Chapter VI (4)

Pray? Yes, I will pray night and morning, and all day long, to whatever there is left of inherited strength and courage in that luckless, misbegotten waif, Peter Ibbetson; that it may bear him up a little while yet; that he may not disgrace himself in the dock or on the gallows.

* * * * *

Repent? Yes, of many things. But of the thing for which I am here? Never!

* * * * *

It is a ghastly thing to be judge and jury and executioner all in one, and for a private and personal wrong--to condemn and strike and kill.

Pity comes after--when it is too late, fortunately--the wretched weakness of pity! Pooh! no Calcraft will ever pity _me_, and I do not want him to.

* * * * *

He had his long, snaky knife against my stick; he, too, was a big strong man, well skilled in self-defence! Down he went, and I struck him again and again. "O my God! O Christ!" he shrieked....

"It will ring in my heart and my ears till I die--till I die!"

* * * * *

There was no time to lose--no time to think for the best. It is all for the best as it is. What might he not have said if he had lived!

* * * * *

Thank Heaven, pity is not remorse or shame; and what crime could well be worse than his? To rob one's dearly beloved dead of their fair shame!

* * * * *

He might have been mad, perhaps, and have grown in time to believe the lies he told himself. Such things have been. But such a madman should no more be suffered to live than a mad dog. The only way to kill the lie was to kill the liar--that is, if one _can_ ever kill a lie!

* * * * *

Poor worm! after all, he could not help it, I suppose! he was _built_ like that! and _I_ was built to kill him for it, and be hanged.' [Greek: Anagkae]!

What an exit for "Gogo--gentil petit Gogo!"

* * * * *

Just opposite that wall, on the other side, was once a small tripe and trotter shop, kept by a most lovely daughter of the people, so fair and good in my eyes that I would have asked her to be my wife. What would she think of me now? That I should have dared to aspire! What a King Cophetua!

* * * * *

What does everybody think? I can never breathe the real cause to a soul. Only two women know the truth, and they will take good care not to tell. Thank Heaven for that!

What matters what anybody thinks? "It will be all the same as a hundred years hence." That is the most sensible proverb ever invented.

* * * * *

But meanwhile!

* * * * *

The judge puts on the black cap, and it is all for you! Every eye is fixed on you, so big and young and strong and full of life! Ugh!

* * * * *

They pinion you, and you have to walk and be a man, and the chaplain exhorts and prays and tries to comfort. Then a sea of faces; people opposite, who have been eating and drinking and making merry, waiting for _you!_ A cap is pulled over your eyes--oh, horror! horror! horror!

* * * * *

"Heureux tambour-major de Sicile!"

* * * * *

"Il faut laver son ligne sale en famille, et c'est ce que j'ai fait. Mais ca va ma couter cher!"

* * * * *

Would I do it all over again? Oh, let me hope, yes!

* * * * *

Ah, he died too quick; I dealt him those four blows in less than as many seconds. It was five minutes, perhaps--or, at the most, ten--from the moment he came into the room to that when I finished him and was caught red-handed. And I--what a long agony!

Oh, that I might once more dream a "true dream," and see my dear people once more! But it seems that I have lost the power of dreaming true since that fatal night. I try and try, but it will not come. My dreams are dreadful; and, oh, the _waking_!

* * * * *

After all, my life hitherto, but for a few happy years of childhood, has not been worth living; it is most unlikely that it ever would have been, had I lived to a hundred! Oh, Mary! Mary!

* * * * *

And penal servitude! Better any death than that. It is good that my secret must die with me--that there will be no extenuating circumstances, no recommendation to mercy, no commutation of the swift penalty of death.

"File, file... File sa corde au bourreau!"

By such monotonous thoughts, and others as dreary and hopeless, recurring again and again in the same dull round, I beguiled the terrible time that intervened between Ibbetson's death and my trial at the Old Bailey.

It all seems very trivial and unimportant now--not worth recording--even hard to remember.

But at the time my misery was so great, my terror of the gallows so poignant, that each day I thought I must die of sheer grief before another twenty-four hours could possibly pass over me.

