(which they had not) it would have been Sunday, and the holiday awhole one.
I knew them all, and the two _pions_, or ushers, M. Lartigue and _lepetit Cazal_; but no longer cared for them or found them amusing orinteresting in the least.
Opposite the Ranelagh a few old hackney-coach men were pacificallykilling time by a game of _bouchon_--knocking sous off a cork with othersous--great fat sous and double sous long gone out of fashion. It is avery good game, and I watched it for a while and envied thelong-dead players.
Close by was a small wooden shed, or _baraque_, prettily painted andglazed, and ornamented at the top with little tricolor flags; itbelonged to a couple of old ladies, Mere Manette and GrandmereManette-the two oldest women ever seen. They were very keen aboutbusiness, and would not give credit for a centime--not even to Englishboys. They were said to be immensely rich and quite alone in the world.How very dead they must be now! I thought. And I gazed at them andwondered at their liveliness and the pleasure they took in living. Theysold many things: nougat, _pain d'epices_, mirlitons, hoops, drums,noisy battledoors and shuttlecocks; and little ten-sou hand-mirrors,neatly bound in zinc, that could open and shut.
I looked at myself in one of these that was hanging outside; I was oldand worn and gray-my face badly shaven--my hair almost white. I hadnever been old in a dream before.
I walked through the gate in the fortifications on to the outer Talus(which was quite bare in those days), in the direction of the Mared'Auteuil. The place seemed very deserted and dull for a Thursday. Itwas a sad and sober walk; my melancholy was not to be borne--my heartwas utterly broken, and my body so tired I could scarcely drag myselfalong. Never before had I known in a dream what it was to be tired.
I gazed at the famous fortifications in all their brand-new pinkness,the scaffoldings barely removed--some of them still lying in the dryditch between--and smiled to think how these little brick and granitewalls would avail to keep the Germans out of Paris thirty years later(twenty years ago). I tried to throw a stone across the narrow part, andfound I could no longer throw stones; so I sat down and rested. How thinmy legs were! and how miserably clad--in old prison trousers, greasy,stained, and frayed, and ignobly kneed--and what boots!
"I sat down and rested."]
Never had I been shabby in a dream before.
Why could not I, once for all, walk round to the other side and take aheader _a la hussarde_ off those lofty bulwarks, and kill myself forgood and all? Alas! I should only blur the dream, and perhaps even wakein my miserable strait-waistcoat. And I wanted to see the _mare_ oncemore, very badly.
This set me thinking. I would fill my pockets with stones, and throwmyself into the Mare d'Auteuil after I had taken a last good look at it,and around. Perhaps the shock of emotion, in my present state ofweakness, might really kill me in my sleep. Who knows? it was worthtrying, anyhow.
I got up and dragged myself to the _mare_. It was deserted but for onesolitary female figure, soberly clad in black and gray, that satmotionless on the bench by the old willow.
I walked slowly round in her direction, picking up stones and puttingthem into my pockets, and saw that she was gray-haired and middle-aged,with very dark eyebrows, and extremely tall, and that her magnificenteyes were following me.
Then, as I drew nearer, she smiled and showed gleaming white teeth, andher eyes crinkled and nearly closed up as she did so.
"Oh, my God!" I shrieked; "it is Mary Seraskier!"
* * * * *
I ran to her--I threw myself at her feet, and buried my face in her lap,and there I sobbed like a hysterical child, while she tried to soothe meas one soothes a child.
After a while I looked up into her face. It was old and worn and gray,and her hair nearly white, like mine. I had never seen her like thatbefore; she had always been eight-and-twenty. But age became herwell--she looked so benignly beautiful and calm and grand that I wasawed--and quick, chill waves went down my backbone.
Her dress and bonnet were old and shabby, her gloves had beenmended--old kid gloves with fur about the wrists. She drew them off, andtook my hands and made me sit beside her, and looked at me for a whilewith all her might in silence.
At length she said: "Gogo mio, I know all you have been through by thetouch of your hands. Does the touch of mine tell you nothing?"
It told me nothing but her huge love for me, which was all I cared for,and I said so.
She sighed, and said: "I was afraid it would be like this. The oldcircuit is broken, and can't be restored--not yet!"
We tried again hard; but it was useless.
She looked round and about and up at the tree-tops, everywhere; and thenat me again, with great wistfulness, and shivered, and finally began tospeak, with hesitation at first, and in a manner foreign to her. Butsoon she became apparently herself, and found her old swift smile andlaugh, her happy slight shrugs and gestures, and quaint polyglotcolloquialisms (which I omit, as I cannot always spell them); herhomely, simple ways of speech, her fluent, magnetic energy, the winningand sympathetic modulations of her voice, its quick humorous changesfrom grave to gay--all that made everything she said so suggestive ofall she wanted to say besides.
"Gogo, I knew you would come. I _wished_ it! How dreadfully you havesuffered! How thin you are! It shocks me to see you! But that will notbe any more; we are going to change all that.
"Gogo, you have no idea how difficult it has been for me to come back,even for a few short hours, for I can't hold on very long. It is likehanging on to the window-sill by one's wrists. This time it is Heroswimming to Leander, or Juliet climbing up to Romeo.
"Nobody has ever come back before.
