Chapter VI (5)

For the next three years of my life has nothing to show but the alternation of such honeymooning as never was before with a dull but contented prison life, not one hour of which is worth recording, or even remembering, except as a foil to its alternative.

It had but one hour for me, the bed hour, and fortunately that was an early one.

Healthily tired in body, blissfully expectant in mind, I would lie on my back, with my hands duly crossed under my head, and sleep would soon steal over me like balm; and before I had forgotten who and what and where I really was, I would reach the goal on which my will was intent, and waking up, find my body in another place, in another garb, on a couch by an enchanted window, still with my arms crossed behind my head--in the sacramental attitude.

Then would I stretch my limbs and slip myself free of my outer life, as a new-born butterfly from the durance of its self-spun cocoon, with an unutterable sense of youth and strength and freshness and felicity; and opening my eyes I would see on the adjacent couch the form of Mary, also supine, but motionless and inanimate as a statue. Nothing could wake her to life till the time came: her hours were somewhat later, and she was still in the toils of the outer life I had just left behind me.

And these toils, in her case, were more complicated than in mine. Although she had given up the world, she had many friends and an immense correspondence. And then, being a woman endowed with boundless health and energy, splendid buoyancy of animal spirits, and a great capacity for business, she had made for herself many cares and occupations.

She was the virtual mistress of a home for fallen women, a reformatory for juvenile thieves, and a children's convalescent hospital--to all of which she gave her immediate personal superintendence, and almost every penny she had. She had let her house in Hampshire, and lived with a couple of female servants in a small furnished house on Campden Hill. She did without a carriage, and went about in cabs and omnibuses, dressed like a daily governess, though nobody could appear more regally magnificent than she did when we were together.

She still kept her name and title, as a potent weapon of influence on behalf of her charities, and wielded it mercilessly in her constant raid on the purse of the benevolent Philistine, who is fond of great people.

All of which gave rise to much comment that did not affect her equanimity in the least.

She also attended lectures, committees, boards, and councils; opened bazaars and soup kitchens and coffee taverns, etc. The list of her self-imposed tasks was endless. Thus her outer life was filled to overflowing, and, unlike mine, every hour of it was worth record--as I well know, who have witnessed it all. But this is not the place in which to write the outer life of the Duchess of Towers; another hand has done that, as everybody knows.

Every page henceforward must be sacred to Mary Seraskier, the "fee Tarapatapoum" of "Magna sed Apta" (for so we had called the new home and palace of art she had added on to "Parva sed Apta," the home of her childhood).

To return thither, where we left her lying unconscious. Soon the color would come back to her cheeks, the breath to her nostrils, the pulse to her heart, and she would wake to her Eden, as she called it--our common inner life--that we might spend it in each other's company for the next eight hours.

Pending this happy moment, I would make coffee (such coffee!), and smoke a cigarette or two; and to fully appreciate the bliss of _that_ one must be an habitual smoker who lives his real life in an English jail.

When she awoke from her sixteen hours' busy trance in the outer world, such a choice of pleasures lay before us as no other mortal has ever known. She had been all her life a great traveller, and had dwelt in many lands and cities, and seen more of life and the world and nature than most people. I had but to take her hand, and one of us had but to wish, and, lo! wherever either of us had been, whatever either of us had seen or heard or felt, or even eaten or drunk, there it was all over again to choose from, with the other to share in it--such a hypnotism of ourselves and each other as was never dreamed of before.

Everything was as life-like, as real to us both, as it had been to either at the actual time of its occurrence, with an added freshness and charm that never belonged to mortal existence. It was no dream; it was a second life, a better land.

We had, however, to stay within certain bounds, and beware of transgressing certain laws that we discovered for ourselves, but could not quite account for. For instance, it was fatal to attempt exploits that were outside of our real experience; to fly, or to jump from a height, or do any of these non-natural things that make the charm and wonder of ordinary dreams. If we did so our true dream was blurred, and became as an ordinary dream--vague, futile, unreal, and untrue--the baseless fabric of a vision. Nor must we alter ourselves in any way; even to the shape of a finger-nail, we must remain ourselves; although we kept ourselves at our very best, and could choose what age we should be. We chose from twenty-six to twenty-eight, and stuck to it.

Yet there were many things, quite as impossible in real life, that we could do with impunity--most delightful things!

For instance, after the waking cup of coffee, it was certainly delightful to spend a couple of hours in the Yosemite Valley, leisurely strolling about and gazing at the giant pines--a never-palling source of delight to both of us--breathing the fragrant fresh air, looking at our fellow-tourists and listening to their talk, with the agreeable consciousness that, solid and substantial as we were to each other, we were quite inaudible, invisible, and intangible to them. Often we would dispense with the tourists, and have the Yosemite Valley all to ourselves. (Always there, and in whatever place she had visited with her husband, we would dispense with the figure of her former self and him, a sight I could not have borne.)