The intolerable strain would grow more and more severe till a climax of tension was reached, and a hysterical burst of tears would relieve me for a while, and I would feel reconciled to my fate, and able to face death like a man.... Then the anguish would gradually steal over me again, and the uncontrollable weakness of the flesh....

And each of these two opposite moods, while it lasted, made the other seem impossible, and as if it never could come back again; yet back it came with the regularity of a tide--the most harrowing seesaw that ever was.

I had always been unstable like that; but whereas I had hitherto oscillated between high elation and despondency, it was now from a dumb, resigned despair to the wildest agony and terror.

I sought in vain for the only comfort it was in me to seek; but when, overdone with suffering, I fell asleep at last, I could no longer dream true; I could dream only as other wretches dream.

I always dreamed those two little dancing, deformed jailers, man and wife, had got me at last; and that I shrieked aloud for my beloved duchess to succor me, as they ran me in, each butting at me sideways, and showing their toothless gums in a black smile, and poisoning me with their hot sour breath! The gate was there, and the avenue, all distorted and quite unlike; and, opposite, a jail; but no powerful Duchess of Towers to wave the horror away.

* * * * *

It will be remembered by some, perhaps, how short was my trial.

The plea of "not guilty" was entered for me. The defence set up was insanity, based on the absence of any adequate motive. This defence was soon disposed of by the prosecution; witnesses to my sanity were not wanting, and motives enough were found in my past relations with Colonel Ibbetson to "make me--a violent, morose, and vindictive-natured man--imbrue my hands in the gore of my relative and benefactor--a man old enough to be my father--who, indeed, might have been my father, for the love he had bestowed upon me, with his honored name, when I was left a penniless, foreign orphan on his hands."

Here I laughed loud and long, and made a most painful impression, as is duly recorded in the reports of the trial.

The jury found me guilty quite early in the afternoon of the second day, without leaving the box; and I, "preserving to the last the callous and unmoved demeanor I had borne all through the trial," was duly sentenced to death without any hope of mercy, but with an expression of regret on the part of the judge--a famous hanging judge--that a man of my education and promise should be brought by his own evil nature and uncontrollable passions to so deplorable an end.

Now whether the worst of certainties is better than suspense--whether my nerves of pain had been so exercised during the period preceding my trial that I had really become callous, as they say a man's back does after a certain number of strokes from the "cat"--certain it was that I knew the worst, and acquiesced in it with a surprised sense of actual relief, and found it in me to feel it not unbearable.

Such, at least, was my mood that night. I made the most of it. It was almost happiness by comparison with what I had gone through. I remember eating with a heartiness that surprised me. I could have gone straight from my dinner to the gallows, and died with a light heart and a good grace--like a Sicilian drum-major.

I resolved to write the whole true story to the Duchess of Towers, with an avowal of my long and hopeless adoration for her, and the expression of a hope that she would try to think of me only as her old playfellow, and as she had known me before this terrible disaster. And thinking of the letter I would write till very late, I fell asleep in my cell, with two warders to watch over me; and then--Another phase of my inner life began.

* * * * *

Without effort, without let or hindrance of any kind, I was at the avenue gate.

The pink and white may, the lilacs and laburnums were in full bloom, the sun made golden paths everywhere. The warm air was full of fragrance, and alive with all the buzz and chirp of early summer.

I was half crying with joy to reach the land of my true dreams again, to feel at home once more--_chez moi! chez moi!_

La Mere Francois sat peeling potatoes at the door of her _loge_; she was singing a little song about _cinq sous, sinq sous, pour monter notre menage._ I had forgotten it, but it all came back now.

The facetious postman, Yverdon, went in at the gate of my old garden; the bell rang as he pushed it, and I followed him.

Under the apple-tree, which was putting forth shoots of blossom in profusion, sat my mother and Monsieur le Major. My mother took the letter from the postman's hand as he said, "Pour Vous? Oh yes, Madame Pasquier, God sev ze Kveen!" and paid the postage. It was from Colonel Ibbetson, then in Ireland, and not yet a colonel.

Medor lay snoring on the grass, and Gogo and Mimsey were looking at the pictures in the _musee des familles._

In a garden chair lolled Dr. Seraskier, apparently asleep, with his long porcelain pipe across his knees.