"I am but a poor husk of my former self, put together at great pains foryou to know me by. I could not make myself again what I have always beento you. I had to be content with this, and so must you. These are theclothes I died in. But you knew me directly, dear Gogo.
"I have come a long way--such a long way--to have an _abboccamento_ withyou. I had so many things to say. And now we are both here, hand in handas we used to be, I can't even understand what they were; and if Icould, I couldn't make _you_ understand. But you will know some day, andthere is no hurry whatever.
"Every thought you have had since I died, I know already; _your_ shareof the circuit is unbroken at least. I know now why you picked up thosestones and put them in your pockets. You must never think of _that_again--you never will. Besides, it would be of no use, poor Gogo!"
Then she looked up at the sky and all round her again, and smiled in herold happy manner, and rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands, andseemed to settle herself for a good long talk--an _abboccamento!_
* * * * *
Of all she said I can only give a few fragments--whatever I can recalland understand when awake. Wherever I have forgotten I will put a lineof little dots. Only when I sleep and dream can I recall and understandthe rest. It seems all very simple then. I often say to myself, "I willfix it well in my mind, and put it into well-chosen words--_her_words--and learn them by heart; and then wake cautiously and rememberthem, and write them all down in a book, so that they shall do forothers all they have done for me, and turn doubt into happy certainty,and despair into patience and hope and high elation."
"IT IS MARY SERASKIER!"]
But the bell rings and I wake, and my memory plays me false. Nothingremains but the knowledge _that all will be well for us all, and of sucha kind that those who do not sigh for the moon will be well content_.
Alas, this knowledge: I cannot impart it to others. Like many who havelived b
efore me, I cannot prove--I can only affirm....
* * * * *
"How odd and old-fashioned it feels," she began, "to have eyes and earsagain, and all that--little open windows on to what is near us. They arevery clumsy contrivances! I had already forgotten them."
* * * * *
Look, there goes our old friend, the water-rat, under the bank--the oldfat father--_le bon gros pere_--as we used to call him. He is only alittle flat picture moving upsidedown in the opposite direction acrossthe backs of our eyes, and the farther he goes the smaller he seems. Acouple of hundred yards off we shouldn't see him at all. As it is, wecan only see the outside of him, and that only on one side at a time;and yet he is full of important and wonderful things that have takenmillions of years to make--like us! And to see him at all we have tolook straight at him--and then we can't see what's behind us oraround--and if it was dark we couldn't see anything whatever.
Poor eyes! Little bags full of water, with a little magnifying-glassinside, and a nasturtium leaf behind--to catch the light and feel it!
A celebrated German oculist once told papa that if his instrument-makerwere to send him such an ill-made machine as a human eye, he would sendit back and refuse to pay the bill. I can understand that now; and yeton earth where should we be without eyes? And afterwards where should webe if some of us hadn't once had them on earth?
* * * * *
I can hear your dear voice, Gogo, with both ears. Why two ears? Whyonly two? What you want, or think, or feel, you try to tell me in soundsthat you have been taught--English, French. If I didn't know English andFrench, it would be no good whatever. Language is a poor thing. You fillyour lungs with wind and shake a little slit in your throat, and makemouths, and that shakes the air; and the air shakes a pair of littledrums in my head--a very complicated arrangement, with lots of bonesbehind--and my brain seizes your meaning in the rough. What a roundaboutway, and what a waste of time!
* * * * *
And so with all the rest. We can't even smell straight! A dog wouldlaugh at us--not that even a dog knows much!
And feeling! We can feel too hot or too cold, and it sometimes makes usill, or even kills us. But we can't feel the coming storm, or which isnorth and south, or where the new moon is, or the sun at midnight, orthe stars at noon, or even what o'clock it is by our own measurement. Wecannot even find our way home blindfolded--not even a pigeon can dothat, nor a swallow, nor an owl! Only a mole, or a blind man, perhaps,feebly groping with a stick, if he has already been that way before.
And taste! It is well said there is no accounting for it.
And then, to keep all this going, we have to eat, and drink, and sleep,and all the rest. What a burden!
* * * * *
And you and I are the only mortals that I know of who ever found a wayto each other's inner being by the touch of the hands. And then we hadto go to sleep first. Our bodies were miles apart; not that _that_ wouldhave made any difference, for we could never have done it waking--never;not if we hugged each other to extinction!
* * * * *
Gogo, I cannot find any words to tell you _how_, for there are none inany language that _I_ ever knew to tell it; but where I am it is all earand eye and the rest in _one_, and there is, oh, how much more besides!Things a homing-pigeon has known, and an ant, and a mole, and awater-beetle, and an earthworm, and a leaf, and a root, and amagnet--even a lump of chalk, and more. One can see and smell and touchand taste a sound, as well as hear it, and _vice versa_. It is verysimple, though it may not seem so to you now.
And the sounds! Ah, what sounds! The thick atmosphere of earth is noconductor for such as _they_, and earthly ear-drums no receiver. Soundis everything. Sound and light are one.
* * * * *
And what does it all mean?
I knew what it meant when I was there--part of it, at least--and shouldknow again in a few hours. But this poor old earth-brain of mine, whichI have had to put on once more as an old woman puts on a nightcap, islike my eyes and ears. It can now only understand what is of theearth--what _you_ can understand, Gogo, who are still of the earth. Iforget, as one forgets an ordinary dream, as one sometimes forgets theanswer to a riddle, or the last verse of a song. It is on the tip of thetongue; but there it sticks, and won't come any farther.