When we had strolled and gazed our fill, it was delightful again, just by a slight effort of her will and a few moments' closing of our eyes, to find ourselves driving along the Via Cornice to an exquisite garden concert in Dresden, or being rowed in a gondola to a Saturday Pop at St. James's Hall. And thence, jumping into a hansom, we would be whisked through Piccadilly and the park to the Arc de Triomphe home to "Magna sed Apta," Rue de la Pompe, Passy (a charming drive, and not a bit too long), just in time for dinner.

A very delicious little dinner, judiciously ordered out of _her_ remembrance, not _mine_ (and served in the most exquisite little dining-room in all Paris--the Princesse de Chevagne's): "huitres d'Ostende," let us say, and "soupe a la bonne femme," with a "perdrix aux choux" to follow, and pancakes, and "fromage de Brie;" and to drink, a bottle of "Romane Conti;" without even the bother of waiters to change the dishes; a wish, a moment's shutting of the eyes--_augenblick_! and it was done--and then we could wait on each other.

After my prison fare, and with nothing but tenpenny London dinners to recollect in the immediate past, I trust I shall not be thought a gross materialist for appreciating these small banquets, and in such company. (The only dinner I could recall which was not a tenpenny one, except the old dinners of my childhood, was that famous dinner at Cray, where I had discovered that the Duchess of Towers was Mimsey Seraskier, and I did not eat much of _that_.)

Then a cigarette and a cup of coffee, and a glass of curacoa; and after, to reach our private box we had but to cross the room and lift a curtain.

And there before us was the theatre or opera-house brilliantly lighted, and the instruments tuning up, and the splendid company pouring in: crowned heads, famous beauties, world-renowned warriors and statesmen, Garibaldi, Gortschakoff, Cavour, Bismarck, and Moltke, now so famous, and who not? Mary would point them out to me. And in the next box Dr. Seraskier and his tall daughter, who seemed friends with all that brilliant crowd.

Now it was St. Petersburg, now Berlin, now Vienna, Paris, Naples, Milan, London--every great city in turn. But our box was always the same, and always the best in the house, and I the one person privileged to smoke my cigar in the face of all that royalty, fashion, and splendor.

Then, after the overture, up went the curtain. If it was a play, and the play was in German or Russian or Italian, I had but to touch Mary's little finger to understand it all--a true but incomprehensible thing. For well as I might understand, I could not have spoken a word of either, and the moment that slight contact was discontinued, they might as well have been acting in Greek or Hebrew, for _me_.

But it was for music we cared the most, and I think I may say that of music during those three years (and ever after) we have had our glut. For all through her busy waking life Mary found time to hear whatever good music was going on in London, that she might bring it back to me at night; and we would rehear it together, again and again, and _da capo_.

It is a rare privilege for two private individuals, and one of them a convict, to assist at a performance honored by the patronage and presence of crowned heads, and yet be able to encore any particular thing that pleases them. How often have we done that!

Oh, Joachim! oh, Clara Schumann! oh, Piattil--all of whom I know so well, but have never heard with the fleshly ear! Oh, others, whom it would be invidious to mention without mentioning all--a glorious list! How we have made you, all unconscious, repeat the same movements over and over again, without ever from you a sign of impatience or fatigue! How often have we summoned Liszt to play to us on his own favorite piano, which adorned our own favorite sitting-room! How little he knew (or will ever know now, alas!) what exquisite delight he gave us!

Oh, Pattit, Angelina! Oh, Santley and Sims Reeves! Oh, De Soria, nightingale of the drawing-room, I wonder you have a note left!

And you, Ristori, and you, Salvini, et vous, divine Sarah, qui debutiez alors! On me dit que votre adorable voix a perdu un peu de sa premiere fraicheur. Cela ne m'etonne pas! Bien sur, nous y sommes pour quelque chose!

* * * * *

And then the picture-galleries, the museums, the botanical and zoological gardens of all countries--"Magna sed Apta" had space for them all, even to the Elgin Marbles room of the British Museum, which I added myself.

What enchanted hours have we spent among the pictures and statues of the world, weeding them here and there, perhaps, or hanging them differently, or placing them in what we thought a better light! The "Venus of Milo" showed to far greater advantage in "Magna sed Apta" than at the Louvre.

And when busied thus delightfully at home, and to enhance the delight, we made it shocking bad weather outside; it rained cats and dogs, or else the north wind piped, and snow fell on the desolate gardens of "Magna sed Apta," and whitened the landscape as far as eye could see.

Nearest to our hearts, however, were many pictures of our own time, for we were moderns of the moderns, after all, in spite of our efforts of self-culture.

There was scarcely a living or recently living master in Europe whose best works were not in our possession, so lighted and hung that even the masters themselves would have been content; for we had plenty of space at our command, and each picture had a wall to itself, so toned as to do full justice to its beauty, and a comfortable sofa for two just opposite.

But in the little room we most lived in, the room with the magic window, we had crowded a few special favorites of the English school, for we had so much foreign blood in us that we were more British than John Bull himself--_plus royalistes que le Roi_.

