_"'Mon grand père était rossignol; Ma grand mère était hirondelle!"_
[Illustration]
Look at my dear people there--look at your dear people! What waifs and
strays, until their ship comes home, which we know it never will! Our
fathers forever racking their five wits in the pursuit of an idea! Our
mothers forever racking theirs to save money and make both ends
meet!... Why, Mr. Ibbetson, you are nearer to the _rossignol_ than I am.
Do you remember your father's voice? Shall I ever forget it! He sang to
me only last night, and in the midst of my harrowing anxiety about you I
was beguiled into listening outside the window. He sang Rossini's
_'Cujus Animam.'_ He _was_ the nightingale; that was his vocation, if he
could but have known it. And you are my brother Bohemian; that is
_yours!_ ... Ah, _my_ vocation! It was to be the wife of some busy
brain-worker--man of science--conspirator--writer--artist--architect,
if you like; to fence him round and shield him from all the little
worries and troubles and petty vexations of life. I am a woman of
business _par excellence_--a manager, and all that. He would have had a
warm, well-ordered little nest to come home to after hunting his idea!
"Well, I thought myself the most unhappy woman alive, and wrapped myself
up in my affection for my much-afflicted little son; and as I held him
to my breast, and vainly tried to warm and mesmerize him into feeling
and intelligence, Gogo came back into my heart, and I was forever
thinking, 'Oh, if I had a son like Gogo what a happy woman I should be!'
and pitied Madame Pasquier for dying and leaving him so soon, for I had
just begun to dream true, and had seen Gogo and his sweet mother
once again.
"And then one night--one never-to-be-forgotten night--I went to Lady
Gray's concert, and saw you standing in a corner by yourself; and I
thought, with a leap of my heart, 'Why, that must be Gogo, grown dark,
and with a beard and mustache like a Frenchman!' But alas, I found that
you were only a Mr. Ibbetson, Lady Cray's architect, whom she had asked
to her house because he was 'quite the handsomest young man she had
ever seen!'
"You needn't laugh. You looked very nice, I assure you!
"Well, Mr. Ibbetson, although you were not Gogo, you became suddenly so
interesting to me that I never forgot you--you were never quite out of
my mind. I wanted to counsel and advise you, and take you by the hand,
and be an elder sister to you, for I felt myself already older than you
in the world and its ways. I wanted to be twenty years older still, and
to have you for my son. I don't know _what_ I wanted! You seemed so
lonely, and fresh, and unspotted from the world, among all those smart
worldlings, and yet so big and strong and square and invincible--oh, so
strong! And then you looked at me with such sincere and sweet and
chivalrous admiration and sympathy--there, I cannot speak of it--and
then you were _so_ like what Gogo might have become! Oh, you made as
warm and devoted a friend of me at first sight as any one might desire!
"And at the same time you made me feel so self-conscious and shy that I
dared not ask to be introduced to you--I, who scarcely know what
shyness is.
"Dear Giulia Grisi sang '_Sedut' al Pie d' un' Salice,' and that tune
has always been associated in my mind with your tongue ever since, and
always will be. Your dear mother used to play it on the harp. Do
you remember?
"Then came that extraordinary dream, which you remember as well as I do:
_wasn't_ it a wonder? You see, my dear father had learned a strange
secret of the brain--how in sleep to recall past things and people and
places as they had once been seen or known by him--even unremembered
things. He called it 'dreaming true,' and by long practice, he told me,
he had brought the art of doing this to perfection. It was the one
consolation of his troubled life to go over and over again in sleep all
his happy youth and childhood, and the few short years he had spent with
his beloved young wife. And before he died, when he saw I had become so
unhappy that life seemed to have no longer any possible hope of pleasure
for me, he taught me his very simple secret.
"Thus have I revisited in sleep every place I have ever lived in, and
especially this, the beloved spot where I first as a little girl
knew _you_!"
