Peter Ibbetson Part 19

I was still holding the d.u.c.h.ess's hand, and felt the warmth of it through her glove; it stole up my arm like a magnetic current. I was in Elysium; a heavenly sense had come over me that at last my periphery had been victoriously invaded by a spirit other than mine--a most powerful and beneficent spirit. There was a blessed fault in my impenetrable armor of self, after all, and the genius of strength and charity and loving-kindness had found it out.

"Now you're dreaming true," she said. "Where are those boys going?"

"To church, to make their _premiere communion_," I replied.

"That's right. You're dreaming true because I've got you by the hand. Do you know that tune?"

I listened, and the words belonging to it came out of the past and I said them to her, and she laughed again, with her eyes screwed up deliciously.

"Quite right--quite!" she exclaimed. "How odd that you should know them!

How well you p.r.o.nounce French for an Englishman! For you are Mr.

Ibbetson, Lady Cray's architect?"

I a.s.sented, and she let go my hand.

The street was full of people--familiar forms and faces and voices, chatting together and looking down the road after the yellow omnibus; old att.i.tudes, old tricks of gait and manner, old forgotten French ways of speech--all as it was long ago. n.o.body noticed us, and we walked up the now deserted avenue.

The happiness, the enchantment of it all! Could it be that I was dead, that I had died suddenly in my sleep, at the hotel in the Rue de la Michodiere! Could it be that the d.u.c.h.ess of Towers was dead too--had been killed by some accident on her way from St. Cloud to Paris? and that, both having died so near each other, we had begun our eternal afterlife in this heavenly fashion?

That was too good to be true, I reflected; some instinct told me that this was not death, but transcendent earthly life--and also, alas! that it would not endure forever!

I was deeply conscious of every feature in her face, every movement of her body, every detail of her dress--more so then I could have been in actual life--and said to myself, "Whatever this is, it is no dream." But I felt there was about me the unspeakable elation which can come to us only in our waking moments when we are at our very best; and then only feebly, in comparison with this, and to many of us never, ft never had to me, since that morning when I had found the little wheelbarrow.

I was also conscious, however, that the avenue itself had a slight touch of the dream in it. It was no longer quite right, and was getting out of drawing and perspective, so to speak. I had lost my stay--the touch of her hand.

"Are you still dreaming true, Mr. Ibbetson?"

"I am afraid not quite," I replied.

"You must try by yourself a little--try hard. Look at this house; what is written on the portico?"

I saw written in gold letters the words, "Tete Noire," and said so.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

She rippled with laughter, and said, "No; try again"; and just touched me with the tip of her finger for a moment.

I tried again and said, "Parvis Notre Dame."

"That's rather better," she said, and touched me again; and I read, "Parva sed Apta," as I had so often read there before in old days.

"And now look at that old house over there," pointing to my old home; "how many windows are there in the top story?"

I said seven.

"No; there are five. Look again!" and there were five; and the whole house was exactly, down to its minutest detail, as it had been once upon a time. I could see Therese through one of the windows, making my bed.

"That's better," said the d.u.c.h.ess; "you will soon do it--it's very easy--_ce n'est que le premier pas!_ My father taught me; you must always sleep on your back with your arms above your head, your hands clasped under it and your feet crossed, the right one over the left, unless you are left-handed; and you must never for a moment cease thinking of where you want to be in your dream till you are asleep and get there; and you must never forget in your dream where and what you were when awake. You must join the dream on to reality. Don't forget.

And now I will say good-bye; but before I go give me both hands and look round everywhere as far as your eyes can see."

It was hard to look away from her; her face drew my eyes, and through them all my heart; but I did as she told me, and took in the whole familiar scene, even to the distant woods of Ville d'Avray, a glimpse of which was visible through an opening in the trees; even to the smoke of a train making its way to Versailles, miles off; and the old telegraph, working its black arms on the top of Mont Valerien.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "It was hard to look away from her."]

"Is it all right?" she asked. "That's well. Henceforward, whenever you come here, you will be safe as far as your sight can reach--from this spot--all through my introduction. See what it is to have a friend at court! No more little dancing jailers! And then you can gradually get farther by yourself.

"Out there, through that park, leads to the Bois de Boulogne--there's a gap in the hedge you can get through; but mind and make everything plain in front of you--_true_, before you go a step farther, or else you'll have to wake and begin it all over again. You have only to will it, and think of yourself as awake, and it will come--on condition, of course, that you have been there before. And mind, also, you must take care how you touch things or people--you may hear, and see, and smell; but you mustn't touch, nor pick flowers or leaves, nor move things about. It blurs the dream, like breathing on a window-pane. I don't know why, but it does. You must remember that everything here is dead and gone by.

With you and me it is different; we're alive and real--that is, _I_ am; and there would seem to be no mistake about your being real too, Mr.