There was Millais's "Autumn Leaves," his "Youth of Sir Walter Raleigh," his "Chill October"; Watts's "Endymion," and "Orpheus and Eurydice"; Burne-Jones's "Chant d'Amour," and his "Laus Veneris"; Alma-Tadema's "Audience of Agrippa," and the "Women of Amphissa"; J. Whistler's portrait of his mother; the "Venus and Aesculapius," by E. J. Poynter; F. Leighton's "Daphnephoria"; George Mason's "Harvest Moon"; and Frederic Walker's "Harbor of Refuge," and, of course, Merridew's "Sun-God."

While on a screen, designed by H. S. Marks, and exquisitely decorated round the margin with golden plovers and their eggs (which I adore), were smaller gems in oil and water-color that Mary had fallen in love with at one time or another. The immortal "Moonlight Sonata," by Whistler; E, J. Poynter's exquisite "Our Lady of the Fields" (dated Paris, 1857); a pair of adorable "Bimbi" by V. Prinsep, who seems very fond of children; T. R. Lamont's touching "L'Apres Diner de l'Abbe Constantin," with the sweet girl playing the old spinet; and that admirable work of T. Armstrong, in his earlier and more realistic manner, "Le Zouave et la Nounou," not to mention splendid rough sketches by John Leech, Charles Keene, Tenniel, Sambourne, Furniss, Caldecott, etc.; not to mention, also, endless little sketches in silver point of a most impossibly colossal, blackavised, shaggy-coated St. Bernard--signed with the familiar French name of some gay troubadour of the pencil, some stray half-breed like myself, and who seems to have loved his dog as much as I loved mine.

Then suddenly, in the midst of all this unparalleled artistic splendor, we felt that a something was wanting. There was a certain hollowness about it; and we discovered that in our case the principal motives for collecting all these beautiful things were absent.

1. We were not the sole possessors.
2. We had nobody to show them to.
3. Therefore we could take no pride in them.

And found that when we wanted bad weather for a change, and the joys of home, we could be quite as happy in my old school-room, where the squirrels and the monkey and the hedgehog were, with each of us on a cane-bottomed arm-chair by the wood-fire, each roasting chestnuts for the other, and one book between us, for one of us to read out loud; or, better still, the morning and evening papers she had read a few hours earlier; and marvellous to relate, she had not even _read_ them when awake! she had merely glanced through them carefully, taking in the aspect of each column one after another, from top to bottom--and yet she was able to read out every word from the dream-paper she held in her hands--thus truly chewing the very cud of journalism!

This always seemed to us, in a small but practical way, the most complete and signal triumph of mind over matter we had yet achieved.

Not, indeed, that we could read much, we had so much to talk about.

Unfortunately, the weak part of "Magna sed Apta" was its library. Naturally it could only consist of books that one or the other of us had read when awake. She had led such an active life that but little leisure had been left her for books, and I had read only as an every-day young man reads who is fond of reading.

However, such books as we _had_ read were made the most of, and so magnificently bound that even their authors would have blushed with pride and pleasure had they been there to see. And though we had little time for reading them over again, we could enjoy the true bibliophilous delight of gazing at their backs, and taking them down and fingering them and putting them carefully back again.

In most of these treats, excursions, festivities, and pleasures of the fireside, Mary was naturally leader and hostess; it could scarcely have been otherwise.

There was once a famous Mary, of whom it was said that to know her was a liberal education. I think I may say that to have known Mary Seraskier has been all that to me!

But now and then I would make some small attempt at returning her hospitality.

We have slummed together in Clerkenwell, Smithfield, Cow Cross, Petticoat Lane, Ratcliffe Highway, and the East India and West India docks.

She has been with me to penny gaffs and music-halls; to Greenwich Fair, and Cremorne and Rosherville gardens--and liked them all. She knew Pentonville as well as I do; and my old lodgings there, where we have both leaned over my former shoulder as I read or drew. It was she who rescued from oblivion my little prophetic song about "The Chime," which I had quite forgotten. She has been to Mr. Lintot's parties, and found them most amusing--especially Mr. Lintot.

And going further back into the past, she has roamed with me all over Paris, and climbed with me the towers of Notre Dame, and looked in vain for the mystic word [Greek: Anagkae]!

But I had also better things to show, untravelled as I was.

She had never seen Hampstead Heath, which I knew by heart; and Hampstead Heath at any time, but especially on a sunny morning in late October, is not to be disdained by any one.

Half the leaves have fallen, so that one can see the fading glory of those that remain; yellow and brown and pale and hectic red, shining like golden guineas and bright copper coins against the rich, dark, business-like green of the trees that mean to flourish all the winter through, like the tall slanting pines near the Spaniards, and the old cedar-trees, and hedges of yew and holly, for which the Hampstead gardens are famous.

Before us lies a sea of fern, gone a russet-brown from decay, in which are isles of dark green gorse, and little trees with little scarlet and orange and lemon-colored leaflets fluttering down, and running after each other on the bright grass, under the brisk west wind which makes the willows rustle, and turn up the whites of their leaves in pious resignation to the coming change.