That night when we met again in our common dream I was looking at the
boys from Saindou's school going to their _première communion_, and
thinking very much of you, as I had seen you, when awake, a few hours
before, looking out of the window at the 'Tête Noire;' when you suddenly
appeared in great seeming trouble and walking like a tipsy man; and my
vision was disturbed by the shadow of a prison--alas! alas!--and two
little jailers jingling their keys and trying to hem you in.
My emotion at seeing you again so soon was so great that I nearly woke.
But I rescued you from your imaginary terrors and held you by the hand.
You remember all the rest.
I could not understand why you should be in my dream, as I had almost
always dreamed true--that is, about things that _had_ been in my
life--not about things that _might_ be; nor could I account for the
solidity of your hand, nor understand why you didn't fade away when I
took it, and blur the dream. It was a most perplexing mystery that
troubled many hours of both my waking and sleeping life. Then came that
meeting with you at Cray, and part of the mystery was accounted for, for
you were my old friend Gogo, after all. But it is still a mystery, an
awful mystery, that two people should meet as we are meeting now in one
and the same dream--should dovetail so accurately into each other's
brains. What a link between us two, Mr. Ibbetson, already linked by
such memories!
After meeting you at Cray I felt that I must never meet you again,
either waking or dreaming. The discovery that you were Gogo, after all,
combined with the preoccupation which as a mere stranger you had already
caused me for so long, created such a disturbance in my spirit
that--that--there, you must try and imagine it for yourself.
Even before that revelation at Cray I had often known you were here in
my dream, and I had carefully avoided you ... though little dreaming
you were here in your own dream too! Often from that little
dormer-window up there I have seen you wandering about the park and
avenue in seeming search of _me_, and wondered why and how you came. You
drove me into attics and servants' bedrooms to conceal myself from you.
It was quite a game of hide-and-seek--_cache-cache_, as we used to
call it.
But after our meeting at Cray I felt there must be no more
_cache-cache_; I avoided coming here at all; you drove me away
altogether.
Now try to imagine what I felt when the news of your terrible quarrel
with Mr. Ibbetson burst upon the world. I was beside myself! I came here
night after night; I looked for you everywhere--in the park, in the Bois
de Boulogne, at the Mare d'Auteuil, at St. Cloud--in every place I could
think of! And now here you are at last--at last!
Hush! Don't speak yet! I have soon done!
Six months ago I lost my poor little son, and, much as I loved him, I
cannot wish him back again. In a fortnight I shall be legally separated
from my wretched husband--I shall be quite alone in the world! And then,
Mr. Ibbetson--oh, _then_, dearest friend that child or woman ever
had--every hour that I can steal from my waking existence shall
henceforward be devoted to you as long as both of us live, and sleep the
same hours out of the twenty-four. My one object and endeavor shall be
to make up for the wreck of your sweet and valuable young life. 'Stone
walls shall not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage!' [And here she
laughed and cried together, so that her eyes, closing up, squeezed out
her tears, and I thought, "Oh, that I might drink them!"]
And now I will leave you. I am a weak and loving woman, and must not
stay by your side till I can do so without too much self-reproach.
And indeed I feel I shall soon fall awake from sheer exhaustion of joy.
Oh, selfish and jealous wretch that I am, to talk of joy!
"I cannot help rejoicing that no other woman can be to you what I hope
to be. No other woman can ever come _near_ you! I am your tyrant and
your slave--your calamity has made you mine forever; but all my
life--all--all--shall be spent in trying to make you forget yours, and I
think I shall succeed."
"Oh, don't make such dreadful haste!" I exclaimed. "Am _I_ dreaming
true? What is to prove all this to me when I wake? Either I am the most
abject and wretched of men, or life will never have another unhappy
moment. How am I to _know_?'
"Listen. Do you remember 'Parva sed Apta, le petit pavilion,' as you
used to call it? That is still my home when I am here. It shall be
yours, if you like, when the time comes. You will find much to interest
you there. Well, to-morrow early, in your cell, you will receive from me
an envelope with a slip of paper in it, containing some violets, and the
words 'Parva sed Apta--à bientôt' written in violet ink. Will that
convince you?"