Remember, it is only in your brain I am living now--your earthly brain,that has been my only home for so many happy years, as mine hasbeen yours.
How we have nestled!
* * * * *
But this I know: one must have had them all once--brains, ears, eyes,and the rest--on earth. 'Il faut avoir passe par la!' or noafter-existence for man or beast would be possible or even conceivable.
One cannot teach a born deaf-mute how to understand a musical score,nor a born blind man how to feel color. To Beethoven, who had once heardwith the ear, his deafness made no difference, nor their blindness toHomer and Milton.
Can you make out my little parable?
* * * * *
Sound and light and heat, and electricity and motion, and will andthought and remembrance, and love and hate and pity, and the desire tobe born and to live, and the longing of all things alive and dead to getnear each other, or to fly apart--and lots of other things besides! Allthat comes to the same--'C'est comme qui dirait bonnet blanc et blancbonnet,' as Monsieur le Major used to say. 'C'est simple comme bonjour!'
Where I am, Gogo, I can hear the sun shining on the earth and makingthe flowers blow, and the birds sing, and the bells peal for birth andmarriage and death--happy, happy death, if you only knew--'C'est la clefdes champs!'
It shines on moons and planets, and I can hear it, and hear the echothey give back again. The very stars are singing; rather a long way off!but it is well worth their while with such an audience as lies betweenus and them; and they can't help it....
I can't hear it here--not a bit--now that I've got my ears on; besides,the winds of the earth are too loud....
Ah, that _is_ music, if you like; but men and women are stone-deaf toit--their ears are in the way! ...
Those poor unseen flat fish that live in the darkness and mud at thebottom of deep seas can't catch the music men and women make upon theearth--such poor music as it is! But if ever so faint a murmur, borne onthe wings and fins of a sunbeam, reaches them for a few minutes atmid-day, and they have a speck of marrow in their spines to feel it, andno ears or eyes to come between, they are better off than any man, Gogo.Their dull existence is more blessed than his.
But alas for them, as yet! They haven't got the memory of the eye andear, and without that no speck of spinal marrow will avail; they must becontent to wait, like you.
The blind and deaf?
Oh yes; _la bas_, it is all right for the poor deaf-mutes and bornblind of the earth; they can remember with the past eyes and ears of allthe rest. Besides, it is no longer _they_. There is no _they_! That isonly a detail.
* * * * *
You must try and realize that it is just as though all space between usand the sun and stars were full of little specks of spinal marrow, muchtoo small to be seen in any microscope--smaller than anything in theworld. All space is full of them, shoulder to shoulder--almost as closeas sardines in a box--and there is still room for more! Yet a singledrop of water would hold them all, and not be the less transparent. Theyall remember having been alive on earth or elsewhere, in some form orother, and each knows all the others remember. I can only compare itto that.
Once all that space was only full of stones, rushing, whirling,meeting, and crushing together, and melting and steaming in thewhite-heat of their own hurry. But now there's a crop of somethingbetter than stones, I can promise you! It goes on gathering, and beinggarnered and mingled and sifted and winn
owed--the precious,indestructible harvest of how many millions of years of life!
* * * * *
And this I know: the longer and more strenuously and completely onelives one's life on earth the better for all. It is the foundation ofeverything. Though if men could guess what is in store for them whenthey die, without also knowing _that_, they would not have the patienceto live--they wouldn't wait! For who would fardels bear? They would justput stones in their pockets, as you did, and make for the nearest pond.
They mustn't!
* * * * *
Nothing is lost--nothing! From the ineffable, high, fleeting thought aShakespeare can't find words to express, to the slightest sensation ofan earthworm--nothing! Not a leaf's feeling of the light, not aloadstone's sense of the pole, not a single volcanic or electric thrillof the mother earth.
All knowledge must begin on earth for _us_. It is the most favoredplanet in this poor system of ours just now, and for a few shortmillions of years to come. There are just a couple of others, perhapsthree; but they are not of great consequence. 'Il y fait trop chaud--oupas assez!' They are failures.
The sun, the father sun, _le bon gros pere_, rains life on to themother earth. A poor little life it was at first, as you know--grassesand moss, and little wriggling, transparent things--all stomach; it isquite true! That is what we come from--Shakespeare, and you, and I!
* * * * *
After each individual death the earth retains each individual clay tobe used again and again; and, as far as I can see, it rains back eachindividual essence to the sun--or somewhere near it--like a preciouswater-drop returned to the sea, where it mingles, after having beenabout and seen something of the world, and learned the use of five smallwits--and remembering all! Yes, like that poor little exiled wanderingwater-drop in the pretty song your father used to sing, and which alwaysmanages to find its home at last--
_'Va passaggier' in fiume, Va prigionier' in fonte, Ma sempre ritorn' al mar.'_
Or else it is as if little grains of salt were being showered into theMare d'Auteuil, to melt and mingle with the water and each other tillthe Mare d'Auteuil itself was as salt as salt can be.
Not till that Mare d'Auteuil of the sun is saturated with the salt ofthe earth, of earthly life and knowledge, will the purpose be complete,and then old mother earth may well dry up into a cinder like the moon;its occupation will be gone, like hers--'adieu, panier, les vendangessont faites!'
