Peter Ibbetson Part 36

And I knew that, if she died, not only her body on the adjacent couch, but all "Magna sed Apta" itself would melt away, and be as if it had never been, with its endless galleries and gardens and magic windows, and all the wonders it contained.

Sometimes I felt a hideous nervous dread, on sinking into sleep, lest I should find it was so, and the ever-heavenly delight of waking there, and finding all as usual, was but the keener. I would kneel by her inanimate body, and gaze at her with a pa.s.sion of love that seemed made up of all the different kinds of love a human being can feel; even the love of a dog for his mistress was in it, and that of a wild beast for its young.

With eager, tremulous anxiety and aching suspense I would watch for the first light breath from her lips, the first faint tinge of carmine in her cheek, that always heralded her coming back to life. And when she opened her eyes and smiled, and stretched her long young limbs in the joy of waking, what transports of grat.i.tude and relief!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WAITING"]

Ah me! the recollection!

At last a terrible unforgettable night arrived when my presentiment was fulfilled.

I awoke in the little lumber-room of "Parva sed Apta," where the door had always been that led to and from our palace of delight; but there was no door any longer--nothing but a blank wall....

I woke back at once in my cell, in such a state as it is impossible to describe. I felt there must be some mistake, and after much time and effort was able to sink into sleep again, but with the same result: the blank wall, the certainty that "Magna sed Apta" was closed forever, that Mary was dead; and then the terrible jump back into my prison life again.

This happened several times during the night, and when the morning dawned I was a raving madman. I took the warder who first came (attracted by my cries of "Mary!") for Colonel Ibbetson, and tried to kill him, and should have done so, but that he was a very big man, almost as powerful as myself and only half my age.

Other warders came to the rescue, and I took them all for Ibbetsons, and fought like the maniac I was.

When I came to myself, after long horrors and brain-fever and what not, I was removed from the jail infirmary to another place, where I am now.

I had suddenly recovered my reason, and woke to mental agony such as I, who had stood in the dock and been condemned to a shameful death, had never even dreamed of.

I soon had the knowledge of my loss confirmed, and heard (it had been common talk for more than nine days) that the famous Mary, d.u.c.h.ess of Towers, had met her death at the ------ station of the Metropolitan Railway.

A woman, carrying a child, had been jostled by a tipsy man just as a train was entering the station, and dropped her child onto the metals.

She tried to jump after it but was held back, and Mary, who had just come up, jumped in her stead, and by a miracle of strength and agility was just able to clutch the child and get onto the six-foot way as the engine came by.

She was able to carry the child to the end of the train, and was helped onto the platform. It was her train, and she got into a carriage, but she was dead before it reached the next station. Her heart, (which, it seems, had been diseased for some time) had stopped, and all was over.

So died Mary Seraskier, at fifty-three.

I lay for many weeks convalescent in body, but in a state of dumb, dry tearless, despair, to which there never came a moment's relief, except in the dreamless sleep I got from chloral, which was given to me in large quant.i.ties--and then, the _waking_!

I never spoke nor answered a question, and hardly ever stirred. I had one fixed idea--that of self-destruction; and after two unsuccessful attempts, I was so closely bound and watched night and day that any further attempt was impossible. They would not trust me with a toothpick or a b.u.t.ton or a piece of common packthread.

I tried to starve myself to death and refused all solid food: but an intolerable thirst (perhaps artificially brought on) made it impossible for me to refuse any liquid that was offered, and I was tempted with milk, beef-tea, port, and sherry, and these kept me alive....

I had lost all wish to dream.

At length, one afternoon, a strange, inexplicable, overwhelming nostalgic desire came over me to see once more the Mare d'Auteuil--only once; to walk thither for the last time through the Chaussee de la Muette, and by the fortifications.

It grew upon me till it became a torture to wait for bedtime, so frantic was my impatience.

When the long-wished-for hour arrived at last, I laid myself down once more (as nearly as I could for my bonds) in the old position I had not tried for so long; my will intent upon the Porte de la Muette, an old stone gate-way that separated the Grande Rue de Pa.s.sy from the entrance to the Bois de Boulogne--a kind of Temple Bar.

It was pulled down forty-five years ago.

I soon found myself there, just where the Grande Rue meets the Rue de la Pompe, and went through the arch and looked towards the Bois.

It was a dull, leaden day in autumn; few people were about, but a gay _repas de noces_ was being held at a little restaurant on my right-hand side. It was to celebrate the wedding of Achille Grigoux, the green-grocer, with Felicite Lenormand, who had been the Seraskiers'

house-maid. I suddenly remembered all this, and that Mimsey and Gogo were of the party--the latter, indeed, being _premier garcon d'honneur_, on whom would soon devolve the duty of stealing the bride's garter, and cutting it up into little bits to adorn the b.u.t.ton-holes of the male guests before the ball began.

