Peter Ibbetson Part 21

Evidently our brain contains something akin both to a photographic plate and a phonographic cylinder, and many other things of the same kind not yet discovered; not a sight or a sound or a smell is lost; not a taste or a feeling or an emotion. Unconscious memory records them all, without our even heeding what goes on around us beyond the things that attract our immediate interest or attention.

Thus night after night I saw reacted before me scenes not only fairly remembered, but scenes utterly forgotten, and yet as unmistakably true as the remembered ones, and all bathed in that ineffable light, the light of other days--the light that never was on sea or land, and yet the light of absolute truth.

How it transcends in value as well as in beauty the garish light of common day, by which poor humanity has. .h.i.therto been content to live and die, disdaining through lack of knowledge the shadow for the substance, the spirit for the matter! I verified the truth of these sleeping experiences in every detail: old family letters I had preserved, and which I studied on awaking, confirmed what I had seen and heard in my dream; old stories explained themselves. It was all by-gone truth, garnered in some remote corner of the brain, and brought out of the dim past as I willed, and made actual once more.

And strange to say, and most inexplicable, I saw it all as an independent spectator, an outsider, not as an actor going again through scenes in which he has played a part before!

Yet many things perplexed and puzzled me.

For instance, Gogo's back, and the back of his head, when I stood behind him, were as visible and apparently as true to life as his face, and I had never seen his back or the back of his head; it was much later in life that I learned the secret of two mirrors. And then, when Gogo went out of the room, sometimes apparently pa.s.sing through me as he did so and coming out at the other side (with a momentary blurring of the dream), the rest would go on talking just as reasonably, as naturally, as before. Could the trees and walls and furniture have had ears and eyes, those long-vanished trees and walls and furniture that existed now only in my sleeping brain, and have retained the sound and shape and meaning of all that pa.s.sed when Gogo, my only conceivable remembrancer, was away?

Francoise, the cook, would come into the drawing-room to discuss the dinner with my mother when Gogo was at school; and I would hear the orders given, and later I would a.s.sist at the eating of the meal (to which Gogo would invariably do ample justice), and it was just as my mother had ordered. Mystery of mysteries!

What a pleasant life it was they led together, these ghosts of a by-gone time! Such a genial, smooth, easygoing, happy-go-lucky state of things--half bourgeois, half Bohemian, and yet with a well-marked simplicity, refinement, and distinction of bearing and speech that were quite aristocratic.

The servants (only three--Therese the house-maid, Francoise the cook, and English Sarah, who had been my nurse and was now my mother's maid) were on the kindliest and most familiar terms with us, and talked to us like friends, and interested themselves in our concerns, and we in theirs; I noticed that they always wished us each good-morning and good-night--a pretty French fashion of the Pa.s.sy bourgeoisie in Louis Philippe's time (he was a bourgeois king).

Our cuisine was bourgeoise also. Peter Ibbetson's mouth watered (after his tenpenny London dinner) to see and smell the steam of "soupe a la bonne femme," "soupe aux choux," "pot au feu," "blanquette de veau,"

"boeuf a la mode," "cotelettes de porc a la sauce piquante,"

"vinaigrette de boeuf bouilli"--that endless variety of good things on which French people grow fat so young--and most excellent claret (at one franc a bottle in those happy days): its bouquet seemed to fill the room as soon as the cork was drawn!

Sometimes, such a repast ended, "le beau Pasquier," in the fulness of his heart, would suddenly let off impossible fireworks of vocalization, ascending rockets of chromatic notes which would explode softly very high up and come down in full cadences, trills, roulades, like beautiful colored stars; and Therese would exclaim, "Ah, q'c'est beau!" as if she had been present at a real pyrotechnic display; and Therese was quite right. I have never heard the like from any human throat, and should not have believed it possible. Only Joachim's violin can do such beautiful things so beautifully.

Or else he would tell us of wolves he had shot in Brittany, or wild-boars in Burgundy--for he was a great sportsman--or of his adventures as a _garde du corps_ of Charles Dix, or of the wonderful inventions that were so soon to bring us fame and fortune; and he would loyally drink to Henri Cinq; and he was so droll and buoyant and witty that it was as good to hear him speak as to hear him sing.

But there was another and a sad side to all this strange comedy of vanished lives.

They built castles in the air, and made plans, and talked of all the wealth and happiness that would be theirs when my father's ship came home, and of all the good they would do, pathetically unconscious of the near future; which, of course, was all past history to their loving audience of one.

And then my tears would flow with the unbearable ache of love and pity combined; they would fall and dry on the waxed floors of my old home in Pa.s.sy, and I would find them still wet on my pillow in Pentonville when I woke.

Soon I discovered by practice that I was able for a second or two to be more than a mere spectator--to be an actor once more; to turn myself (Ibbetson) into my old self (Gogo), and thus be touched and caressed by those I had so loved. My mother kissed me and I felt it; just as long as I could hold my breath I could walk hand in hand with Madame Seraskier, or feel Mimsey's small weight on my back and her arms round my neck for four or five yards as I walked, before blurring the dream; and the blur would soon pa.s.s away, if it did not wake me, and I was Peter Ibbetson once more, walking and sitting among them, hearing them talk and laugh, watching them at their meals, in their walks; listening to my father's songs, my mother's sweet playing, and always unseen and unheeded by them. Moreover, I soon learned to touch things without sensibly blurring the dream. I would cull a rose, and stick it in my b.u.t.tonhole, and there it remained--but lo! the very rose I had just culled was still on the rose-bush also! I would pick up a stone and throw it at the wall, where it disappeared without a sound--and the very same stone still lay at my feet, however often I might pick it up and throw it!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

No waking joy in the world can give, can equal in intensity, these complex joys I had when asleep; waking joys seem so slight, so vague in comparison--so much escapes the senses through lack of concentration and undivided attention--the waking perceptions are so blunt.