Madame Seraskier, in a yellow nankeen gown with gigot sleeves, was cutting curl-papers out of the _Constitutionnel_.

I gazed on them all with unutterable tenderness. I was gazing on them perhaps for the last time.

I called out to them by name.

"Oh, speak to me, beloved shades! Oh, my father! oh, mother, I want you so desperately! Come out of the past for a few seconds, and give me some words of comfort! I'm in such woful plight! If you could only _know_ ..."

But they could neither hear nor see me.

Then suddenly another figure stepped forth from behind the apple-tree--no old-fashioned, unsubstantial shadow of by-gone days that one can only see and hear, and that cannot hear and see one back again; but one in all the splendid fulness of life, a pillar of help and strength--Mary, Duchess of Towers!

I fell on my knees as she came to me with both hands extended.

"Oh, Mr. Ibbetson, I have been seeking and waiting for you here night after night! I have been frantic! If you hadn't come at last, I must have thrown everything to the winds, and gone to see you in Newgate, waking and before the world, to have a talk with you--an _abboccamento_. I suppose you couldn't sleep, or were unable to dream."

I could not answer at first. I could only cover her hands with kisses, as I felt her warm life-current mixing with mine--a rapture!

And then I said--

"I swear to you by all I hold most sacred--by _my_ mother's memory and _yours_--by yourself--that I never meant to take Ibbetson's life, or even strike him; the miserable blow was dealt...."

"As if you need tell me that! As if I didn't know you of old, my poor friend, kindest and gentlest of men! Why, I am holding your hands, and see into the very depths of your heart!"

(I put down all she said as she said it. Of course I am not, and never have been, what her old affectionate regard made me seem in her eyes, any more than I am the bloodthirsty monster I passed for. Woman-like, she was the slave of her predilections.)

"And now, Mr. Ibbetson," she went on, "let me first of all tell you, for a certainty, that the sentence will be commuted. I saw the Home Secretary three or four hours ago. The real cause of your deplorable quarrel with your uncle is an open secret. His character is well known. A Mrs. Gregory (whom you knew in Hopshire as Mrs. Deane) has been with the Home Secretary this afternoon. Your chivalrous reticence at the trial...."

"Oh," I interrupted, "I don't care to live any longer! Now that I have met you once more, and that you have forgiven me and think well of me in spite of everything, I am ready to die. There has never been anybody but you in the world for _me_--never a ghost of a woman, never even a friend since my mother died and yours. Between that time and the night I first saw you at Lady Cray's concert, I can scarcely be said to have lived at all. I fed on scraps of remembrance. You see I have no talent for making new friends, but oh, such a genius for fidelity to old ones! I was waiting for Mimsey to come back again, I suppose, the one survivor to me of that sweet time, and when she came at last I was too stupid to recognize her. She suddenly blazed and dazzled into my poor life like a meteor, and filled it with a maddening love and pain. I don't know which of the two has been the sweetest; both have been my life. You cannot realize what it has been. Trust me, I have lived my fill. I am ready and willing to die. It is the only perfect consummation I can think of. Nothing can ever equal this moment--nothing on earth or in heaven. And if I were free to-morrow, life would not be worth having without _you_. I would not take it as a gift."

She sat down by me on the grass with her hands clasped across her knees, close to the unconscious shadows of our kith and kin, within hearing of their happy talk and laughter.

Suddenly we both heard Mimsey say to Gogo--

"O, ils sont joliment bien ensemble, le Prince Charmant et la fee Tarapatapoum!"

We looked at each other and actually laughed aloud. The duchess said--

"Was there ever, since the world began, such a _muse en scene_, and for such a meeting, Mr. Ibbetson? Think of it! Conceive it! _I_ arranged it all. I chose a day when they were all together. As they would say in America, _I_ am the boss of this particular dream."

And she laughed again, through her tears, that enchanting ripple of a laugh that closed her eyes and made her so irresistible.

"Was there ever," said I--"ever since the world began, such ecstasy as I feel now? After this what can there be for me but death--well earned and well paid for? Welcome and lovely death!"

"You have not yet thought, Mr. Ibbetson--you have not realized what life may have in store for you if--if all you have said about your affection for me is true. Oh, it is too terrible for me to think of, I know, that you, scarcely more than a boy, should have to spend the rest of your life in miserable confinement and unprofitable monotonous toil. But there is _another_ side to that picture.