Harrow-on-the-Hill, with its pointed spire, rises blue in the distance; and distant ridges, like receding waves, rise into blueness, one after the other, out of the low-lying mist; the last ridge bluely melting into space. In the midst of it all gleams the Welsh Harp Lake, like a piece of sky that has become unstuck and tumbled into the landscape with its shiny side up.

On the other side, all London, with nothing but the gilded cross of St. Paul's on a level with the eye; it lies at our feet, as Paris used to do from the heights of Passy, a sight to make true dreamers gaze and think and dream the more; and there we sit thinking and dreaming and gazing our fill, hand in hand, our spirits rushing together.

Once as we sat we heard the clatter of hoofs behind us, and there was a troop of my old regiment out exercising. Invisible to all but ourselves, and each other, we watched the wanton troopers riding by on their meek black chargers.

First came the cornet--a sunny-haired Apollo, a gilded youth, graceful and magnificent to the eye--careless, fearless, but stupid, harsh, and proud--an English Phebus de Chateaupers--the son of a great contractor; I remembered him well, and that he loved me not. Then the rank and file in stable jackets, most of them (but for a stalwart corporal here and there) raw, lanky youths, giving promise of much future strength, and each leading a second horse; and among them, longest and lankiest of them all, but ruddy as a ploughboy, and stolidly whistling _"On revient toujours a ses premiers amours,"_ rode my former self--a sight (or sound) that seemed to touch some tender chord in Mary's nature, where there were so many, since it filled her eyes with tears.

To describe in full a honey-moon filled with such adventures, and that lasted for three years, is unnecessary. It would be but another superficial record of travel, by another unskilled pen. And what a pen is wanted for such a theme! It was not mere life, it was the very cream and essence of life, that we shared with each other--all the toil and trouble, the friction and fatigue, left out. The necessary earthly journey through time and space from one joy to another was omitted, unless such a journey were a joy in itself.

For instance, a pleasant hour can be spent on the deck of a splendid steamer, as it cleaves its way through a sapphire tropical sea, bound for some lovely West Indian islet; with a good cigar and the dearest companion in the world, watching the dolphins and the flying-fish, and mildly interesting one's self in one's fellow-passengers, the captain, the crew. And then, the hour spent and the cigar smoked out, it is well to shut one's eyes and have one's self quietly lowered down the side of the vessel into a beautiful sledge, and then, half smothered in costly furs, to be whirled along the frozen Neva to a ball at the Winter Palace, there to valse with one's Mary among all the beauty and chivalry of St. Petersburg, and never a soul to find fault with one's valsing, which at first was far from perfect, or one's attire, which was not that of the fashionable world of the day, nor was Mary's either. We were aesthetic people, and very Greek, who made for ourselves fashions of our own, which I will not describe.

Where have we not waltzed together, from Buckingham Palace downward? I confess I grew to take a delight in valsing, or waltzing, or whatever it is properly called; and although it is not much to boast of, I may say that after a year or two no better dancer than I was to be found in all Vienna.

And here, by the way, I may mention what pleasure it gave me (hand in hand with Mary, of course, as usual) to renew and improve my acquaintance with our British aristocracy, begun so agreeably many years ago at Lady Cray's concert.

Our British aristocracy does not waltz well by any means, and lacks lightness generally; but it may gratify and encourage some of its members to hear that Peter Ibbetson (ex-private soldier, architect and surveyor, convict and criminal lunatic), who has had unrivalled opportunities for mixing with the cream of European society, considers our British aristocracy quite the best-looking, best-dressed, and best-behaved aristocracy of them all, and the most sensible and the least exclusive--perhaps the most sensible _because_ the least exclusive.

It often snubs, but does not altogether repulse, those gifted and privileged outsiders who (just for the honor and glory of the thing) are ever so ready to flatter and instruct and amuse it, and run its errands, and fetch and carry, and tumble for its pleasure, and even to marry such of its "ugly ducklings" (or shall we say such of its "unprepossessing cygnets?") as cannot hope to mate with birds of their own feather.

For it has the true English eye for physical beauty.

Indeed, it is much given to throw the handkerchief--successfully, of course--and, most fortunately for itself, beyond the pale of its own narrow precincts--nay, beyond the broad Atlantic, even, to the land where beauty and dollars are to be found in such happy combination.

Nor does it disdain the comeliness of the daughters of Israel, nor their shekels, nor their brains, nor their ancient and most valuable blood. It knows the secret virtue of that mechanical transfusion of fluids familiar to science under the name of "endosmoses" and "exosmoses" (I hope I have spelled them rightly), and practises the same. Whereby it shows itself wise in its generation, and will endure the longer, which cannot be very long.

Peter Ibbetson (etc., etc.), for one, wishes it no manner of harm.