It was a life within a life--an intenser life--in which the fresh perceptions of childhood combined with the magic of dream-land, and in which there was but one unsatisfied longing; but its name was Lion.

It was the pa.s.sionate longing to meet the d.u.c.h.ess of Towers once more in that land of dreams.

Thus for a time I went on, more solitary than ever, but well compensated for all my loneliness by this strange new life that had opened itself to me, and never ceasing to marvel and rejoice--when one morning I received a note from Lady Cray, who wanted some stables built at Cray, their country-seat in Hertfordshire, and begged I would go there for the day and night.

I was bound to accept this invitation, as a mere matter of business, of course; as a friend, Lady Cray seemed to have dropped me long ago, "like a 'ot potato," blissfully unconscious that it was I who had dropped her.

But she received me as a friend--an old friend. All my shyness and sn.o.bbery fell from me at the mere touch of her hand.

I had arrived at Cray early in the afternoon, and had immediately set about my work, which took several hours, so that I got to the house only just in time to dress for dinner.

When I came into the drawing-room there were several people there, and Lady Cray presented me to a young lady, the vicar's daughter, whom I was to take in to dinner.

I was very much impressed on being told by her that the company a.s.sembled in the drawing-room included no less a person than Sir Edwin Landseer. Many years ago I had copied an engraving of one of his pictures for Mimsey Seraskier. It was called "The Challenge," or "Coming Events cast their Shadows before Them." I feasted my eyes on the wondrous little man, who seemed extremely chatty and genial, and quite unembarra.s.sed by his fame.

A guest was late, and Lord Cray, who seemed somewhat peevishly impatient for his food, exclaimed--

"Mary wouldn't be Mary if she were punctual!"

Just then Mary came in--and Mary was no less a person than the d.u.c.h.ess of Towers!

My knees trembled under me; but there was no time to give way to any such tender weakness. Lord Cray walked away with her; the procession filed into the dining room, and somewhere at the end of it my young vicaress and myself.

The d.u.c.h.ess sat a long way from me, but I met her glance for a moment, and fancied I saw again in it that glimmer of kindly recognition.

My neighbor, who was charming, asked me if I did not think the d.u.c.h.ess of Towers the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

I a.s.sented with right good-will, and was told that she was as good as she was beautiful, and as clever as she was good (as if I did not know it); that she would give away the very clothes off her back; that there was no trouble she would not take for others; that she did not get on well with her husband, who drank, and was altogether bad and vile; that she had a great sorrow--an only child, an idiot, to whom she was devoted, and who would some day be the Duke of Towers; that she was highly accomplished, a great linguist, a great musician, and about the most popular woman in all English society.

Ah! Who loved the d.u.c.h.ess of Towers better than this poor scribe, in whose soul she lived and shone like a bright particular star--like the sun; and who, without his knowing, was being rapidly drawn into the sphere of her attraction, as Lintot called it; one day to be finally absorbed, I trust, forever!

"And who was this wonderful d.u.c.h.ess of Towers before she married?" I asked.

"She was a Miss Seraskier. Her father was a Hungarian, a physician, and a political reformer--a most charming person; that's where she gets her manners. Her mother, whom she lost when she was quite a child, was a very beautiful Irish girl of good family, a first cousin of Lord Cray's--a Miss Desmond, who ran away with the interesting patriot. They lived somewhere near Paris. It was there that Madame Seraskier died of cholera--... What is the matter--are you ill?"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I made out that I was faint from the heat, and concealed as well as I could the flood of emotion and bewilderment that overwhelmed me.

I dared not look again at the d.u.c.h.ess of Towers.

"Oh! little Mimsey dear, with your poor thin arms round my neck, and your cold, pale cheek against mine. I felt them there only last night!

To have grown into such a splendid vision of female health and strength and beauty as this--with that enchanting, ever-ready laugh and smile!

Why, of course, those eyes, so lashless then, so thickly fringed to-day!--how could I have mistaken them? Ah, Mimsey, you never smiled or laughed in those days, or I should have known your eyes again! Is it possible--is it possible?"

Thus I went on to myself till the ladies left, my fair young companion expressing her kind anxiety and polite hope that I would soon be myself again.

I sat silent till it was time to join the ladies (I could not even follow the witty and brilliant anecdotes of the great painter, who held the table); and then I went up to my room. I could not face _her_ again so soon after what I had heard.

The good Lord Cray came to make kind inquiries, but I soon satisfied him that my indisposition was nothing. He stayed on, however, and talked; his dinner seemed to have done him a great deal of good, and he wanted to smoke (and somebody to smoke with), which he had not been able to do in the dining-room on account of some reverend old bishop who was present. So he rolled himself a little cigarette, like a Frenchman, and puffed away to his heart's content.

He little guessed how his humble architect wished him away, until he began to talk of the d.u.c.h.ess of Towers--"Mary Towers," as he called her--and to tell me how "Towers" deserved to be kicked, and whipped at the cart's tail. "Why, she's the best and most beautiful woman in England, and as sharp as a needle! If it hadn't been for her, he'd have been in the bankruptcy court long ago," etc. "There's not a d.u.c.h.ess in England that's fit to hold the candle to her, either for looks or brains, or breedin' either. Her mother (the loveliest woman that ever lived, except Mary) was a connection of mine; that's where she gets her manners!" etc.

Thus did this n.o.ble earl make music for me--sweet and bitter music.

Mary! It is a heavenly name, especially on English lips, and spelled in the English mode with the adorable _y_! Great men have had a pa.s.sion for it--Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, Burns. But none, methinks, a greater pa.s.sion than I, nor with such good cause.