And, as for the sun and its surrounding ocean of life--ah, that isbeyond _me_! but the sun will dry up, too, and its ocean of life nodoubt be drawn to other greater suns. For everything seems to go on moreor less in the same way, only crescendo, everywhere and forever.
* * * * *
You must understand that it is not a bit like an ocean, nor a bit likewater-drops, or grains of salt, or specks of spinal marrow; but it isonly by such poor metaphors that I can give you a glimpse of what Imean, since you can no longer understand me, as you used to do onearthly things, by the mere touch of our hands.
* * * * *
Gogo, I am the only little water-drop, the one grain of salt that hasnot yet been able to dissolve and melt away in that universal sea; I amthe exception.
It is as though a long, invisible chain bound me still to the earth,and I were hung at the other end of it in a little transparent locket, akind of cage, which lets me see and hear things all round, but keeps mefrom melting away.
And soon I found that this locket was made of that half of you that isstill in me, so that I couldn't dissolve, because half of me wasn't deadat all; for the chain linked me to that half of myself I had left inyou, so that half of me actually wasn't there to be dissolved.... I amgetting rather mixed!
But oh, my heart's true love, how I hugged my chain, with you at theother end of it!
With such pain and effort as you cannot conceive, I have crept along itback to you, like a spider on an endless thread of its own spinning.Such love as mine is stronger then death indeed!
* * * * *
I have come to tell you that we are inseparable forever, you and I, onedouble speck of spinal marrow--'Philipschen!'--one little grain of salt,one drop. There is to be no parting for _us_--I can see that; but suchextraordinary luck seems reserved for you and me alone up to now; and itis all our own doing.
But not till you join me shall you and I be complete, and free to meltaway in that universal ocean, and take our part, as One, in all isto be.
That moment--you must not hasten it by a moment. Time is nothing. I'meven beginning to believe there's no such thing; there is so littledifference, _la-bas_, between a year and a day. And as for space--dearme, an inch is as as an ell!
Things cannot be measured like that.
A midge's life is as long as a man's, for it has time to learn itsbusiness, and do all the harm it can, and fight, and make love, andmarry, and reproduce its kind, and grow disenchanted and bored and sickand content to die--all in a summer afternoon. An average man can liveto seventy years without doing much more.
And then there are tall midges, and clever and good-looking ones, andmidges of great personal strength and cunning, who can fly a littlefaster and a little farther than the rest, and live an hour longer todrink a whole drop more of some other creature's blood; but it does notmake a very great difference!
* * * * *
No, time and space mean just the same as 'nothing.'
But for you they mean much, as you have much to do. Our joint life mustbe revealed--that long, sweet life of make-believe, that has been somuch more real than reality. Ah! where and what were time or space tous then?
* * * * *
And you must tell all we have found out, and how; the way must be shownto others with better brains and better training than _we_ had. Thevalue to mankind--to mankind here and hereafter--may be incalculable.
* * * * *
For some day, when all is found out that can be found out on earth, andmade the common property of all (or even before that), the great manwill perhaps arise and make the great guess that is to set us all free,here and hereafter. Who knows?
I feel this splendid guesser will be some inspired musician of thefuture, as simple as a little child in all things but his knowledge ofthe power of sound; but even little children will have learned much inthose days. He will want new notes and find them--new notes between theblack and white keys. He will go blind like Milton and Homer, and deaflike Beethoven; and then, all in the stillness and the dark, all in thedepths of his forlorn and lonely soul, he will make his best music, andout of the endless mazes of its counterpoint he will evolve a secret, aswe did from the "Chant du Triste Commensal," but it will be a greatersecret than ours. Others will have been very near this hidden treasure;but he will happen right _on_ it, and unearth it, and bring it to light.
I think I see him sitting at the key-board, so familiar of old to thefeel of his consummate fingers; painfully dictating his score to somemost patient and devoted friend--mother, sister, daughter, wife--thatscore that he will never see or hear.
What a stammerer! Not only blind and deaf, but _mad_--mad in theworld's eyes, for fifty, a hundred, a thousand years. Time is nothing;but that score will survive....
He will die of it, of course; and when he dies and comes to us, therewill be joy from here to Sirius, and beyond.
And one day they will find out on earth that he was only deaf andblind--not mad at all. They will hear and _understand_--they will knowthat he saw and heard as none had ever heard or seen before!
* * * * *
For 'as we sow we reap'; that is a true saying, and all the sowing isdone here on earth, and the reaping beyond. Man is a grub; his deadclay, as he lies coffined in his grave, is the left-off cocoon h
e hasspun for himself during his earthly life, to burst open and soar fromwith all his memories about him, even his lost ones. Like thedragon-fly, the butterfly, the moth ... and when _they_ die it is thesame, and the same with a blade of grass. We are all, _tous tant quenous sommes_, little bags of remembrance that never dies; that's whatwe're _for_. But we can only bring with us to the common stock whatwe've got. As Pere Francois used to say, 'La plus belle fille au mondene peut donner que ce qu'elle a.'
* * * * *
Besides all this I am your earthly wife, Gogo--your loving, faithful,devoted wife, and I wish it to be known.
* * * * *
And then at last, in the fulness of time--a very few years--ah,then----
"Once more shall Neuha lead her Torquil by the hand."