* * * * *

But to return. With all these temptations of travel and amusement and society and the great world, such was our insatiable fondness for "the pretty place of our childhood" and all its associations, that our greatest pleasure of all was to live our old life over again and again, and make Gogo and Mimsey and our parents and cousins and M. le Major go through their old paces once more; and to recall _new_ old paces for them, which we were sometimes able to do, out of stray forgotten bits of the past; to hunt for which was the most exciting sport in the world.

Our tenderness for these beloved shades increased with familiarity. We could see all the charm and goodness and kindness of these dear fathers and mothers of ours with the eyes of matured experience, for we were pretty much of an age with them now; no other children could ever say as much since the world began, and how few young parents could bear such a scrutiny as ours.

Ah! what would we not have given to extort just a spark of recognition, but that was impossible; or to have been able to whisper just a word of warning, which would have averted the impending strokes of inexorable fate! They might have been alive now, perhaps--old indeed, but honored and loved as no parents ever were before. How different everything would have been! Alas! alas!

And of all things in the world, we never tired of that walk through the avenue and park and Bois de Boulogne to the Mare d'Auteuil; strolling there leisurely on an early spring afternoon, just in time to spend a midsummer hour or two on its bank, and watch the old water-rat and the dytiscus and the tadpoles and newts, and see the frogs jump; and then walking home at dusk in the school-room of my old home; and then back to war, well-lighted "Magna sed Apta" by moonlight through the avenue on New Year's Eve, ankle-deep in snow; all in a few short hours.

Dream winds and dream weathers--what an enchantment! And all real!

Soft caressing rains that do not wet us if we do not wish them to; sharp frosts that brace but never chill; blazing suns that neither scorch nor dazzle.

Blustering winds of early spring, that seem to sweep right through these solid frames of ours, and thrill us to the very marrow with the old heroic excitement and ecstasy we knew so well in happy childhood, but can no longer feel now when awake!

Bland summer breezes, heavy with the scent of long lost French woods and fields and gardens in full flower; swift, soft, moist equinoctial gales, blowing from the far-off orchards of Meudon, or the old market gardens of Suresnes in their autumnal decay, and laden, we do not know why, with strange, mysterious, troubling reminiscence too subtle and elusive to be expressed in any tongue--too sweet for any words! And then the dark December wind that comes down from the north, and brings the short, early twilights and the snow, and drives us home, pleasantly shivering, to the chimney-corner and the hissing logs--_chez nous!_

It is the last night of an old year--_la veille du jour de l'an_.

Ankle-deep in snow, we walk to warm, well-lighted "Magna sed Apta," up the moonlit avenue. It is dream snow, and yet we feel it crunch beneath our feet; but if we turn to look, the tracks of our footsteps have disappeared--and we cast no shadows, though the moon is full!

M. le Major goes by, and Yverdon the postman, and Pere Francois, with his big sabots, and others, and their footprints remain--and their shadows are strong and sharp!

They wish each other the compliments of the season as they meet and pass; they wish us nothing! We give them _la bonne annee_ at the tops of our voices; they do not heed us in the least, though our voices are as resonant as theirs. We are wishing them a "Happy New Year," that dawned for good or evil nearly twenty years ago.

Out comes Gogo from the Seraskiers', with Mimsey. He makes a snowball and throws it. It flies straight through me, and splashes itself on Pere Francois's broad back. "Ah, ce polisson de Monsieur Gogo ... attendez un peu!" and Pere Francois returns the compliment--straight through me again, as it seems; and I do not even feel it! Mary and I are as solid to each other as flesh and blood can make us. We cannot even touch these dream people without their melting away into thin air; we can only hear and see them, but that in perfection!

There goes that little Andre Corbin, the poulterer's son, running along the slippery top of Madame Pele's garden wall, which is nearly ten feet high.

"Good heavens," cries Mary, "stop him! Don't you remember? When he gets to the corner he'll fall down and break both his legs!"

I rush and bellow out to him--

"Descends donc, malheureux; tu vas te casser les deux jambes! Saute! saute!" ... I cry, holding out my arms. He does not pay the slightest attention: he reaches the corner, followed low down by Gogo and Mimsey, who are beside themselves with generous envy and admiration. Stimulated by their applause, he becomes more foolhardy than ever, and even tries to be droll, and standing on one leg, sings a little song that begins--

_"Maman m'a donne quat' sous Pour m'en aller a la foire, Non pas pour manger ni boire, Alais pour m'regaler d'joujoux!"_

Then suddenly down he slips, poor boy, and breaks both his legs below the knee on an iron rail, whereby he becomes a cripple for life.

All this sad little tragedy of a New-year's Eve plays itself anew. The sympathetic crowd collects; Mimsey and Gogo weep; the heart-broken parents arrive, and the good little doctor Larcher; and Mary and I look on like criminals, so impossible it seems not to feel that we might have prevented it all!