"Oh yes, yes!"
"Well, then, give me your hands, dearest and best--both hands! I shall
soon be here again, by this apple-tree; I shall count the hours.
Good-bye!" and she was gone, and I woke.
I woke to the gaslit darkness of my cell. It was just before dawn. One
of the warders asked me civilly if I wanted anything, and gave me a
drink of water.
I thanked him quietly, and recalled what had just happened to me, with a
wonder, an ecstasy, for which I can find no words.
No, it had _not_ been a _dream_--of that I felt quite sure--not in any
one single respect; there had been nothing of the dream about it except
its transcendent, ineffable enchantment.
Every inflexion of that beloved voice, with its scarcely perceptible
foreign accent that I had never noticed before; every animated gesture,
with its subtle reminiscence of both her father and her mother; her
black dress trimmed with gray; her black and gray hat; the scent of
sandal-wood about her--all were more distinctly and vividly impressed
upon me than if she had just been actually, and in the flesh, at my
bedside. Her tones still rang in my ears. My eyes were full of her: now
her profile, so pure and chiselled; now her full face, with her gray
eyes (sometimes tender and grave and wet with tears, sometimes half
closed in laughter) fixed on mine; her lithe sweet body curved forward,
as she sat and clasped her knees; her arched and slender smooth straight
feet so delicately shod, that seemed now and then to beat time to
her story....
And then that strange sense of the transfusion of life at the touching
of the hands! Oh, it was _no dream_! Though what it was I
cannot tell....
I turned on my side, happy beyond expression, and fell asleep again--a
dreamless sleep that lasted till I was woke and told to dress.
[Illustration: "MY EYES WERE FULL OF HER."]
Some breakfast was brought to me, and _with it an envelope, open, which
contained some violets, and a slip of paper, scented with sandal-wood,
on which were written, in violet ink, the words--
"Parva sed Apla--à bientôt!
Tarapatapoum."_
I will pass over the time that elapsed between my sentence and its
commutation; the ministrations and exhortations of the good chaplain;
the kind and touching farewells of Mr. and Mrs. Lintot, who had also
believed that I was Ibbetson's son (I undeceived them); the visit of my
old friend Mrs. Deane ... and her strange passion of gratitude and
admiration.
I have no doubt it would all be interesting enough, if properly
remembered and ably told. But it was all too much like a
dream--anybody's dream--not one of _mine_--all too slight and flimsy to
have left an abiding remembrance, or to matter much.
In due time I was removed to the jail at----, and bade farewell to the
world, and adapted myself to the conditions of my new outer life with a
good grace and with a very light heart.
The prison routine, leaving the brain so free and unoccupied; the
healthy labor, the pure air, the plain, wholesome food were delightful
to me--a much-needed daily mental rest after the tumultuous emotions of
each night.
For I was soon back again in Passy, where I spent every hour of my
sleep, you may be sure, never very far from the old apple-tree, which
went through all its changes, from bare bough to tender shoots and
blossoms, from blossom to ripe fruit, from fruit to yellow falling leaf,
and then to bare boughs again, and all in a few peaceful nights, which
were my days. I flatter myself by this time that I know the habits of a
French apple-tree, and its caterpillars!
And all the dear people I loved, and of whom I could never tire, were
about--all but one. _The_ One!
At last she arrived. The garden door was pushed, the bell rang, and she
came across the lawn, radiant and tall and swift, and opened wide her
arms. And there, with our little world around us--all that we had ever
loved and cared for, but quite unseen and unheard by them--for the first
time in my life since my mother and Madame Seraskier had died I held a
woman in my arms, and she pressed her lips to mine.
[Illustration: "AT LAST SHE ARRIVED."]
Round and round the lawn we walked and talked, as we had often done
fifteen, sixteen, twenty years ago. There were many things to say. "The
Charming Prince" and the "Fairy Tarapatapoum" were "prettily well
together"--at last!