* * * * *
"Oh, Mary!" I cried, "shall we be transcendently happy again? As happyas we were--_happier_ even?"
Ah, Gogo, is a man happier than a mouse, or a mouse than a turnip, ora turnip than a lump of chalk? But what man would be a mouse or aturnip, or _vice versa_? What turnip would be a lump--of anything butitself? Are two people happier than one? You and I, yes; because we_are_ one; but who else? It is one and all. Happiness is like timeand space--we make and measure it ourselves; it is a fancy--as big, aslittle, as you please; just a thing of contrasts and comparisons, likehealth or strength or beauty or any other good--that wouldn't even benoticed but for sad personal experience of its opposite!--orits greater!
"I have forgotten all I know but this, which is for you and me: we areinseparable forever. Be sure we shall not want to go back again fora moment."
"And is there no punishment or reward?"
Oh, there again! What a detail! Poor little naughty perversemidges--who were _born_ so--and _can't_ keep straight! poor littleexemplary midges who couldn't go wrong if they tried! Is it worth while?Isn't it enough for either punishment or reward that the secrets of allmidges' hearts shall be revealed, and for all other midges to see?Think of it!
* * * * *
There are battles to be fought and races to be won, but no longeragainst '_each other_.' And strength and swiftness to win them; but nolonger any strong and swift. There is weakness and cowardice, but nolonger any cowards or weaklings. The good and the bad and the worst andthe best--it is all mixed up. But the good comes to the top; the badgoes to the bottom--it is precipitated, as papa used to say. It is notan agreeable sediment, with its once useful cruelty at the lowest bottomof all--out of sight, out of mind--all but forgotten. _C'est dejale ciel_.
* * * * *
"And the goal? The cause, the whither, and the why of it all? Ah!Gogo--as inscrutable, as unthinkable as ever, till the great guessercomes! At least so it seems to me, speaking as a fool, out of the depthsof my poor ignorance; for I am a new arrival, and a complete outsider,with my chain and locket, waiting for you.
"I have only picked up a few grains of sand on the shore of that sea--afew little shells, and I can't even show you what they are like. I seethat it is no good even talking of it, alas! And I had promised myself_so_ much.
"Oh! how my earthly education was neglected, and yours! and how I feelit now, with so much to say in words, mere words! Why, to tell you inwords the little I can see, the very little--so that you couldunderstand--would require that each of us should be the greatest poetand the greatest mathematician that ever were, rolled into one! How Ipity you, Gogo--with your untrained, unskilled, innocent pen, poorscribe! having to write all this down--for you _must_--and do your poorlittle best, as I have done mine in telling you! You must let the heartspeak, and not mind style or manner! Write _any_ how! write for thegreatest need and the greatest number.
"But do just try and see this, dearest, and make the best of it you can:as far as _I_ can make it out, everything everywhere seems to be anever-deepening, ever-broadening stream that makes with inconceivablevelocity for its own proper level, WHERE PERFECTION IS! ... and evergets nearer and nearer, and never finds it, and fortunately never will!
"Only that, unlike an earthly stream, and more like a fresh flowing tideup an endless, boundless, shoreless creek (if you can imagine that), thelevel it seeks is immeasurably higher than its source. And everywhere init is Life, Life, Life! ever renewing and doubling itself, and everswelling that mighty river which has no banks!
"And everywhere in it like begets like, _plus_ a little better or alittle worse; and the little worse finds its way into some backwater andsticks there, and finally goes to the bottom, and nobody cares. And thelittle better goes on bettering and bettering--not all man's folly orperverseness can hinder _that_, nor make that headlong torrent stay, orebb, or roll backward for a moment--_c'est plus fort que nous_! ... Therecord goes on beating itself, the high-water-mark gets higher andhigher till the highest on earth is reached that can be--and then, Isuppose, the earth grows cold and the sun goes out--to be broken up intobits, and used all over again, perhaps! And betterness flies to warmerclimes and higher systems, to better itself still! And so on, frombetter to better, from higher to higher, from warmer to warmer, andbigger to bigger--for ever and ever and ever!
"But the final superlative of all, absolute all--goodness andall-highness, absolute all-wisdom, absolute omnipotence, beyond whichthere neither is nor can be anything more, will never be reached atall--since there are no such things; they are abstractions; besideswhich, attainment means rest, and rest stagnation, and stagnation an endof all! And there is no end, and never can be--no end to Time and allthe things that are done in it--no end to Space and all the things thatfill it, or all would come together in a heap and smash up in themiddle--and there _is_ no middle!--no end, no beginning, no middle! _nomiddle_, Gogo! think of _that_! it is the most inconceivable thingof all!!!
"So who shall say where Shakespeare and you and I come in--tiny links inan endless chain, so tiny that even Shakespeare is no bigger than we!And just a little way behind us, those little wriggling transparentthings, all stomach, that we descend from; and far ahead of ourselves,but in the direct line of a long descent from _us_, an ever-growingconscious Power, so strong, so glad, so simple, so wise, so mild, and sobeneficent, that what can we do, even now, but fall on our knees withour foreheads in the dust, and our hearts brimful of wonder, hope, andlove, and tender shivering awe; and worship as a yet unborn, barelyconceived, and scarce begotten _Child_--that which we have always beentaught to worship as a _Father_--That which is not now, but _is_ tobe--That which we shall all share in and be part and parcel of in thedim future--That which is slowly, surely, painfully weaving Itself outof us and the likes of us all through the limitless Universe, and Whosecoming we can but faintly foretell by the casting of its shadow on ourown slowly, surely, painfully awakening souls!"
