Jean Aubéry, Seigneur du Brail, married Anne Busson. His daughter,
Gatienne Aubéry, Dame du Brail, married Mathurin Budes, Seigneur de
Verny le Moustier et de Monhoudéard.
--------------------------^--------------------------
/ \
Anne Budes, Dame de Jeanne Budes, Dame du
Verny le Moustier, married Brail et de Monhoudéard,
Guy Hérault, Comte married Ulric
de Boismorinel. Seraskier.
Jeanne François Hérault de Otto Seraskier, violinist,
Boismorinel married married Teresa Pulci.
François Pasquier de la
Marière.
Jean Pasquier de la Marière Johann Seraskier, M.D.,
married Catherine married Laura Desmond.
Ibbetson-Biddulph.
Pierre Pasquier de la Marière Mary Seraskier, Duchess of
(_alias_ Peter Ibbetson, Towers.
convict).
We walked back to "Magna sed Apta" in great joy, and there we celebrated
our newly-discovered kinship by a simple repast, out of _my_ répertoire
this time. It consisted of oysters from Rules's in Maiden Lane, when
they were sixpence a dozen, and bottled stout (_l'eau m'en vient à la
bouche_); and we spent the rest of the hours allotted to us that night
in evolving such visions as we could from the old tune "Le Chant du
Triste Commensal," with varying success; she humming it, accompanying
herself on the piano in her masterly, musician-like way, with one hand,
and seeing all that I saw by holding my hand with the other.
By slow degrees the scenes and people evoked grew less dim, and whenever
the splendid and important lady, whom we soon identified for certain as
Gatienne, our common great-great-grandmother, appeared--"la belle
verrière de Verny le Moustier"--she was more distinct than the others;
no doubt, because we both had part and parcel in her individuality, and
also because her individuality was so strongly marked.
And before I was called away at the inexorable hour, we had the supreme
satisfaction of seeing her play the fiddle to a shadowy company of
patched and powdered and bewigged ladies and gentlemen, who seemed to
take much sympathetic delight in her performance, and actually, even, of
just hearing the thin, unearthly tones of that most original and
exquisite melody, "Le Chant du Triste Commensal," to a quite inaudible
accompaniment on the spinet by her daughter, evidently Anne Hérault,
Comtesse de Boismorinel (_née_ Budes), while the small child Jeanne de
Boismorinel (afterwards Dame Pasquier de la Marière) listened with
dreamy rapture.
And, just as Mary had said, she played her fiddle with its body
downward, and resting on her knees, as though it had been an undersized
'cello. I then vaguely remembered having dreamed of such a figure when a
small child.
Within twenty-four hours of this strange adventure the practical and
business-like Mary had started, in the flesh and with her maid, for that
part of France where these, my ancestors, had lived, and within a
fortnight she had made herself mistress of all my French family history,
and had visited such of the different houses of my kin as were still in
existence.
The turreted castle of my childish dreams, which, with the adjacent
glass-factory, was still called Verny le Moustier, was one of these. She
found it in the possession of a certain Count Hector du Chamorin, whose
grandfather had purchased it at the beginning of the century.
He had built an entirely new plant, and made it one of the first
glass-factories in Western France. But the old turreted _corps de logis_
still remained, and his foreman lived there with his wife and family.
The _pigeonnier_ had been pulled down to make room for a shed with a
steam-engine, and the whole aspect of the place was revolutionized; but
the stream and water-mill (the latter a mere picturesque ruin) were
still there; the stream was, however, little more than a ditch, some ten
feet deep and twenty broad, with a fringe of gnarled and twisted willows
and alders, many of them dead.
It was called "Le Brail," and had given its name to my
great-great-grandmother's property, whence it had issued thirty miles
away (and many hundred years ago); but the old Château du Brail, the
manor of the Aubérys, had become a farm-house.
The Château de la Marière, in its walled park, and with its beautiful,
tall, hexagonal tower, dated 1550, and visible for miles around, was now
a prosperous cider brewery; it is still, and lies on the high-road from
Angers to Le Mans.
The old forest of Boismorinel, that had once belonged to the family of
Hérault, was still in existence; charcoal-burners were to be found in
its depths, and a stray roebuck or two; but no more wolves and
wild-boars, as in the olden time. And where the old castle had been now
stood the new railway station of Boismorinel et Saint Maixent.
[Illustration: LA BELLE VERRIERE]
Most of such Budes, Bussons, Héraults, Aubérys, and Pasquiers as were
still to be found in the country, probably distant kinsmen of Mary's
and mine, were lawyers, doctors, or priests, or had gone into trade and
become respectably uninteresting; such as they were, they would scarcely
have cared to claim kinship with such as I.
