_She_. "And then I gave you good advice about how to dream true, and we
got to my old house, and I tried to make you read the letters on the
portico, and you read them wrong, and I laughed."
_I_. "Yes; I read 'Tête Noire.' Wasn't it idiotic?"
_She_. "And then I touched you again and you read 'Parvis Notre Dame.'"
_I_. "Yes! and you touched me _again_, and I read 'Parva sed
Apta'--small but fit."
_She_. "Is _that_ what it means? Why, when you were a boy, you told me
_sed apta_ was all one word, and was the Latin for 'Pavilion.' I
believed it ever since, and thought 'Parva sed Apta' meant _petit
pavillon_!"
_I_. "I blush for my bad Latin! After this you gave me good advice
again, about not touching anything or picking flowers. I never have. And
then you went away into the park--the light went out of my life,
sleeping or waking. I have never been able to dream of you since. I
don't suppose I shall ever meet you again after to-day!"
After this we were silent for a long time, though I hummed and hawed now
and then, and tried to speak. I was sick with the conflict of my
feelings. At length she said--
"Dear Mr. Ibbetson, this is all so extraordinary that I must go away
and think it all over. I cannot tell you what it has been to me to meet
you once more. And that double dream, common to us both! Oh, I am dazed
beyond expression, and feel as if I were dreaming now--except that this
all seems so unreal and impossible--so untrue! We had better part now. I
don't know if I shall ever meet you again. You will be often in my
thoughts, but never in my dreams again--that, at least, I can
command--nor I in yours; it must not be. My poor father taught me how to
dream before he died, that I might find innocent consolation in dreams
for my waking troubles, which are many and great, as his were. If I can
see that any good may come of it, I will write--but no--you must not
expect a letter. I will now say good-bye and leave you. You go to-day,
do you not? That is best. I think this had better be a final adieu. I
cannot tell you of what interest you are to me and always have been. I
thought you had died long ago. We shall often think of each other--that
is inevitable--_but never, never dream. That will not do._
"Dear Mr. Ibbetson, I wish you all the good that one human being can
wish another. And now goodbye, and may God in heaven bless you!"
She rose, trembling and white, and her eyes wet with tears, and wrung
both my hands, and left me as she had left me in the dream.
The light went out of my life, and I was once more alone--more
wretchedly and miserably alone than if I had never met her.
I went back to Pentonville, and outwardly took up the thread of my
monotonous existence, and ate, drank, and worked, and went about as
usual, but as one in an ordinary dream. For now dreams--true dreams--had
become the only reality for me.
[Illustration: A FAREWELL.]
So great, so inconceivable and unexampled a wonder had been wrought in a
dream that all the conditions of life had been altered and reversed.
I and another human being had met--actually and really met--in a double
dream, a dream common to us both, and clasped each other's hands! And
each had spoken words to the other which neither ever would or ever
could forget.
And this other human being and I had been enshrined in each other's
memory for years--since childhood--and were now linked together by a tie
so marvellous, an experience so unprecedented, that neither could ever
well be out of the other's thoughts as long as life and sense and
memory lasted.
Her very self, as we talked to each other under the ash-tree at Cray,
was less vividly present to me than that other and still dearer self of
hers with whom I had walked up the avenue in that balmy dream
atmosphere, where we had lived and moved and had our being together for
a few short moments, yet each believing the other at the time to be a
mere figment of his own (and her) sleeping imagination; such stuff as
dreams are made of!
And lo! it was all true--as true as the common experience of every-day
life--more (ten times more), because through our keener and more exalted
sense perceptions, and less divided attention, we were more conscious of
each other's real inner being--linked closer together for a space--than
two mortals had probably ever been since the world began.
That clasp of the hands in the dream--how infinitely more it had
conveyed of one to the other than even that sad farewell clasp at Cray!
In my poor outer life I waited in vain for a letter; in vain I haunted
the parks and streets--the street where she lived--in the hope of seeing
her once more. The house was shut; she was away--in America, as I
afterwards learned--with her husband and child.
At night, in the familiar scenes I had learned so well to conjure up, I
explored every nook and corner with the same yearning desire to find a
trace of her. I was hardly ever away from "Parva sed Apta." There were
Madame Seraskier and Mimsey and the major, and my mother and Gogo, at
all times, in and out, and of course as unconscious of my solid presence
as though I had never existed. And as I looked at Mimsey and her mother
I wondered at my obtuseness in not recognizing at the very first glance
who the Duchess of Towers had been, and whose daughter. The height, the
voice, the eyes, certain tricks of gait and gesture--how could I have
failed to know her again after such recent dream opportunities?
And Seraskier, towering among them all, as his daughter now towered
among women. I saw that he lived again in his daughter; _his_ was the
smile that closed up the eyes, as hers did; had Mimsey ever smiled in
those days, I should have known her again by this very characteristic
trait.