* * * * *
Then she went on to speak of earthly things, and ask questions in herold practical way. First of my bodily health, with the tenderestsolicitude and the wisest advice--as a mother to a son. She eveninsisted on listening to my heart, like a doctor.
Then she spoke at great length of the charities in which she had beeninterested, and gave me many directions which I was to write, as comingfrom myself, to certain people whose names and addresses she impressedupon me with great care.
I have done as she wished, and most of these directions have beenfollowed to the letter, with no little wonder on the world's part (asthe world well knows) that such sagacious and useful reforms should haveoriginated with the inmate of a criminal lunatic asylum.
* * * * *
At last the time came for us to part. She foresaw that I should have towake in a few minutes, and said, rising----
"And now, Gogo, the best beloved that ever was on earth, take me oncemore in your dear arms, and kiss me good-bye for a little while--_aufwiedersehen_. Come here to rest and think and remember when your bodysleeps. My sp
irit will always be here with you. I may even be able tocome back again myself--just this poor husk of me--hardly more to lookat than a bundle of old clothes; but yet a world made up of love for_you_. Good-bye, good-bye, dearest and best. Time is nothing, but Ishall count the hours. Good-bye...."
Even as she strained me to her breast I awoke.
"GOOD-BYE"]
* * * * *
I awoke, and knew that the dread black shadow of melancholia had passedaway from me like a hideous nightmare--like a long and horrible winter.My heart was full of the sunshine of spring--the gladness of awaking toa new life.
I smiled at my night attendant, who stared back at me in astonishment,and exclaimed----
"Why, sir, blest if you ain't a new man altogether. There, now!"
I wrung his hand, and thanked him for all his past patience, kindness,and forbearance with such effusion that his eyes had tears in them. Ihad not spoken for weeks, and he heard my voice for the first time.
That day, also, without any preamble or explanation, I gave the doctorand the chaplain and the governor my word of honor that I would notattempt my life again, or any one else's, and was believed and trustedon the spot; and they unstrapped me.
I was never so touched in my life.
In a week I recovered much of my strength; but I was an old man. Thatwas a great change.
Most people age gradually and imperceptibly. To me old age had come of asudden--in a night, as it were; but with it, and suddenly also, theresigned and cheerful acquiescence, the mild serenity, that are itscompensation and more.
My hope, my certainty to be one with Mary some day--that is my haven, myheaven--a consummation of completeness beyond which there is nothing towish for or imagine. Come what else may, that is safe, and that is all Icare for. She was able to care for me, and for many other thingsbesides, and I love her all the more for it; but I can only carefor _her_.
Sooner or later--a year--ten years; it does not matter much. I also ambeginning to disbelieve in the existence of time.
That waking was the gladdest in my life--gladder even than the wakingin my condemned cell the morning after my sentence of death, whenanother black shadow passed away--that of the scaffold.
Oh, Mary! What has she not done for me--what clouds has she notdispelled!
When night came round again I made once more, step by step, the journeyfrom the Porte de la Muette to the Mare d'Auteuil, with everything thesame--the gay wedding-feast, the blue and silver courier, the merryguests singing
_"Il etait un petit navire."_
Nothing was altered, even to the dull gray weather. But, oh, thedifference to me!
I longed to play at _bouchon_ with the hackney coachmen, or at _la balleau camp_ with my old schoolfellows. I could have even waltzed with"Monsieur Lartigue" and "le petit Cazal."
I looked in Mere Manette's little mirror and saw my worn, gray, haggard,old face again; and liked it, and thought it quite good-looking. I satdown and rested by the fortifications as I had done the night before,for I was still tired, but with a most delicious fatigue; my veryshabbiness was agreeable to me--_pauvre, mais honnete_. A convict, amadman, but a prince among men--still the beloved of Mary!
And when at last I reached the spot I had always loved the best on earthever since I first saw it as a child, I fell on my knees and wept forsheer excess of joy. It was mine indeed; it belonged to me as no land orwater had ever belonged to any man before.
Mary was not there, of course; I did not expect her.
But, strange and incomprehensible as it seems, she had forgotten hergloves; she had left them behind her. One was on the bench, one was onthe ground; poor old gloves that had been mended, with the well-knownshape of her dear hand in them; every fold and crease preserved as in amould--the very cast of her finger-nails; and the scent of sandal-woodshe and her mother had so loved.
I laid them side by side, palms upward, on the bench where we had satthe night before. No dream-wind has blown them away; no dream-thief hasstolen them; there they lie still, and will lie till the great changecomes over me, and I am one with their owner.
* * * * *
I am there every night--in the lovely spring or autumnsunshine--meditating, remembering, taking notes--dream-notes to belearned by heard, and used next day for a real purpose.
I walk round and round, or sit on the benches, or lie in the grass bythe brink, and smoke cigarettes without end, and watch the oldamphibious life I found so charming half a century ago, and find itcharming still.
Sometimes I dive into the forest (which has now been razed to theground. Ever since 1870 there is an open space all round the Mared'Auteuil. I had seen it since then in a dream with Mary, who went toParis after the war, and mad pilgrimages by day to all the places sodear to our hearts, and so changed; and again, when the night came,with me for a fellow-pilgrim. It was a sad disenchantment for us both).