We two alone are alive and substantial in all this strange world of shadows, who seem, as far as we can hear and see, no less substantial and alive than ourselves. They exist for us; we do not exist for them. We exist for each other only, waking or sleeping; for even the people among whom our waking life is spent know hardly more of us, and what our real existence is, than poor little Andre Corbin, who has just broken his legs for us over again!

And so, back to "Magna sed Apta," both saddened by this deplorable misadventure, to muse and talk and marvel over these wonders; penetrated to the very heart's core by a dim sense of some vast, mysterious power, latent in the sub-consciousness of man--unheard of, undreamed of as yet, but linking him with the Infinite and the Eternal.

And how many things we always had to talk about besides!

Heaven knows, I am not a brilliant conversationalist, but she was the most easily amusable person in the world--interested in everything that interested me, and I disdamaged myself (to use one of her Anglo-Gallicisms) of the sulky silence of years.

Of her as a companion it is not for me to speak. It would be impertinent, and even ludicrous, for a person in my position to dilate on the social gifts of the famous Duchess of Towers.

Incredible as it may appear, however, most of our conversation was about very common and earthly topics--her homes and refuges, the difficulties of their management, her eternal want of money, her many schemes and plans and experiments and failures and disenchantments--in all of which I naturally took a very warm interest. And then my jail, and all that occurred there--in all of which I became interested myself because it interested her so passionately; she knew every corner of it that I knew, every detail of the life there--the name, appearance, and history of almost every inmate, and criticised its internal economy with a practical knowledge of affairs; a business-like sagacity at which I never ceased to marvel.

One of my drollest recollections is of a visit she paid there _in the flesh_, by some famous philanthropists of both sexes. I was interviewed by them all as the model prisoner, who, for his unorthodoxy, was a credit to the institution. She listened demurely to my intelligent answers when I was questioned as to my bodily health, etc., and asked whether I had any complaints to make. Complaints! Never was jail-bird so thoroughly satisfied with his nest--so healthy, so happy, so well-behaved. She took notes all the time.

Eight hours before we had been strolling hand in hand through the Uffizi Gallery in Florence; eight hours later we should be in each other's arms.

* * * * *

Strange to relate, this happiness of ours--so deep, so acute, so transcendent, so unmatched in all the history of human affection--was not always free of unreasonable longings and regrets. Man is never so blessed but what he would have his blessedness still greater.

The reality of our close companionship, of our true possession of each other (during our allotted time), was absolute, complete, and thorough. No Darby that ever lived can ever have had sweeter, warmer, more tender memories of any Joan than I have now of Mary Seraskier! Although each was, in a way, but a seeming illusion of the other's brain, the illusion was no illusion for us. It was an illusion that showed the truth, as does the illusion of sight. Like twin kernels in one shell ("Philipschen," as Mary called it), we touched at more points and were closer than the rest of mankind (with each of them a separate shell of his own). We tried and tested this in every way we could devise, and never found ourselves at fault, and never ceased to marvel at so great a wonder. For instance, I received letters from her in jail (and answered them) in an intricate cipher we had invented and perfected together entirely during sleep, and referring to things that had happened to us both when together.[A]

[Footnote A: _Note_.--Several of these letters are in my possession. MADGE PLUNKET.]

Our privileges were such as probably no human beings could have ever enjoyed before. Time and space were annihilated for us at the mere wish of either--we lived in a palace of delight; all conceivable luxuries were ours--and, better than all, and perennially, such freshness and elation as belong only to the morning of life--and such a love for each other (the result of circumstances not to be paralleled) as time could never slake or quench till death should come and part us. All this, and more, was our portion for eight hours out of twenty-four.

So what must we do sometimes, but fret that the sixteen hours which remained did not belong to us well; that we must live two-thirds of our lives apart; that we could not share the toils and troubles of our work-a-day, waking existence, as we shared the blissful guerdon of our seeming sleep--the glories of our common dream.

And then we would lament the lost years we had spent in mutual ignorance and separation--a deplorable waste of life; when life, sleeping or waking, was so short.

How different things might have been with us had we but known!

We need never have lost sight and touch of each other; we might have grown up, and learned and worked and struggled together from the first--boy and girl, brother and sister, lovers, man and wife--and yet have found our blessed dream-land and dwelt in it just the same.

Children might have been born to us! Sweet children, _beaux comme le jour_, as in Madame Perrault's fairy tales; even beautiful and good as their mother.

And as we talked of these imaginary little beings and tried to picture them, we felt in ourselves such a stupendous capacity for loving the same that we would fall to weeping on each other's shoulders. Full well I knew, even as if they had formed a part of my own personal experience, all the passion and tenderness, all the wasted anguish of her brief, ill-starred motherhood: the very ache of my jealousy that she should have borne a child to another man was forgotten in that keen and thorough comprehension! Ah, yes ... that hungry love, that woful pity, which not to know is hardly quite to have lived! Childless as I am (though old enough to be a grandfather) I have it all by heart!

Never could we hope for son or daughter of our own. For us the blessed flower of love in rich, profuse, unfading bloom; but its blessed fruit of life, never, never, never!