"Now listen to your old friend's story--poor little Mimsey's confession. I will make it as short as I can.

"Do you remember when you first saw me, a sickly, plain, sad little girl, at the avenue gate, twenty years ago?

"Le Pere Francois was killing a fowl--cutting its throat with a clasp-knife--and the poor thing struggled frantically in his grasp as its blood flowed into the gutter. A group of boys were looking on in great glee, and all the while Pere Francois was gossiping with M. le Cure, who didn't seem to mind in the least. I was fainting with pity and horror. Suddenly you came out of the school opposite with Alfred and Charlie Plunket, and saw it all, and in a fit of noble rage you called Pere Francois a 'sacred pig of assassin'--which, as you know, is very rude in French--and struck him as near his face as you could reach.

"Have you forgotten that? Ah, _I_ haven't! It was not an effectual deed, perhaps, and certainly came too late to save the fowl. Besides, Pere Francois struck you back again, and left some of the fowl's blood on your cheek. It was a baptism! You became on the spot my hero--my angel of light. Look at Gogo over there. Is he beautiful enough? That was _you_, Mr. Ibbetson.

"M. le Cure said something about 'ces _Anglais_' who go mad if a man whips his horse, and yet pay people to box each other to death. Don't you really remember? Oh, the recollection to _me!_

"And that little language we invented and used to talk so fluently! Don't you _rappel_ it to yourself? 'Ne le _recollectes_ tu pas?' as we would have said in those days, for it used to be _thee_ and _thou_ with us then.

"Well, at all events, you must remember how for five happy years we were so often together; how you drew for me, read to me, played with me; took my part in everything, right or wrong; carried me pickaback when I was tired. Your drawings--I have them all. And oh! you were so funny sometimes! How you used to make mamma laugh, and M. le Major! Just look at Gogo again. Have you forgotten what he is doing now? I haven't.... He has just changed the _musee des familles_ for the _Penny Magazine_, and is explaining Hogarth's pictures of the 'Idle and Industrious Apprentices' to Mimsey, and they are both agreed that the idle one is much the less objectionable of the two!

"Mimsey looks passive enough, with her thumb in her mouth, doesn't she? Her little heart is so full of gratitude and love for Gogo that she can't speak. She can only suck her thumb. Poor, sick, ungainly child! She would like to be Gogo's slave--she would die for Gogo. And her mother adores Gogo too; she is almost jealous of dear Madame Pasquier for having so sweet a son. In just one minute from now, when she has cut that last curl-paper, poor long-dead mamma will call Gogo to her and give him a good 'Irish hug,' and make him happy for a week. Wait a minute and see. _There!_ What did I tell you?

"Well, all that came to an end. Madame Pasquier went away and never came back, and so did Gogo. Monsieur and Madame Pasquier were dead, and dear mamma died in a week from the cholera. Poor heartbroken Mimsey was taken away to St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Leipsic, Venice, all over Europe, by her father, as heart-broken as herself.

"It was her wish and her father's that she should become a pianist by profession, and she studied hard for many years in almost every capital, and under almost every master in Europe, and she gave promise of success.

"And so, wandering from one place to another, she became a young woman--a greatly petted and spoiled and made-much-of young woman, Mr. Ibbetson, although she says it who shouldn't; and had many suitors of all kinds and countries.

"But the heroic and angelic Gogo, with his lovely straight nose, and his hair _aux enfants d'Edouard_, and his dear little white silk chimney-pot hat and Eton jacket, was always enshrined in her memory, in her inmost heart, as the incarnation of all that was beautiful and brave and good. But alas! what had become of this Gogo in the mean time? Ah, he was never even heard of--he was dead!

"Well, this long-legged, tender-hearted, grown-up young Mimsey of nineteen was attracted by a very witty and accomplished English attache at Vienna--a Mr. Harcourt, who seemed deeply in love with her, and wished her to be his wife.

"He was not rich, but Dr. Seraskier liked and trusted him so much that he dispossessed himself of almost everything he had to enable this young couple to marry--and they did. And truth compels me to admit that for a year they were very happy and contented with fate and each other.