Of this daughter of his (the Mimsey of the past years, not the duchess
of to-day) I never now could have enough, and made her go through again
and again all the scenes with Gogo, so dear to my remembrance, and to
hers. I was, in fact, the Prince Charmant, of whose unseen attendance
she had been conscious in some inconceivable way. What a strange
foresight! But where was the fée Tarapatapoum? Never there during this
year of unutterable longing; she had said it; never, never again should
I be in her dream, or she in mine, however constantly we might dwell in
each other's thoughts.
So sped a twelvemonth after that last meeting in the flesh at Gray.
* * * * *
And now with an unwilling heart and most reluctant pen, I must come to
the great calamity of my life which I will endeavor to tell in as few
words as possible.
The reader, if he has been good enough to read without skipping, will
remember the handsome Mrs. Deane, to whom I fancied I lost my heart, in
Hopshire, a few years back.
I had not seen her since--had, indeed, almost forgotten her--but had
heard vaguely that she had left Hopshire, and come to London, and
married a wealthy man much older than herself.
Well, one day I was in Hyde Park, gazing at the people in the drive,
when a spick-and-span and very brand-new open carriage went by, and in
it sad Mrs. Deane (that was), all alone in her glory, and looking very
sulky indeed. She recognized me and bowed, and I bowed back again, with
just a moment's little flutter of the heart--an involuntary tribute to
auld lang syne--and went on my way, wondering that I could ever had
admired her so.
Presently, to my surprise, I was touched on the elbow. It was Mrs. Deane
again--I will call her Mrs. Deane still. She had got out and followed
me on foot. It was her wish that I should drive round the park with her
and talk of old times. I obeyed, and for the first and last time found
myself forming part of that proud and gay procession I had so often
watched with curious eyes.
She seemed anxious to know whether I had ever made it up with Colonel
Ibbetson, and pleased to hear that I had not, and that I probably never
should, and that my feeling against him was strong and bitter and
likely to last.
She appeared to hate him very much.
She inquired kindly after myself and my prospects in life, but did not
seem deeply interested in my answers--until later, when I talked of my
French life, and my dear father and mother, when she listened with eager
sympathy, and I was much touched. She asked if I had portraits of them;
I had--most excellent miniatures; and when we parted I had promised to
call upon her next afternoon, and bring these miniatures with me.
She seemed a languid woman, much ennuyée, and evidently without a large
circle of acquaintance. She told me I was the only person in the whole
park whom she had bowed to that day. Her husband was in Hamburg, and she
was going to meet him in Paris in a day or two.
I had not so many friends but what I felt rather glad than otherwise to
have met her, and willingly called, as I had promised, with the
portraits.
She lived in a large, new house, magnificently up near the Marble Arch.
She was quite alone when I called, and asked me immediately if I had
brought the miniatures; and looked at them quite eagerly, and then at
me, and exclaimed--
"Good heavens, you are your father's very image!"
Indeed, I had always been considered so.
Both his eyebrows and mine, especially, met in a singular and
characteristic fashion at the bridge of the nose, and she seemed much
struck by this. He was represented in the uniform of Charles X's _gardes
du corps_, in which he had served for two years, and had acquired the
nickname of "le beau Pasquier." Mrs. Deane seemed never to tire of
gazing at it, and remarked that my father "must have been the very ideal
of a young girl's dream" (an indirect compliment which made me blush
after what she had just said of the likeness between us. I almost began
to wonder whether she was going to try and make a fool of me again, as
she had so successfully done a few years ago).
Then she became interested again in my early life and recollections, and
wanted to know whether my parents were fond of each other. They were a
most devoted and lover-like pair, and had loved each other at first
sight and until death, and I told her so; and so on until I became quite
excited, and imagined she must know of some good fortune to which I was
entitled, and had been kept out of by the machinations of a
wicked uncle.
For I had long discovered in my dreams that he had been my father's
bitterest enemy and the main cause of his financial ruin, by selfish,
heartless, and dishonest deeds too complicated to explain here--a
regular Shylock.
I had found this out by listening (in my dreams) to long conversations
between my father and mother in the old drawing-room at Passy, while
Gogo was absorbed in his book; and every word that had passed through
Gogo's inattentive ears into his otherwise preoccupied little brain had
been recorded there as in a phonograph, and was now repeated over and
over again for Peter Ibbetson, as he sat unnoticed among them.
I asked her, jokingly, if she had discovered that I was the rightful
heir to Ibbetson Hall by any chance.
She replied that nothing would give her greater pleasure, but there was
no such good fortune in store for either her or me; that she had
discovered long ago that Colonel Ibbetson was the greatest blackguard
unhung, and nothing new she might discover could make him worse.