Our only children were Mimsey and Gogo, between whom and ourselves was an impassable gulf, and who were unconscious of our very existence, except for Mimsey's strange consciousness that a Fairy Tarapatapoum and a Prince Charming were watching over them.

All this would always end, as it could not but end, in our realizing the more fully our utter dependence on each other for all that made life not only worth living, ingrates that we were, but a heaven on earth for us both; and, indeed, we could not but recognize that merely thus to love and be loved was in itself a thing so immense (without all the other blessings we had) that we were fain to tremble at our audacity in daring to wish for more.

* * * * *

Thus sped three years, and would have sped all the rest, perhaps, but for an incident that made an epoch in our joint lives, and turned all our thoughts and energies in a new direction.

Part Six

Some petty annoyance to which I had been subjected by one of the prison authorities had kept me awake for a little while after I had gone to bed, so that when at last I awoke in "Magna sed Apta," and lay on my couch there (with that ever-fresh feeling of coming to life in heaven after my daily round of work in an earthly jail), I was conscious that Mary was there already, making coffee, the fragrance of which filled the 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 as familiar to me as "God save the Queen."

As I listened with rapt ears and closed eyes, wonderful scenes passed before my mental vision: the beautiful white-haired lady of my childish dreams, leading a small _female_ child by the hand, and that child was myself; the pigeons and their tower, the stream and the water-mill; the white-haired young man with red heels to his shoes; a very fine lady, very tall, stout, and middle-aged, magnificently dressed in brocaded silk; a park with lawns and alleys and trees cut into trim formal shapes; a turreted castle--all kinds of charming scenes and people of another age and country.

"What on earth is that wonderful tune, Mary?" I exclaimed, when she had finished it.

"It's my favorite tune," she answered; "I seldom hum it for fear of wearing away its charm. I suppose that is why you have never heard it before. 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 his own, and made it famous in his time; but it was never published, and it's now forgotten.

"It is called 'Le Chant du Triste Commensal,' and was composed by his grandmother, a beautiful French woman, who played the fiddle too; but not as a profession. He remembered her playing it when he was a child and she was quite an old lady, just as I remember _his_ playing it when I was a girl in Vienna, and he was a white-haired old man. She used to play holding her fiddle downward, on her knee, it seems; and always played in perfect tune, quite in the middle of the note, and with excellent taste and expression; it was her playing that decided his career. But she was like 'Single-speech Hamilton,' for this was the only thing she ever composed. She composed it under great grief and excitement, just after her husband had died from the bite of a wolf, and just before the birth of her twin-daughters--her only children--one of whom 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 made glass--decanters, water-bottles, tumblers, and all that, I suppose--in spite of his nobility. It was not considered derogatory to do so; indeed, it was the only trade permitted to the _noblesse_, and one had to 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's death, and made lots of money for her two daughters."

"How strange!" I exclaimed; "Gatienne Aubery! Dame du Brail--Budes--the names are quite familiar to me. Mathurin Budes, Seigneur de Monhoudeard et 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 her sister that only her mother could distinguish them) was called Anne, and married a Comte de Bois something."

"Boismorinel. Why, all those names are in my family too. My father used to make me paint their arms and quarterings when I was a child, on Sunday 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 could find out? Have you no family papers?"

_I_. "There were lots of them, in a horse-hair trunk, but I don't know where they are now. What good would family papers have been to me? Ibbetson took charge of them when I changed my name. I suppose his lawyers have got them."

_She_. "Happy thought; we will do without lawyers. Let us go round to your 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 old house, with the wish (immediate father to the deed) that Gogo should be there, once more engaged in his long forgotten accomplishment of painting coats of arms.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and we found Gogo hard at work at a small table by an open window. The floor was covered with old deeds and parchments and family papers; and le beau Pasquier, at another table, was deep in his own pedigree, making notes on the margin--an occupation in which he delighted--and unconsciously humming as he did so. The sunny room was filled with the penetrating soft sound of his voice, as a conservatory is filled with the scent of its flowers.

By the strangest inconsistency my dear father, a genuine republican at heart (for all his fancied loyalty to the white lily of the Bourbons), a would-be scientist, who in reality was far more impressed by a clever and industrious French mechanic than by a prince (and would, I think, have preferred the former's friendship and society), yet took both a pleasure and a pride in his quaint old parchments and obscure quarterings. So would I, perhaps, if things had gone differently with me--for what true democrat, however intolerant of such weakness in others, ever thinks lightly of his own personal claims to aristocratic descent, shadowy as these may be!

He was fond of such proverbs and aphorisms as "noblesse oblige," "bon sang ne sait mentir," "bon chien chasse de race," etc., and had even invented a little aphorism of his own, to comfort him when he was extra hard up, "bon gentilhomme n'a jamais honte de la misere." All of which sayings, to do him justice, he reserved for home consumption exclusively, and he would have been the first to laugh on hearing them in the mouth of any one else.

Of his one great gift, the treasure in his throat, he thought absolutely nothing at all.