"Then a great misfortune befell them both. In a most unexpected manner, through four or five consecutive deaths in Mr. Harcourt's family, he became, first, Lord Harcourt, and then the Duke of Towers. And since then, Mr. Ibbetson, I have not had an hour's peace or happiness.

"In the first place a son was born to me--a cripple, poor dear! and deformed from his birth; and as he grew older it soon became evident that he was also born without a mind.

"Then my unfortunate husband changed completely; he drank and gambled and worse, till we came to live together as strangers, and only spoke to each other in public and before the world...."

"Ah," I said, "you were still a great lady--an English duchess!"

I could not endure the thought of that happy twelvemonth with that bestial duke! I, sober, chaste, and clean--of all but blood, alas!--and a condemned convict!

Oh, Mr. Ibbetson, you must make no mistake about _me_! I was never intended by nature for a duchess--especially an English one. Not but what, if dukes and duchesses are necessary, the English are the best--and, of course, by dukes and duchesses I mean all that upper-ten-thousand in England which calls itself 'society'--as if there were no other worth speaking of. Some of them are almost angelic, but they are not for outsiders like me. Perpetual hunting and shooting and fishing and horseracing--eating, drinking, and killing, and making love--eternal court gossip and tittle-tattle--the Prince--the Queen--whom and what the Queen likes, whom and what she doesn't!--tame English party politics--the Church--a Church that doesn't know its own mind, in spite of its deans, bishops, archbishops, and their wives and daughters--and all their silly, solemn sense of social rank and dignity! Endless small-talk, dinners, and drums, and no society from year's end to year's end but each other! Ah, one must be caught young, and put in harness early, to lead such an existence as that and be content! And I had met and known _such_ men and women with my father! They _were_ something to know!

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

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

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

Look at my dear people there--look at your dear people! What waifs and strays, until their ship comes home, which we know it never will! Our fathers forever racking their five wits in the pursuit of an idea! Our mothers forever racking theirs to save money and make both ends meet!... Why, Mr. Ibbetson, you are nearer to the _rossignol_ than I am. Do you remember your father's voice? Shall I ever forget it! He sang to me only last night, and in the midst of my harrowing anxiety about you I was beguiled into listening outside the window. He sang Rossini's _'Cujus Animam.'_ He _was_ the nightingale; that was his vocation, if he could but have known it. And you are my brother Bohemian; that is _yours!_ ... Ah, _my_ vocation! It was to be the wife of some busy brain-worker--man of science--conspirator--writer--artist--architect, if you like; to fence him round and shield him from all the little worries and troubles and petty vexations of life. I am a woman of business _par excellence_--a manager, and all that. He would have had a warm, well-ordered little nest to come home to after hunting his idea!

"Well, I thought myself the most unhappy woman alive, and wrapped myself up in my affection for my much-afflicted little son; and as I held him to my breast, and vainly tried to warm and mesmerize him into feeling and intelligence, Gogo came back into my heart, and I was forever thinking, 'Oh, if I had a son like Gogo what a happy woman I should be!' and pitied Madame Pasquier for dying and leaving him so soon, for I had just begun to dream true, and had seen Gogo and his sweet mother once again.

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

"You needn't laugh. You looked very nice, I assure you!

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

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

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

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

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

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

My emotion at seeing you again so soon was so great that I nearly woke. But I rescued you from your imaginary terrors and held you by the hand. You remember all the rest.

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

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

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

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

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

Hush! Don't speak yet! I have soon done!

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

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

And indeed I feel I shall soon fall awake from sheer exhaustion of joy. Oh, selfish and jealous wretch that I am, to talk of joy!

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

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

"Listen. Do you remember 'Parva sed Apta, le petit pavilion,' as you used to call it? That is still my home when I am here. It shall be yours, if you like, when the time comes. You will find much to interest you there. Well, to-morrow early, in your cell, you will receive from me an envelope with a slip of paper in it, containing some violets, and the words 'Parva sed Apta--a bientot' written in violet ink. Will that convince you?"