But a hundred years ago and more these were names of importance in Maine
and Anjou; their bearers were descended for the most part from younger
branches of houses which in the Middle Ages had intermarried with all
there was of the best in France; and although they were looked down upon
by the _noblesse_ of the court and Versailles, as were all the
provincial nobility, they held their own well in their own country;
feasting, hunting, and shooting with each other; dancing and fiddling
and making love and intermarrying; and blowing glass, and growing richer
and richer, till the Revolution came and blew them and their glass into
space, and with them many greater than themselves, but few better. And
all record of them and of their doings, pleasant and genial people as
they were, is lost, and can only be recalled by a dream.
Verny le Moustier was not the least interesting of these old manors.
It had been built three hundred years ago, on the site of a still older
monastery (whence its name); the ruined walls of the old abbey were (and
are) still extant in the house-garden, covered with apricot and pear and
peach trees, which had been sown or planted by our common ancestress
when she was a bride.
Count Hector, who took a great pleasure in explaining all the past
history of the place to Mary, had built himself a fine new house in
what remained of the old park, and a quarter of a mile away from the
old manor-house. Every room of the latter was shown to her; old wood
panels still remained, prettily painted in a by-gone fashion; old
documents, and parchment deeds, and leases concerning fish-ponds,
farms, and the like, were brought out for her inspection, signed by
my grandfather Pasquier, my great-grandfather Boismorinel, and our
great-great-grandmother and her husband, Mathurin Budes, the lord of
Verny le Moustier; and the tradition of Gatienne, _la belle Verrière_
(also nicknamed _la reine de Hongrie_, it seems) still lingered in the
county; and many old people still remembered, more or less correctly,
"Le Chant du Triste Commensal," which a hundred years ago had been in
everybody's mouth.
She was said to have been the tallest and handsomest woman in Anjou, of
an imperious will and very masculine character, but immensely popular
among rich and poor alike; of indomitable energy, and with a finger in
every pie; but always more for the good of others than her own--a
typical, managing, business-like French woman, and an exquisite
musician to boot.
Such was our common ancestress, from whom, no doubt, we drew our love of
music and our strange, almost hysterical susceptibility to the power of
sound; from whom had issued those two born nightingales of our
race--Seraskier, the violinist, and my father, the singer. And, strange
to say, her eyebrows met at the bridge of her nose just like mine, and
from under them beamed the luminous, black-fringed, gray-blue eyes of
Mary, that suffered eclipse whenever their owners laughed or smiled!
[Illustration]
During this interesting journey of Mary's in the flesh, we met every
night at "Magna sed Apta" in the spirit, as usual; and I was made to
participate in every incident of it.
We sat by the magic window, and had for our entertainment, now the
Verrerie de Verny le Moustier in its present state, all full of modern
life, color, and sound, steam and gas, as she had seen it a few hours
before; now the old château as it was a hundred years ago; dim and
indistinct, as though seen by nearsighted eyes at the close of a gray,
misty afternoon in late autumn through a blurred window-pane, with busy
but silent shadows moving about--silent, because at first we could not
hear their speech; it was too thin for our mortal ears, even in this
dream within our dream! Only Gatienne, the authoritative and commanding
Gatienne, was faintly audible.
Then we would go down and mix with them. Thus, at one moment, we would
be in the midst of a charming old-fashioned French family group of
shadows: Gatienne, with her lovely twin-daughters Jeanne and Anne, and
her gardeners round her, all trailing young peach and apricot trees
against what still remained of the ancient buttresses and walls of the
Abbaye de Verny le Moustier--all this more than a hundred years ago--the
pale sun of a long-past noon casting the fainter shadows of these faint
shadows on the shadowy garden-path.
Then, presto! Changing the scene as one changes a slide in a
magic-lantern, we would skip a century, and behold!
Another French family group, equally charming, on the self-same spot,
but in the garb of to-day, and no longer shadowy or mute by any means.
Little trees have grown big; big trees have disappeared to make place
for industrious workshops and machinery; but the old abbey walls have
been respected, and gay, genial father, and handsome mother, and lovely
daughters, all pressing on "la belle Duchesse Anglaise" peaches and
apricots of her great-great-grandmother's growing.
For this amiable family of the Chamorin became devoted to Mary in a very
short time--that is, the very moment they first saw her; and she never
forgot their kindness, courtesy, and hospitality; they made her feel in
five minutes as though she had known them for many years.