"Ce que c'est que de nous!"

Gogo was coloring the quarterings of the Pasquier family--_la maison de Pasquier_, as it was called--in a printed book (_Armorial General du Maine et de l'Anjou_), according to the instructions that were given underneath. He used one of Madame Liard's three-sou boxes, and the tints left much to be desired.

We looked over his shoulder and read the picturesque old jargon, which sounds even prettier and more comforting and more idiotic in French than in English. It ran thus--

"Pasquier (branche des Seigneurs de la Mariere et du Hirel), party de 4 pieces 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 et lampasse d'or," And so on, through the other quarterings: Bigot, Epinay, Malestroit, Mathefelon. And finally, "Sur le tout, de Pasquier qui est d'or a trois lyons d'azur, au franc quartier ecartele des royames de Castille et de Leon."

Presently my mother came home from the English chapel in the Rue Marboeuf, where she had been with Sarah, the English maid. Lunch was announced, and we were left alone with the family papers. With infinite precautions, for fear of blurring the dream, we were able to find what we wanted to find--namely, that we were the great-great-grandchildren and only possible living descendants of Gatienne, the fair glassmaker and 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 de Verny 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 Seraskier, 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 celebrated our newly-discovered kinship by a simple repast, out of _my_ repertoire this time. It consisted of oysters from Rules's in Maiden Lane, when they were sixpence a dozen, and bottled stout (_l'eau m'en vient a la bouche_); and we spent the rest of the hours allotted to us that night in evolving such visions as we could from the old tune "Le Chant du Triste Commensal," with varying success; she humming it, accompanying herself 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 whenever the splendid and important lady, whom we soon identified for certain as Gatienne, our common great-great-grandmother, appeared--"la belle verriere de Verny le Moustier"--she was more distinct than the others; no doubt, because we both had part and parcel in her individuality, and also because her individuality was so strongly marked.

And before I was called away at the inexorable hour, we had the supreme satisfaction of seeing her play the fiddle to a shadowy company of patched and powdered and bewigged ladies and gentlemen, who seemed to take much sympathetic delight in her performance, and actually, even, of just hearing the thin, unearthly tones of that most original and exquisite melody, "Le Chant du Triste Commensal," to a quite inaudible accompaniment on the spinet by her daughter, evidently Anne Herault, Comtesse de Boismorinel (_nee_ Budes), while the small child Jeanne de Boismorinel (afterwards Dame Pasquier de la Mariere) listened with dreamy rapture.

And, just as Mary had said, she played her fiddle with its body downward, and resting on her knees, as though it had been an undersized 'cello. I then vaguely remembered having dreamed of such a figure when a small child.

Within twenty-four hours of this strange adventure the practical and business-like Mary had started, in the flesh and with her maid, for that part of France where these, my ancestors, had lived, and within a fortnight 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 in existence.

The turreted castle of my childish dreams, which, with the adjacent glass-factory, was still called Verny le Moustier, was one of these. She found it in the possession of a certain Count Hector du Chamorin, whose grandfather had purchased it at the beginning of the century.

He had built an entirely new plant, and made it one of the first glass-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 a steam-engine, and the whole aspect of the place was revolutionized; but the stream and water-mill (the latter a mere picturesque ruin) were still there; the stream was, however, little more than a ditch, some ten feet deep and twenty broad, with a fringe of gnarled and twisted willows and alders, many of them dead.

It was called "Le Brail," and had given its name to my great-great-grandmother's property, whence it had issued thirty miles away (and many hundred years ago); but the old Chateau du Brail, the manor 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 now a prosperous cider brewery; it is still, and lies on the high-road from Angers to Le Mans.

The old forest of Boismorinel, that had once belonged to the family of Herault, was still in existence; charcoal-burners were to be found in its depths, and a stray roebuck or two; but no more wolves and wild-boars, as in the olden time. And where the old castle had been now stood the new railway station of Boismorinel et Saint Maixent.

Most of such Budes, Bussons, Heraults, Auberys, and Pasquiers as were still to be found in the country, probably distant kinsmen of Mary's and mine, were lawyers, doctors, or priests, or had gone into trade and become respectably uninteresting; such as they were, they would scarcely have cared to claim kinship with such as I.

But a hundred years ago and more these were names of importance in Maine and Anjou; their bearers were descended for the most part from younger branches of houses which in the Middle Ages had intermarried with all there was of the best in France; and although they were looked down upon by the _noblesse_ of the court and Versailles, as were all the provincial nobility, they held their own well in their own country; feasting, hunting, and shooting with each other; dancing and fiddling and making love and intermarrying; and blowing glass, and growing richer and richer, till the Revolution came and blew them and their glass into space, and with them many greater than themselves, but few better. And all record of them and of their doings, pleasant and genial people as they 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 older monastery (whence its name); the ruined walls of the old abbey were (and are) still extant in the house-garden, covered with apricot and pear and peach trees, which had been sown or planted by our common ancestress when she was a bride.