Ibbetson, by the grasp of your hands. But you're _not_; and why you are here, and what business you have in this, my particular dream, I cannot understand; no living person has ever come into it before. I can't make it out. I suppose it's because I saw your reality this afternoon, looking out of the window at the 'Tete Noire,' and you are just a stray figment of my overtired brain--a very agreeable figment, I admit; but you don't exist here just now--you can't possibly; you are somewhere else, Mr. Ibbetson; dancing at Mabille, perhaps, or fast asleep somewhere, and dreaming of French churches and palaces, and public fountains, like a good young British architect--otherwise I shouldn't talk to you like this, you may be sure!

"Never mind. I am very glad to dream that I have been of use to you, and you are very welcome here, if it amuses you to come--especially as you are only a false dream of mine, for what else _can_ you be? And now I must leave you, so good-bye."

She disengaged her hands, and laughed her angelic laugh, and then turned towards the park. I watched her tall, straight figure and blowing skirts, and saw her follow some ladies and children into a thicket that I remembered well, and she was soon out of sight.

I felt as if all warmth had gone out of my life; as if a joy had taken flight; as if a precious something had withdrawn itself from my possession, and the gap in my periphery had closed again.

Long I stood in thought, with my eyes fixed on the spot where she had disappeared; and I felt inclined to follow, but then considered this would not have been discreet. For although she was only a false dream of mine, a mere recollection of the exciting and eventful day, a stray figment of my overtired and excited brain--a _more_ than agreeable figment (what else _could_ she be!)--she was also a great lady, and had treated me, a perfect stranger and a perfect n.o.body, with singular courtesy and kindness; which I repaid, it is true, with a love so deep and strong that my very life was hers, to do what she liked with, and always had been since I first saw her, and always would be as long as there was breath in my body! But this did not const.i.tute an acquaintance without a proper introduction, even in France--even in a dream. Even in dreams one must be polite, even to stray figments of one's tired, sleeping brain.

And then what business had _she_, in _this_, _my_ particular dream--as she herself had asked of me?

But _was_ it a dream? I remembered my lodgings at Pentonville, that I had left yesterday morning. I remembered what I was--why I came to Paris; I remembered the very bedroom at the Paris hotel where I was now fast asleep, its loudly-ticking clock, and all the meagre furniture. And here was I, broad awake and conscious, in the middle of an old avenue that had long ceased to exist--that had been built over by a huge brick edifice covered with newly-painted trellis-work. I saw it, this edifice, myself, only twelve hours ago. And yet here was everything as it had been when I was a child; and all through the agency of this solid phantom of a lovely young English d.u.c.h.ess, whose warm gloved hands I had only this minute been holding in mine! The scent of her gloves was still in my palm. I looked at my watch; it marked twenty-three minutes to twelve. All this had happened in less than three-quarters of an hour!

Pondering over all this in hopeless bewilderment, I turned my steps towards my old home, and, to my surprise, was just able to look over the garden wall, which I had once thought about ten feet high.

Under the old apple-tree in full bloom sat my mother, darning small socks; with her flaxen side-curls (as it was her fashion to wear them) half-concealing her face. My emotion and astonishment were immense. My heart beat fast. I felt its pulse in my temples, and my breath was short.

At a little green table that I remembered well sat a small boy, rather quaintly dressed in a by-gone fashion, with a frill round his wide shirt-collar, and his golden hair cut quite close at the top, and rather long at the sides and back. It was Gogo Pasquier. He seemed a very nice little boy. He had pen and ink and copy-book before him, and a gilt-edged volume bound in red morocco. I knew it at a glance; it was _Elegant Extracts_. The dog Medor lay asleep in the shade. The bees were droning among the nasturtiums and convolvulus.

A little girl ran up the avenue from the porter's lodge and pushed the garden gate, which rang the bell as it opened, and she went into the garden, and I followed her; but she took no notice of me, nor did the others. It was Mimsey Seraskier.

I went out and sat at my mother's feet, and looked long in her face.

I must not speak to her, nor touch her--not even touch her busy hand with my lips, or I should "blur the dream."

I got up and looked over the boy Gogo's shoulder. He was translating Gray's _Elegy_ into French; he had not got very far, and seemed to be stumped by the line--

_"And leaves the world to darkness and to me."_

Mimsey was silently looking over his other shoulder, her thumb in her mouth, one arm on the back of his chair. She seemed to be stumped also: it was an awkward line to translate.

I stooped and put my hand to Medor's nose, and felt his warm breath. He wagged his rudiment of a tail, and whimpered in his sleep. Mimsey said--

"Regarde Medor, comme il remue la queue! _C'est le Prince Charmant qui lui chatouille le bout du nez._"

Said my mother, who had not spoken hitherto: "Do speak English, Mimsey, please."

Oh, my G.o.d! My mother's voice, so forgotten, yet so familiar, so unutterably dear! I rushed to her, and threw myself on my knees at her feet, and seized her hand and kissed it, crying, "Mother, mother!"

A strange blur came over everything; the sense of reality was lost. All became as a dream--a beautiful dream--but only a dream; and I woke.