_My_ Mare d'Auteuil, where I spend so many hours, is the Mare d'Auteuilof Louis Philippe, unchangeable except for such slight changes as _will_occur, now and then, between the years 1839 and 1846: a broken benchmended, a new barrier put up by the high-road, a small wooden dikewhere the brink is giving way.
"I AM THERE EVERY NIGHT."]
And the thicket beside and behind it is dark and dense for miles, withmany tall trees and a rich, tangled undergrowth.
There is a giant oak which it is difficult to find in that labyrinth (itnow stands, for the world, alone in the open; an ornament to the Auteuilrace-course) I have often climbed it as a boy, with Mimsey and therest; I cannot climb it now, but I love to lie on the grass in itsshade, and dream in my dream there, shut in on all sides by fragrant,impenetrable verdure; with birds and bees and butterflies anddragon-flies and strange beetles and little field-mice with bright eyes,and lithe spotted snakes and lively brown squirrels and beautiful greenlizards for my company. Now and then a gentle roebuck comes and feedsclose by me without fear, and the mole throws up his little mound ofearth and takes an airing.
It is a very charming solitude.
It amuses me to think by day, when broad awake in my sad English prison,and among my crazy peers, how this nightly umbrageous French solitude ofmine, so many miles and years away, is now but a common, bare, widegrassy plain, overlooked by a gaudy, beflagged grand-stand. It isSunday, let us say--and for all I know a great race may be going on--allParis is there, rich and poor. Little red-legged soldiers, bigblue-legged gendarmes, keep the course clear; the sun shines, thetricolour waves, the gay, familiar language makes the summer breezemusical. I dare say it is all very bright and animated, but the wholeplace rings with the vulgar din of the bookmakers, and the air is fullof dust and foul with the scent of rank tobacco, the reek of strugglingFrench humanity; and the gaunt Eiffel Tower looks down upon it all fromthe sky over Paris (so, at least, I am told) like a skeleton at a feast.
Then twilight comes, and the crowds have departed; on foot, onhorseback, on bicycles and tricycles, in every kind of vehicle; many bythe _chemin de fer de ceinture_, the Auteuil station of which is closeby ... all is quiet and bare and dull.
Then down drops the silent night like a curtain, and beneath itsfriendly cover the strange transformation effects itself quickly, andall is made ready for _me_. The grand-stand evaporates, the railwaystation melts away into thin air; there is no more Eiffel Tower with itselectric light! The sweet forest of fifty years ago rises suddenly outof the ground, and all the wild live things that once lived in it waketo their merry life again.
A quiet deep old pond in a past French forest, hallowed by suchmemories! What _can_ be more enchanting? Oh, soft and sweet nostalgia,so soon to be relieved!
Up springs the mellow sun, the light of other days, to its appointedplace in the heavens--zenith, or east or west, according to order. Alight wind blows from the south--everything is properly disinfected, andmade warm and bright and comfortable--and lo! old Peter Ibbetson appearsupon the scene, absolute monarch of all
he surveys for the next eighthours--one whose right there are literally none to dispute.
I do not encourage noisy gatherings there as a rule, nor by the pond; Ilike to keep the sweet place pretty much to myself; there is noselfishness in this, for I am really depriving nobody. Whoever comesthere now, comes there nearly fifty years ago and does not know it; theymust have all died long since.
Sometimes it is a _garde champetre_ in Louis Philippe's blue and silver,with his black pipe, his gaiters, his old flint gun, and hisembroidered game-bag. He does well in the landscape.
Sometimes it is a pair of lovers, if they are good-looking andwell-behaved, or else the boys from Saindou's school to play fly thegarter--_la raie_.
Sometimes it is Monsieur le Cure, peacefully conning his "Hours," aswith slow and thoughtful step he paces round and round. I can now readhis calm, benevolent face by the light of half a century's experience oflife, and have learned to love that still, black, meditative aspectwhich I found so antipathetic as a small boy--_he_ is no burner alive oflittle heretics! This world is big enough for us both--and so is theworld to come! And he knows it. Now, at all events!
"THIS WORLD IS BIG ENOUGH FOR US BOTH"]
Sometimes even a couple of Prendergasts are admitted, or even three;they are not so bad, after all; they have the qualities of their faults,although you might not think it.
But very often the old beloved shades arrive with their fishing-nets,and their high spirits, and their ringing Anglo-French--Charlie, andAlfred, and Madge, and the rest, and the grinning, barking, gyratingMedor, who dives after stones.
Oh, how it does my heart good to see and hear them!
They make me feel like a grandfather. Even Monsieur le Major is youngerthan I--his mustache less white than mine. He only comes to my chin; butI look up to him still, and love and revere him as when I was alittle child.
And Dr. Seraskier! I place myself between him and what he is looking at,so that he seems to be looking straight at me; but with a far-away lookin his eyes, as is only natural. Presently something amuses him, and hesmiles, and his eyes crinkle up as his daughter's used to do when shewas a woman, and his majestic face becomes as that of an angel,like hers.