I then remembered how he would often speak of her, even to me, and hint
and insinuate things which were no doubt untrue, and which I
disbelieved. Not that the question of their truth or untruth made him
any the less despicable and vile for telling.
She asked me if he had ever spoken of her to me, and after much
persuasion and cunning cross-examination I told her as much of the truth
as I dared, and she became a tigress. She assured me that he had managed
so to injure and compromise her in Hopshire that she and her mother had
to leave, and she swore to me most solemnly (and I thoroughly believe
she spoke the truth) that there had never been any relation between
them that she could not have owned to before the whole world.
She had wished to marry him, it is true, for his wealth and position;
for both she and her mother were very poor, and often hard put to it to
make both ends meet and keep up a decent appearance before the world;
and he had singled her out and paid her marked attention from the first,
and given her every reason to believe that his attentions were serious
and honorable.
At this juncture her mother came in, Mrs. Glyn, and we renewed our old
acquaintance. She had quite forgiven me my school-boy admiration for her
daughter; all her power of hating, like her daughter's, had concentrated
itself on Ibbetson; and as I listened to the long story of their wrongs
and his infamy, I grew to hate him worse than ever, and was ready to be
their champion on the spot, and to take up their quarrel there and then.
But this would not do, it appeared, for their name must nevermore be in
any way mixed up with his.
Then suddenly Mrs. Glyn asked me if I knew when he went to India.
I could satisfy her, for I knew that it was just after my parents'
marriage, nearly a year before my birth; upon which she gave the exact
date of his departure with his regiment, and the name of the transport,
and everything; and also, to my surprise, the date of my parents'
marriage at Marylebone Church, and of my baptism there fifteen months
later--just fourteen weeks after my birth in Passy. I was growing quite
bewildered with all this knowledge of my affairs, and wondered more
and more.
We sat silent for a while, the two women looking at each other and at me
and at the miniatures. It was getting grewsome. What could it all mean?
Presently Mrs. Glyn, at a nod from her daughter, addressed me thus:
"Mr. Ibbetson, your uncle, as you call him, though he is not your uncle,
is a very terrible villain, and has done you and your parents a very
foul wrong. Before I tell you what it is (and I think you ought to know)
you must give me your word of honor that you will do or say nothing that
will get our name publicly mixed up in any way with Colonel Ibbetson's.
The injury to my daughter, now she is happily married to an excellent
man, would be irreparable."
With a beating heart I solemnly gave the required assurance.
"Then, Mr. Ibbetson, it is right that you should know that Colonel
Ibbetson, when he was paying his infamous addresses to my daughter, gave
her unmistakably to understand that you were his natural son, by his
cousin, Miss Catherine Biddulph, afterwards Madame Pasquier de
la Marière!"
"Oh, oh, oh!" I cried, "surely you must be mistaken--he knew it was
impossible--he had been refused by my mother three times--he went to
India nearly a year before I was born--he--"
Then Mrs. Deane said, producing an old letter from her pocket:
"Do you know his handwriting and his crest? Do you happen to recollect
once bringing me a note from at Ibbetson Hall? Here it is," and she
handed it to me. It was unmistakably his, and I remembered it at once,
and this is what it said:
"For Heaven's sake, dear friend, don't breathe a word to any living soul
of what you were clever enough to guess last night! There is a likeness,
of course.
"Poor Antinoüs! He is quite ignorant of the true relationship, which has
caused me many a pang of shame and remorse....
"'Que voulez-vous? Elle était ravissaure!' ... We were cousins, much
thrown together; 'both were so young, and one so beautiful!' ... I was
but a penniless cornet in those days--hardly more than a boy. Happily an
unsuspecting Frenchman of good family was there who had loved her long,
and she married him. 'Il était temps!' ...
"Can you forgive me this 'entraînement de jeunesse?' I have repented in
sackcloth and ashes, and made what reparation I could by adopting and
giving my name to one who is a perpetual reminder to me of a moment's
infatuation. He little knows, poor boy, and never will, I hope. 'Il n'a
plus que moi au monde!'
"Burn this as soon as you have read it, and never let the subject be
mentioned between us again.
"R. ('Qui sait aimer')."
Here was a thunderbolt out of the blue!
I sat stunned and saw scarlet, and felt as if I should see scarlet
forever.
[Illustration: THE FATAL LETTER.]
After a long silence, during which I could feel my pulse beat to
bursting-point in my temples, Mrs. Glyn said:
"Now, Mr. Ibbetson, I hope you will do nothing rash--nothing that can
bring my daughter's name into any quarrel between yourself and your
uncle. For the sake of your mother's good name, you will be prudent, I
know. If he could speak like this of his cousin, with whom he had been
in love when he was young, what lies would he not tell of my poor
daughter? He _has_--terrible lies! Oh, what we have suffered! When he
wrote that letter I believe he really meant to marry her. He had the
greatest trust in her, or he would never have committed himself so
foolishly."