"Oh yes, yes!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Parva sed Apla--a bientot! Tarapatapoum."_

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

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

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

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

For I was soon back again in Passy, where I spent every hour of my sleep, you may be sure, never very far from the old apple-tree, which went through all its changes, from bare bough to tender shoots and blossoms, from blossom to ripe fruit, from fruit to yellow falling leaf, and then to bare boughs again, and all in a few peaceful nights, which were my days. I flatter myself by this time that I know the habits of a French apple-tree, and its caterpillars!

And all the dear people I loved, and of whom I could never tire, were about--all but one. _The_ One!

At last she arrived. The garden door was pushed, the bell rang, and she came across the lawn, radiant and tall and swift, and opened wide her arms. And there, with our little world around us--all that we had ever loved and cared for, but quite unseen and unheard by them--for the first time in my life since my mother and Madame Seraskier had died I held a woman in my arms, and she pressed her lips to mine.

Round and round the lawn we walked and talked, as we had often done fifteen, sixteen, twenty years ago. There were many things to say. "The Charming Prince" and the "Fairy Tarapatapoum" were "prettily well together"--at last!

The time sped quickly--far too quickly. I said--

"You told me I should see your house--'Parva sed Apta'--that I should find much to interest me there." ...

She blushed a little and smiled, and said--

"You mustn't expect _too_ much," and we soon found ourselves walking thither up the avenue. Thus we had often walked as children, and once--a memorable once--besides.

There stood the little white house with its golden legend, as I had seen it a thousand times when a boy--a hundred since.

How sweet and small it looked in the mellow sunshine! We mounted the stone _perron_, and opened the door and entered. My heart beat violently.

Everything was as it had always been, as far as I could see. Dr. Seraskier sat in a chair by the window reading Schiller, and took no notice of us. His hair moved in the gentle breeze. Overhead we heard the rooms being swept and the beds made.

I followed her into a little lumber-room, where I did not remember to have been before; it was full of odds and ends.

"Why have you brought me here?" I asked.

She laughed and said--

"Open the door in the wall opposite."

There was no door, and I said so.

Then she took my hand, and lo! there _was_ a door! And she pushed, and we entered another suite of apartments that never could have been there before; there had never been room for them--nor ever could have been--in all Passy!

"Come," she said, laughing and blushing at once; for she seemed nervous and excited and shy--do you remember--

'And Neuha led her Torquil by the hand,
And waved along the vault her flaming brand!'

--do you remember your little drawing out of _The Island_, in the green morocco Byron? Here it is, in the top drawer of this beautiful cabinet. Here are all the drawings you ever did for me--plain and colored--with dates, explanations, etc., all written by myself--_l'album de la fee Tarapatapoum_. They are only duplicates. I have the real ones at my house in Hampshire.

The cabinet also is a duplicate;--isn't it a beauty?--it's from the Czar's Winter Palace. Everything here is a duplicate, more or less. See, this is a little dining-room;--did you ever see anything so perfect?--it is the famous _salle a manger_ of Princesse de Chevagne. I never use it, except now and then to eat a slice of English household bread with French butter and 'cassonade.' Little Mimsey, out there, does so sometimes, when Gogo brings her one, and it makes big Mimsey's mouth water to see her, so she has to go and do likewise. Would you like a slice?

You see the cloth is spread, _deux couverts_. There is a bottle of famous champagne from Mr. De Rothschild's; there's plenty more where that came from. The flowers are from Chatsworth, and this is a lobster salad for _you_. Papa was great at lobster salads and taught me. I mixed it myself a fortnight ago, and, as you see, it is as fresh and sweet as if I had only just made it, and the flowers haven't faded a bit.

Here are cigarettes and pipes and cigars. I hope they are good. I don't smoke myself.

Isn't all the furniture rare and beautiful? I have robbed every palace in Europe of its very best, and yet the owners are not a penny the worse. You should see up-stairs.

Look at those pictures--the very pick of Raphael and Titian and Velasquez. Look at that piano--I have heard Liszt play upon it over and over again, in Leipsic!

Here is my library. Every book I ever read is there, and every binding I ever admired. I don't often read them, but I dust them carefully. I've arranged that dust shall fall on them in the usual way to make it real, and remind one of the outer life one is so glad to leave. All has to be taken very seriously here, and one must put one's self to a little trouble. See, here is my father's microscope, and under it a small spider caught on the premises by myself. It is still alive. It seems cruel, doesn't it? but it only exists in our brains.