In an archway on my left some forlorn, worn-out old rips, broken-kneed and broken-winded, were patiently waiting, ready saddled and bridled, to be hired--Chloris, Murat, Rigolette, and others: I knew and had ridden them all nearly half a century ago. Poor old shadows of the long-dead past, so life-like and real and pathetic--it "split me the heart" to see them!

A handsome young blue-coated, silver-b.u.t.toned courier of the name of Lami came trotting along from St. Cloud on a roan horse, with a great jingling of his horse's bells and clacking of his short-handled whip. He stopped at the restaurant and called for a gla.s.s of white wine, and rising in his stirrups, shouted gayly for Monsieur et Madame Grigoux.

They appeared at the first-floor window, looking very happy, and he drank their health, and they his. I could see Gogo and Mimsey in the crowd behind them, and mildly wondered again, as I had so often wondered before, how I came to see it all from the outside--from another point of view than Gogo's.

Then the courier bowed gallantly, and said, _"Bonne chance!"_ and went trotting down the Grande Rue on his way to the Tuileries, and the wedding guests began to sing: they sang a song beginning--

_"Il etait un pet.i.t navire, Qui n'avait jamais navigue_...."

I had quite forgotten it, and listened till the end, and thought it very pretty; and was interested in a dull, mechanical way at discovering that it must be the original of Thackeray's famous ballad of "Little Billee," which I did not hear till many years after. When they came to the last verse--

"_Si cette histoire vous embete, Nous allons la recommencer_,"

I went on my way. This was my last walk in dreamland, perhaps, and dream-hours are uncertain, and I would make the most of them, and look about me.

I walked towards Ranelagh, a kind of casino, where they used to give b.a.l.l.s and theatrical performances on Sunday and Thursday nights (and where afterwards Rossini spent the latter years of his life; then it was pulled down, I am told, to make room for many smart little villas).

In the meadow opposite M. Erard's park, Saindou's school-boys were playing rounders--_la balle au camp_--from which I concluded it was a Thursday afternoon, a half-holiday; if they had had clean shirts on (which they had not) it would have been Sunday, and the holiday a whole one.

I knew them all, and the two _pions_, or ushers, M. Lartigue and _le pet.i.t Cazal_; but no longer cared for them or found them amusing or interesting in the least.

Opposite the Ranelagh a few old hackney-coach men were pacifically killing time by a game of _bouchon_--knocking sous off a cork with other sous--great fat sous and double sous long gone out of fashion. It is a very good game, and I watched it for a while and envied the long-dead players.

Close by was a small wooden shed, or _baraque_, prettily painted and glazed, and ornamented at the top with little tricolor flags; it belonged to a couple of old ladies, Mere Manette and Grandmere Manette-the two oldest women ever seen. They were very keen about business, and would not give credit for a centime--not even to English boys. They were said to be immensely rich and quite alone in the world.

How very dead they must be now! I thought. And I gazed at them and wondered at their liveliness and the pleasure they took in living. They sold many things: nougat, _pain d'epices_, mirlitons, hoops, drums, noisy battledoors and shuttlec.o.c.ks; and little ten-sou hand-mirrors, neatly bound in zinc, that could open and shut.

I looked at myself in one of these that was hanging outside; I was old and worn and gray-my face badly shaven--my hair almost white. I had never been old in a dream before.

I walked through the gate in the fortifications on to the outer Talus (which was quite bare in those days), in the direction of the Mare d'Auteuil. The place seemed very deserted and dull for a Thursday. It was a sad and sober walk; my melancholy was not to be borne--my heart was utterly broken, and my body so tired I could scarcely drag myself along. Never before had I known in a dream what it was to be tired.

I gazed at the famous fortifications in all their brand-new pinkness, the scaffoldings barely removed--some of them still lying in the dry ditch between--and smiled to think how these little brick and granite walls would avail to keep the Germans out of Paris thirty years later (twenty years ago). I tried to throw a stone across the narrow part, and found I could no longer throw stones; so I sat down and rested. How thin my legs were! and how miserably clad--in old prison trousers, greasy, stained, and frayed, and ign.o.bly kneed--and what boots!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I sat down and rested."]

Never had I been shabby in a dream before.

Why could not I, once for all, walk round to the other side and take a header _a la hussarde_ off those lofty bulwarks, and kill myself for good and all? Alas! I should only blur the dream, and perhaps even wake in my miserable strait-waistcoat. And I wanted to see the _mare_ once more, very badly.

This set me thinking. I would fill my pockets with stones, and throw myself into the Mare d'Auteuil after I had taken a last good look at it, and around. Perhaps the shock of emotion, in my present state of weakness, might really kill me in my sleep. Who knows? it was worth trying, anyhow.