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 Médor's nose, and felt his warm breath. He
wagged his rudiment of a tail, and whimpered in his sleep. Mimsey said--
"Regarde Médor, 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 God! 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.
* * * * *
I woke in my small hotel bedroom, and saw all the furniture, and my hat
and clothes, by the light of a lamp outside, and heard the ticking of
the clock on the mantel-piece, and the rumbling of a cart and cracking
of a whip in the street, and yet felt I was not a bit more awake than I
had been a minute ago in my strange vision--not so much!
I heard my watch ticking its little tick on the mantel-piece by the side
of the clock, like a pony trotting by a big horse. The clock struck
twelve, I got up and looked at my watch by the light of the gas-lit
streets; it marked the same. My dream had lasted an hour--I had gone to
bed at half-past ten.
I tried to recall it all, and did so to the smallest particular--all
except the tune the organ had played, and the words belonging to it;
they were on the tip of my tongue, and refused to come further, I got up
again and walked about the room, and felt that it had not been like a
dream at all; it was more "recollectable" than all my real adventures of
the previous day. It had ceased to be like a dream, and had become an
actuality from the moment I first touched the duchess's hand to the
moment I kissed my mother's, and the blur came. It was an entirely new
and utterly bewildering experience that I had gone through.
In a dream there are always breaks, inconsistencies, lapses,
incoherence, breaches of continuity, many links missing in the chain;
only at points is the impression vivid enough to stamp itself afterwards
on the waking mind, and even then it is never so really vivid as the
impression of real life, although it ought to have seemed so in the
dream: One remembers it well on awaking, but soon it fades, and then it
is only one's remembrance of it that one remembers.
[Illustration: "MOTHER, MOTHER!"]
There was nothing of this in my dream.
It was something like the "camera-obscura" on Ramsgate pier: one goes
in and finds one's self in total darkness; the eye is prepared; one is
thoroughly expectant and wide-awake.
Suddenly there flashes on the sight the moving picture of the port and
all the life therein, and the houses and cliffs beyond; and farther
still the green hills, the white clouds, and blue sky.
Little green waves chase each other in the harbor, breaking into crisp
white foam. Sea-gulls wheel and dash and dip behind masts and ropes and
pulleys; shiny brass fittings on gangway and compass flash in the sun
without dazzling the eye; gay Liliputians walk and talk, their white
teeth, no bigger than a pin's point, gleam in laughter, with never a
sound; a steamboat laden with excursionists comes in, its paddles
churning the water, and you cannot hear them. Not a detail is
missed--not a button on a sailor's jacket, not a hair on his face. All
the light and color of sea and earth and sky, that serve for many a
mile, are here concentrated within a few square feet. And what color it
is! A painter's despair! It is light itself, more beautiful than that
which streams through old church windows of stained glass. And all is
framed in utter darkness, so that the fully dilated pupils can see their
very utmost. It seems as though all had been painted life-size and then
shrunk, like a Japanese picture on crape, to a millionth of its natural
size, so as to intensify and mellow the effect.
It is all over: you come out into the open sunshine, and all seems
garish and bare and bald and commonplace. All magic has faded out of
the scene; everything is too far away from everything else; everybody
one meets seems coarse and Brobdingnagian and too near. And one has been
looking at the like of it all one's life!
Thus with my dream, compared to common, waking, every-day experience;
only instead of being mere flat, silent little images moving on a dozen
square feet of Bristol-board, and appealing to the eye alone, the things
and people in my dream had the same roundness and relief as in life, and
were life-size; one could move among them and behind them, and feel as
if one could touch and clasp and embrace them if one dared. And the ear,
as well as the eye, was made free of this dark chamber of the brain: one
heard their speech and laughter as in life. And that was not all, for
soft breezes fanned the cheek, the sparrows twittered, the sun gave out
its warmth, and the scent of many flowers made the illusion complete.
And then the Duchess of Towers! She had been not only visible and
audible like the rest, but tangible as well, to the fullest extent of
the sensibility that lay in my nerves of touch; when my hands held hers
I felt as though I were drawing all her life into mine.
With the exception of that one figure, all had evidently been as it
_had_ been in _reality_ a few years ago, to the very droning of an
insect, to the very fall of a blossom!
Had I gone mad by any chance? I had possessed the past, as I had longed
to do a few hours before.
What are sight and hearing and touch and the rest?
Five senses in all.
The stars, worlds upon worlds, so many billions of miles away, what are
they for us but mere shiny specks on a net-work of nerves behind the
eye? How does one _feel_ them there?
The sound of my friend's voice, what is it? The clasp of his hand, the
pleasant sight of his face, the scent of his pipe and mine, the taste of
the bread and cheese and beer we eat and drink together, what are they
but figments (stray figments, perhaps) of the brain--little thrills
through nerves made on purpose, and without which there would be no
stars, no pipe, no bread and cheese and beer, no voice, no friend,
no me?