Look at the dress I've got on--feel it; how every detail is worked out. And you have unconsciously done the same: that's the suit you wore that morning at Cray under the ash-tree--the nicest suit I ever saw. Here is a spot of ink on your sleeve as real as can be (bravo!). And this button is coming off--quite right; I will sew it on with a dream needle, and dream thread, and a dream thimble!

This little door leads to every picture-gallery in Europe. It took me a long time to build and arrange them all by myself--quite a week of nights. It is very pleasant to walk there with a good catalogue, and make it rain cats and dogs outside.

Through this curtain is an opera box--the most comfortable one I've ever been in; it does for theatres as well, and oratorios and concerts and scientific lectures. You shall see from it every performance I've ever been at, in half a dozen languages; you shall hold my hand and understand them all. Every singer that I ever heard, you shall hear. Dear Giulia Grisi shall sing the 'Willow Song' again and again, and you shall hear the applause. Ah, what applause!

Come into this little room--my favorite; out of _this_ window and down these steps we can walk or drive to any place you or I have ever been to, and other places besides. Nothing is far, and we have only to go hand in hand. I don't know yet where my stables and coach-houses are; you must help me to find out. But so far I have never lacked a carriage at the bottom of those steps when I wanted to drive, nor a steam-launch, nor a gondola, nor a lovely place to go to.

Out of _this_ window, from this divan, we can sit and gaze on whatever we like. What shall it be? Just now, you perceive, there is a wild and turbulent sea, with not a ship in sight. Do you hear the waves tumbling and splashing, and see the albatross? I had been reading Keats's 'Ode to the Nightingale,' and was so fascinated by the idea of a lattice opening on the foam

'_Of perilous seas by faery lands forlorn_'

that I thought it would be nice to have a lattice like that myself. I tried to evolve that sea from my inner consciousness, you know, or rather from seas that I have sailed over. Do you like it? It was done a fortnight ago, and the waves have been tumbling about ever since. How they roar! and hark at the wind! I couldn't manage the 'faery lands.' It wants one lattice for the sea, and one for the land, I'm afraid. You must help me. Mean while, what would you like there tonight--the Yosemite Valley? the Nevski Prospect in the winter, with the sledges? the Rialto? the Bay of Naples after sunset, with Vesuvius in eruption?...

--"Oh Mary--Mimsey--what do I care for Vesuvius, and sunsets, and the Bay of Naples ... _just now_? ... Vesuvius is in my heart!"

* * * * *

Thus began for us both a period of twenty-five years, during which we passed eight or nine hours out of the twenty-four in each other's company--except on a few rare occasions, when illness or some other cause prevented one of us from sleeping at the proper time.

Mary! Mary!

I idolized her while she lived; I idolize her memory.

For her sake all women are sacred to me, even the lowest and most depraved and God-forsaken. They always found a helping friend in _her_.

How can I pay a fitting tribute to one so near to me--nearer than any woman can ever have been to any man?

I know her mind as I know my own! No two human souls can ever have interpenetrated each other as ours have done, or we should have heard of it. Every thought she ever had from her childhood to her death has been revealed--every thought of mine! Living as we did, it was inevitable. The touch of a finger was enough to establish the strange circuit, and wake a common consciousness of past and present, either hers or mine.

And oh, how thankful am I that some lucky chance has preserved me, murderer and convict as I am, from anything she would have found it impossible to condone!

I try not to think that shyness and poverty, ungainliness and social imbecility combined, have had as much to do as self-restraint and self-respect in keeping me out of so many pitfalls that have been fatal to so many men better and more gifted than myself.

I try to think that her extraordinary affection, the chance result of a persistent impression received in childhood, has followed me through life without my knowing it, and in some occult, mysterious way has kept me from thoughts and deeds that would have rendered me unworthy, even in her too indulgent eyes.