_L'ange du sourire!_
And my gay, young, light-hearted father, with his vivacity androllicking laugh and eternal good-humor! He is just like a boy to menow, le beau Pasquier! He has got a new sling of his own invention; hepulls it out of his pocket, and slings stones high over the tree-topsand far away out of sight--to the joy of himself and everybody else--anddoes not trouble much as to where they will fall.
My mother is young enough now to be my daughter; it is as a daughter, asweet, kind, lovely daughter, that I love her now--a happily-marrieddaughter with a tall, handsome husband who yodles divinely and slingsstones, and who has presented me with a grandson--_beau comme lejour_--for whatever Peter Ibbetson may have been in his time, there isno gainsaying the singular comeliness of little Gogo Pasquier.
And Mimsey is just a child angel! Monsieur le Major is infallible.
"Elle a toutes les intelligences de la tete et du coeur! Vous verrez unjour, quand ca ira mieux; vous verrez!"
That day has long come and gone; it is easy to see all that now--to havethe eyes of Monsieur le Major.
Ah, poor little Mimsey, with her cropped head and her pale face, andlong, thin arms and legs, and grave, kind, luminous eyes, that have notyet learned to smile. What she is to _me!!!!_
And Madame Seraskier, in all the youthful bloom and splendor of hersacred beauty! A chosen lily among women--the mother of Mary!
She sits on the old bench by the willow, close to her daughter's gloves.Sometimes (a trivial and almost comic detail!) she actually seems to sit_upon_ them, to my momentary distress; but when she goes away, therethey are still, not flattened a bit--the precious mould of thosebeautiful, generous hands to which I owe everything here and hereafter.
* * * * *
I have not been again to my old home. I dread the sight of the avenue. Icannot face "Parva sed Apta."
But I have seen Mary again--seven times.
And every time she comes she brings a book with her, gilt-edged andbound in green morocco like the Byron we read when we were children, orin red morocco like the _Elegant Extracts_ out of which we used totranslate Gray's "Elegy," and the "Battle of Hohenlinden," andCunningham's "Pastorals" into French.
Such is her fancy!
But inside these books are very different. They are printed in cipher,and in a language I can only understand in my dream. Nothing that I, orany one else, has ever read in any living book can approach, forinterest and importance, what I read in these. There are seven of them.
I say to myself when I read them: it is perhaps well that I shall notremember this when I wake, after all!
For I might be indiscreet and injudicious, and either say too much ornot enough; and the world might come to a stand-still, all through me.For who would fardels bear, as Mary said! No! The world must be contentto wait for the great guesser!
Thus my lips are sealed.
All I know is this: _that all will be well for us all, and of such akind that all who do not sigh for the moon will be well content_.
* * * * *
In such wise have I striven, with the best of my ability, to give someaccount of my two lives and Mary's. We have lived three lives betweenus--three lives in one.
It has been a happy task, however poorly performed, and all theconditions of its performance have been singularly happy also.
A cell in a criminal lunatic asylum! That does not sound like a bower inthe Elysian Fields! It is, and has been for me.
Besides the sun that lights and warms my inner life, I have been treatedwith a kindness and sympathy and consideration by everybody here, fromthe governor downward, that fills me with unspeakable gratitude.
Most especially do I feel grateful to my good friends, the doctor, thechaplain, and the priest--best and kindest of men--each of whom has madeup his mind about everything in heaven and earth and below, and each ina contrary sense to the two others!
There is but one thing they are neither of them quite cocksure about,and that is whether I am mad or sane.
And there is one thing--the only one on which they are agreed; namely,that, mad or sane, I am a great undiscovered genius!
My little sketches, plain or colored, fill them with admiration andecstasy. Such boldness and facility and execution, such an overwhelmingfertility in the choice of subjects, such singular realism in theconception and rendering of past scenes, historical and otherwise, suchastounding knowledge of architecture, character, costume, and what not,such local color--it is all as if I had really been there to see!
I have the greatest difficulty in keeping my fame from spreading beyondthe walls of the asylum. My modesty is as great as my talent!
No, I do not wish this great genius to be discovered just yet. It mustall go to help and illustrate and adorn the work of a much greatergenius, from which it has drawn every inspiration it ever had.
It is a splendid and delightful task I have before me: to unravel andtranslate and put in order these voluminous and hastily-pennedreminiscences of Mary's, all of them written in the cipher we inventedtogether in our dream--a very transparent cipher when once you havegot the key!
It will take five years at least, and I think that, without presumption,I can count on that, strong and active as I feel, and still so far fromthe age of the Psalmist.
First of all, I intend
* * * * *
_Note_.--Here ends my poor cousin's memoir. He was found dead fromeffusion of blood on the brain, with his pen still in his hand, and hishead bowed down on his unfinished manuscript, on the margin of which hehad just sketched a small boy wheeling a toy wheelbarrow full of stonesfrom one open door to another. One door is labelled _Passe_, theother _Avenir_.
I arrived in England, after a long life spent ab
road, at the time hisdeath occurred, but too late to see him alive. I heard much about himand his latter days. All those whose duties brought them into contactwith him seemed to have regarded him with a respect that bordered onveneration.
I had the melancholy satisfaction of seeing him in his coffin. I hadnot seen him since he was twelve years old.
As he lay there, in his still length and breadth, he appearedgigantic--the most magnificent human being I ever beheld; and thesplendor of his dead face will haunt my memory till I die.
MADGE PLUNKET.
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