And is there, perchance, some sixth sense embedded somewhere in the
thickness of the flesh--some survival of the past, of the race, of our
own childhood even, etiolated by disuse? or some rudiment, some effort
to begin, some priceless hidden faculty to be developed into a future
source of bliss and consolation for our descendants? some nerve that now
can only be made to thrill and vibrate in a dream, too delicate as yet
to ply its function in the light of common day?
And was I, of all people in the world--I, Peter Ibbetson, architect and
surveyor, Wharton Street, Pentonville--most futile, desultory, and
uneducated dreamer of dreams--destined to make some great psychical
discovery?
Pondering deeply over these solemn things, I sent myself to sleep again,
as was natural enough--but no more to dream. I slept soundly until late
in the morning, and breakfasted at the Bains Deligny, a delightful
swimming-bath near the Pont de la Concorde (on the other side), and
spent most of the day there, alternately swimming, and dozing, and
smoking cigarettes, and thinking of the wonders of the night before, and
hoping for their repetition on the night to follow.
[Illustration]
I remained a week in Paris, loafing about by day among old haunts of my
childhood--a melancholy pleasure--and at night trying to "dream true" as
my dream duchess had called it. Only once did I succeed.
I had gone to bed thinking most persistently of the "Mare d'Auteuil,"
and it seemed to me that as soon as I was fairly asleep I woke up there,
and knew directly that I had come into a "true dream" again, by the
reality and the bliss. It was transcendent _life_ once more--a very
ecstasy of remembrance made actual, and _such_ an exquisite surprise!
There was M. le Major, in his green frock-coat, on his knees near a
little hawthorn-tree by the brink, among the water-logged roots of which
there dwelt a cunning old dytiscus as big as the bowl of a
table-spoon--a prize we had often tried to catch in vain.
M. le Major had a net in his hand, and was watching the water intently;
the perspiration was trickling down his nose; and around him, in silent
expectation and suspense, were grouped Gogo and Mimsey and my three
cousins, and a good-humored freckled Irish boy I had quite forgotten,
and I suddenly remembered that his name was Johnstone, that he was very
combative, and that he lived in the Rue Basse (now Rue Raynouard).
On the other side of the pond my mother was keeping Médor from the
water, for fear of his spoiling the sport, and on the bench by the
willow sat Madame Seraskier--lovely Madame Seraskier--deeply
interested. I sat down by her side and gazed at her with a joy there is
no telling.
An old woman came by, selling conical wafer-cakes, and singing--"_V'lâ
l'plaisir, mesdames--V'lâ l'plaisir!_" Madame Seraskier bought ten sous'
worth--a mountain!
M. le Major made a dash with his net--unsuccessfully, as usual. Médor
was let loose, and plunged with a plunge that made big waves all round
the mare, and dived after an imaginary stone, amid general shouts and
shrieks of excitement. Oh, the familiar voices! I almost wept.
Médor came out of the water without his stone and shook himself,
twisting and barking and grinning and gyrating, as was his way, quite
close to me. In my delight and sympathy I was ill-advised enough to try
and stroke him, and straight the dream was "blurred"--changed to an
ordinary dream, where all things were jumbled up and incomprehensible; a
dream pleasant enough, but different in kind and degree--an ordinary
dream; and in my distress thereat I woke, and failed to dream again (as
I wished to dream) that night.
Next morning (after an early swim) I went to the Louvre, and stood
spellbound before Leonardo da Vinci's "Lisa Gioconda," trying hard to
find where the wondrous beauty lay that I had heard so extravagantly
extolled; and not trying very successfully, for I had seen Madame
Seraskier once more, and felt that "Gioconda" was a fraud.
Presently I was conscious of a group just behind me, and heard a
pleasant male English voice exclaim--
[Illustration: "Lisa Giaconda"]
"And now, duchess, let me present to you my first and last and only
love, Mona Lisa." I turned round, and there stood a soldier-like old
gentleman and two ladies (one of whom was the Duchess of Towers),
staring at the picture.
As I made way for them I caught her eye, and in it again, as I felt
sure, a kindly look of recognition--just for half a second. She
evidently recollected having seen me at Lady Cray's, where I had stood
all the evening alone in a rather conspicuous corner. I was so
exceptionally tall (in those days of not such tall people as now) that
it was easy to notice and remember me, especially as I wore my beard,
which it was unusual to do then among Englishmen.
She little guessed how _I_ remembered _her_; she little knew all she was
and had been to me--in life and in a dream!
My emotion was so great that I felt it in my very knees; I could
scarcely walk; I was as weak as water. My worship for the beautiful
stranger was becoming almost a madness. She was even more lovely than
Madame Seraskier. It was cruel to be like that.