Who knows but that her sweet mother's farewell kiss and blessing, and the tender tears she shed over me when I bade her good-bye at the avenue gate so many years ago, may have had an antiseptic charm? Mary! I have followed her from her sickly, suffering childhood to her girlhood--from her half-ripe, gracefully lanky girlhood to the day of her retirement from the world of which she was so great an ornament. From girl to woman it seems like a triumphal procession through all the courts of Europe--scenes the like of which I have never even dreamed--flattery and strife to have turned the head of any princess! And she was the simple daughter of a working scientist and physician--the granddaughter of a fiddler.

Yet even Austrian court etiquette was waived in favor of the child of plain Dr. Seraskier.

What men have I seen at her feet--how splendid, handsome, gallant, brilliant, chivalrous, lordly, and gay! And to all, from her, the same happy geniality--the same kindly, laughing, frolicsome, innocent gayety, with never a thought of self.

M. le Major was right--"elle avait toutes les intelligences de la tete et du coeur." And old and young, the best and the worst, seemed to love and respect her alike--and women as well as men--for her perfect sincerity, her sweet reasonableness.

And all this time I was plodding at my dull drawing-board in Pentonville, carrying out another's designs for a stable or a pauper's cottage, and not even achieving that poor task particularly well!

It would have driven me mad with humiliation and jealousy to see this past life of hers, but we saw it all hand in hand together--the magical circuit was established! And I knew, as I saw, how it all affected her, and marvelled at her simplicity in thinking all this pomp and splendor of so little consequence.

And I trembled to find that what space in her heart was not filled by the remembrance of her ever-beloved mother and the image of her father (one of the noblest and best of men) enshrined the ridiculous figure of a small boy in a white silk hat and an Eton jacket. And that small boy was I!

Then came a dreadful twelvemonth that I was fain to leave a blank--the twelvemonth during which her girlish fancy for her husband lasted--and then her life was mine again forever!

And _my_ life!

The life of a convict is not, as a rule, a happy one; his bed is not generally thought a bed of roses.

Mine was!

If I had been the most miserable leper that ever crawled to his wattled hut in Molokai, I should also have been the happiest of men, could sleep but have found me there, and could I but sleeping have been the friend of sleeping Mary Seraskier. She would have loved me all the more!

She has filled my long life of bondage with such felicity as no monarch has ever dreamed, and has found her own felicity in doing so. That poor, plodding existence I led before my great misadventure, and have tried to describe--she has witnessed almost every hour of it with passionate interest and sympathy, as we went hand in hand together through each other's past. She would at any time have been only too glad to share it, leaving her own.

I dreaded the effect of such a sordid revelation upon one who had lived so brilliantly and at such an altitude. I need have had no fear! Just as she thought me an "angelic hero" at eight years old, she remained persuaded all through her life that I was an Apollo--a misunderstood genius--a martyr!

I am sick with shame when I think of it. But I am not the first unworthy mortal on whom blind, undiscriminating love has chosen to lavish its most priceless treasures. Tarapatapoum is not the only fairy who has idealized a hulking clown with an ass's head into a Prince Charming; the spectacle, alas! is not infrequent. But at least I have been humbly thankful for the undeserved blessing, and known its value. And, moreover, I think I may lay claim to one talent: that of also knowing by intuition when and where and how to love--in a moment--in a flash--and forever!

Twenty-five years!

It seems like a thousand, so much have we seen and felt and done in that busy enchanted quarter of a century. And yet how quickly the time has sped!

And now I must endeavor to give some account of our wonderful inner life--_a deux_--a delicate and difficult task.

There is both an impertinence and a lack of taste in any man's laying bare to the public eye--to any eye--the bliss that has come to him through the love of a devoted woman, with whose life his own has been bound up.

The most sympathetic reader is apt to be repelled by such a revelation--to be sceptical of the beauties and virtues and mental gifts of one he has never seen; at all events, to feel that they are no concern of his, and ought to be the subject of a sacred reticence on the part of her too fortunate lover or husband.

The lack of such reticence has marred the interest of many an autobiography--of many a novel, even; and in private life, who does not know by painful experience how embarrassing to the listener such tender confidences can sometimes be? I will try my best not to transgress in this particular. If I fail (I may have failed already), I can only plead that the circumstances are quite exceptional and not to be matched; and that allowances must be made for the deep gratitude I owe and feel over and above even my passionate admiration and love.