"Does he know of this letter's existing?" I asked.
"No. When he and my daughter quarrelled she sent him back his
letters--all but this one, which she told him she had burned immediately
after reading it, as he had told her to do."
"May I keep it?"
"Yes. I know you may be trusted, and my daughter's name has been removed
from the outside, as you see. No one but ourselves has ever seen it, nor
have we mentioned to a soul what it contains, as we never believed it
for a moment. Two or three years ago we had the curiosity to find out
when and where your parents had married, and when you were born, and
when _he_ went to India, it was no surprise to us at all. We then tried
to find you, but soon gave it up, and thought it better to leave matters
alone. Then we heard he was in mischief again--just the same sort of
mischief; and then my daughter saw you in the park, and we concluded you
ought to know."
Such was the gist of that memorable conversation, which I have condensed
as much as I could.
When I left these two ladies I walked twice rapidly round the park. I
saw scarlet often during that walk. Perhaps I looked scarlet. I remember
people staring at me.
Then I went straight to Lintot's, with the impulse to tell him my
trouble and ask his advice.
He was away from home, and I waited in his smoking-room for a while,
reading the letter over and over again.
Then I decided not to tell him, and left the house, taking with me as I
did so (but without any definite purpose) a heavy loaded stick, a most
formidable weapon, even in the hands of a boy, and which I myself had
given to Lintot on his last birthday. [Greek: Anagkae]!
Then I went to my usual eating-house near the circus and dined. To the
surprise of the waiting-maid, I drank a quart of bitter ale and two
glasses of sherry. It was my custom to drink water. She plied me with
questions as to whether I was ill or in trouble. I answered her no, and
at last begged she would leave me alone.
Ibbetson lived in St. James's Street. I went there. He was out. It was
nine o'clock, and his servant seemed uncertain when he would return. I
came back at ten. He was not yet home, and the servant, after thinking a
while, and looking up and down the street, and finding my appearance
decent and by no means dangerous, asked me to go upstairs and wait, as I
told him it was a matter of great importance.
So I went and sat in my uncle's drawing-room and waited.
The servant came with me and lit the candles, and remarked on the
weather, and handed me the _Saturday Review_ and _Punch_. I must have
looked quite natural--as I tried to look--and he left me.
I saw a Malay creese on the mantel-piece and hid it behind a
picture-frame. I locked a door leading to another drawing-room where
there was a grand piano, and above it a trophy of swords, daggers,
battle-axes, etc., and put the key in my pocket.
The key of the room where I waited was inside the door.
All this time I had a vague idea of possible violence on his part, but
no idea of killing him. I felt far too strong for that. Indeed, I had a
feeling of quiet, irresistible strength--the result of suppressed
excitement.
I sat down and meditated all I would say. I had settled it over and over
again, and read and reread the fatal letter.
The servant came up with glasses and soda-water. I trembled lest he
should observe that the door to the other room was locked, but he did
not. He opened the window and looked up and down the street. Presently
he said, "Here's the colonel at last, sir," and went down to open
the door.
I heard him come in and speak to his servant. Then he came straight up,
humming _"la donna e mobile,"_ and walked in with just the jaunty, airy
manner I remembered. He was in evening dress, and very little changed.
He seemed much surprised to see me, and turned very white.
"Well, my Apollo of the T square, _pourquoi cet honneur?_ Have you come,
like a dutiful nephew, to humble yourself and beg for forgiveness?"
I forgot all I meant to say (indeed, nothing happened as I had meant),
but rose and said, "I have come to have a talk with you," as quietly as
I could, though with a thick voice.
He seemed uneasy, and went towards the door.
I got there before him, and closed it, and locked it, and put the key
in my pocket.
He darted to the other door and found it locked.
Then he went to the mantel-piece and looked for the creese, and not
finding it, he turned round with his back to the fireplace and his arms
akimbo, and tried to look very contemptuous and determined. His chin was
quite white under his dyed mustache--like wax--and his eyes blinked
nervously.
I walked up to him and said: "You told Mrs. Deane that I was your
natural son."
"It's a lie! Who told you so?"
"She did--this afternoon."
"It's a lie--a spiteful invention of a cast-off mistress!"
"She never was your mistress!"
"You fool! I suppose she told you that too. Leave the room, you pitiful
green jackass, or I'll have you turned out," and he rang the bell.
"Do you know your own handwriting?" I said, and handed him the letter.
He read a line or two and gasped out that it was a forgery, and rang the
bell again, and looked again behind the clock for his creese. Then he
lit the letter at a candle and threw it in the fireplace, where it
blazed out.