It seems that I was fated to fall down and prostrate myself before very
tall, slender women, with dark hair and lily skins and light angelic
eyes. The fair damsel who sold tripe and pigs' feet in Clerkenwell was
also of that type, I remembered; and so was Mrs. Deane. Fortunately for
me it is not a common one!
All that day I spent on quays and bridges, leaning over parapets, and
looking at the Seine, and nursing my sweet despair, and calling myself
the biggest fool in Paris, and recalling over and over again that
gray-blue kindly glance--my only light, the Light of the World for ME!
* * * * *
My brief holiday over, I went back to London--to Pentonville--and
resumed my old occupations; but the whole tenor of my existence
was changed.
The day, the working-day (and I worked harder than ever, to Lintot's
great satisfaction), passed as in an unimportant dream of mild content
and cheerful acquiescence in everything, work or play.
There was no more quarrelling with my destiny, nor wish to escape from
myself for a moment. My whole being, as I went about on business or
recreation bent, was suffused with the memory of the Duchess of Towers
as with a warm inner glow that kept me at peace with all mankind and
myself, and thrilled by the hope, the enchanting hope, of once more
meeting her image at night in a dream, in or about my old home at Passy,
and perhaps even feeling once more that ineffable bliss of touching her
hand. Though why should she be there?
When the blessed hour came round for sleep, the real business of my life
began. I practised "dreaming true" as one practises a fine art, and
after many failures I became a professed expert--a master.
I lay straight on my back, with my feet crossed, and my hands clasped
above my head in a symmetrical position; I would fix my will intently
and persistently on a certain point in space and time that was within my
memory--for instance, the avenue gate on a certain Christmas afternoon,
when I remembered waiting for M. le Major to go for a walk--at the same
time never losing touch of my own present identity as Peter Ibbetson,
architect, Wharton Street, Pentonville; all of which is not so easy to
manage as one might think, although the dream duchess had said, "Ce
n'est que le premier pas qui coûte;" and finally one night, instead of
dreaming the ordinary dreams I had dreamed all my life (but twice), I
had the rapture of _waking up_, the minute I was fairly asleep, by
the avenue gate, and of seeing Gogo Pasquier sitting on one of the stone
posts and looking up the snowy street for the major. Presently he jumped
up to meet his old friend, whose bottle-green-clad figure had just
appeared in the distance. I saw and heard their warm and friendly
greeting, and walked unperceived by their side through Auteuil to the
_mare_, and back by the fortifications, and listened to the thrilling
adventures of one Fier-à-bras, which, I confess, I had completely
forgotten.
[Illustration: THE STORY OF THE GIANT FIER-A-BRAS.]
As we passed all three together through the "Porte de la Muette," M. le
Major's powers of memory (or invention) began to flag a little--for he
suddenly said, "_Cric!_" But Gogo pitilessly answered, "_Crac!_" and
the story had to go on, till we reached at dusk the gate of the
Pasquiers' house, where these two most affectionately parted, after
making an appointment for the morrow; and I went in with Gogo, and sat
in the school-room while Thérèse gave him his tea, and heard her tell
him all that had happened in Passy that afternoon. Then he read and
summed and translated with his mother till it was time to go up to bed,
and I sat by his bedside as he was lulled asleep by his mother's
harp... how I listened with all my ears and heart, till the sweet strain
ceased for the night! Then out of the hushed house I stole, thinking
unutterable things--through the snow-clad garden, where Médor was baying
the moon--through the silent avenue and park--through the deserted
streets of Passy--and on by desolate quays and bridges to dark quarters
of Paris; till I fell awake in my tracks and found that another dreary
and commonplace day had dawned over London--but no longer dreary and
commonplace for me, with such experiences to look back and forward
to--such a strange inheritance of wonder and delight!
I had a few more occasional failures, such as, for instance, when the
thread between my waking and sleeping life was snapped by a moment's
carelessness, or possibly by some movement of my body in bed, in which
case the vision would suddenly get blurred, the reality of it destroyed,
and an ordinary dream rise in its place. My immediate consciousness of
this was enough to wake me on the spot, and I would begin again, _da
capo_ till all went as I wished.
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 hitherto 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 passing 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 passed when Gogo, my only conceivable
remembrancer, was away?
Françoise, 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 assist 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--Thérèse the house-maid, Françoise 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 Passy 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 à la
bonne femme," "soupe aux choux," "pot au feu," "blanquette de veau,"
"boeuf à la mode," "cotelettes de porc à 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 Thérèse would exclaim, "Ah, q'c'est beau!" as if she
had been present at a real pyrotechnic display; and Thérèse 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
Passy, 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 pass 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 buttonhole, 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!
[Illustration]
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 passionate longing to meet the Duchess 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
snobbery 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
assembled 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
unembarrassed 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 Duchess
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 duchess 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 Duchess
of Towers the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
I assented 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 Duchess 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 Duchess 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?"
[Illustration]
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.