I may as well state here that a few months later she received from
Mademoiselle du Chamorin (with a charming letter) the identical violin
that had once belonged to _la belle Verrière_, and which Count Hector
had found in the possession of an old farmer--the great-grandson of
Gatienne's coachman--and had purchased, that he might present it as a
New-year's gift to her descendant, the Duchess of Towers.
It is now mine, alas! I cannot play it; but it amuses and comforts me to
hold in my hand, when broad and wide awake, an instrument that Mary and
I have so often heard and seen in our dream, and which has so often rung
in by-gone days with the strange melody that has had so great an
influence on our lives. Its aspect, shape, and color, every mark and
stain of it, were familiar to us before we had ever seen it with the
bodily eye or handled it with the hand of flesh. It thus came straight
to us out of the dim and distant past, heralded by the ghost of itself!
* * * * *
To return. Gradually, by practice and the concentration of our united
will, the old-time figures grew to gain substance and color, and their
voices became perceptible; till at length there arrived a day when we
could move among them, and hear them and see them as distinctly as we
could our own immediate progenitors close by--as Gogo and Mimsey, as
Monsieur le Major, and the rest.
The child who went about hand in hand with the white-haired lady (whose
hair was only powdered) and fed the pigeons was my grandmother, Jeanne
de Boismorinel (who married François Pasquier de la Marière). It was her
father who wore red heels to his shoes, and made her believe she could
manufacture little cocked-hats in colored glass; she had lived again in
me whenever, as a child, I had dreamed that exquisite dream.
I could now evoke her at will; and, with her, many buried memories were
called out of nothingness into life.
Among other wonderful things, I heard the red-heeled gentleman, M. de
Boismorinel (my great-grandfather), sing beautiful old songs by Lulli
and others to the spinet, which he played charmingly a rare
accomplishment in those days. And lo! these tunes were tunes that had
risen oft and unbidden in my consciousness, and I had fondly imagined
that I had composed them myself--little impromptus of my own. And lo,
again! His voice, thin, high, nasal, but very sympathetic and musical,
was that never still small voice that has been singing unremittingly for
more than half a century in the unswept, ungarnished corner of my brain
where all the cobwebs are.
[Illustration: "THAT NEVER STILL SMALL VOICE."]
And these cobwebs?
Well, I soon became aware, by deeply diving into my inner consciousness
when awake and at my daily prison toil (which left the mind singularly
clear and free), that I was full, quite full, of slight elusive
reminiscences which were neither of my waking life nor of my dream-life
with Mary: reminiscences of sub-dreams during sleep, and belonging to
the period of my childhood and early youth; sub-dreams which no doubt
had been forgotten when I woke, at which time I could only remember the
surface dreams that had just preceded my waking.
Ponds, rivers, bridges, roads, and streams, avenues of trees, arbors,
windmills and water-mills, corridors and rooms, church functions,
village fairs, festivities, men and women and animals, all of another
time and of a country where I had never set my foot, were familiar to my
remembrance. I had but to dive deep enough into myself, and there they
were; and when night came, and sleep, and "Magna sed Apta," I could
re-evoke them all, and make them real and complete for Mary and myself.
That these subtle reminiscences were true antenatal memories was soon
proved by my excursions with Mary into the past; and her experience of
such reminiscences, and their corroboration, were just as my own. We
have heard and seen her grandfather play the "Chant du Triste Commensal"
to crowded concert-rooms, applauded to the echo by men and women long
dead and buried and forgotten!
Now, I believe such reminiscences to form part of the sub-consciousness
of others, as well as Mary's and mine, and that by perseverance in
self-research many will succeed in reaching them--perhaps even more
easily and completely than we have done.
It is something like listening for the overtones of a musical note; we
do not hear them at first, though they are there, clamoring for
recognition; and when at last we hear them, we wonder at our former
obtuseness, so distinct are they.
Let a man with an average ear, however uncultivated, strike the C low
down on a good piano-forte, keeping his foot on the loud pedal. At first
he will hear nothing but the rich fundamental note C.
But let him become _expectant_ of certain other notes; for instance, of
the C in the octave immediately above, then the G immediately above
that, then the E higher still; he will hear them all in time as clearly
as the note originally struck; and, finally, a shrill little ghostly and
quite importunate B flat in the treble will pulsate so loudly in his ear
that he will never cease to hear it whenever that low C is sounded.
By just such a process, only with infinitely more pains (and in the end
with what pleasure and surprise), will he grow aware in time of a dim,
latent, antenatal experience that underlies his own personal experience
of this life.
We also found that we were able not only to assist as mere spectators at
such past scenes as I have described (and they were endless), but also
to identify ourselves occasionally with the actors, and cease for the
moment to be Mary Seraskier and Peter Ibbetson. Notably was this the
case with Gatienne. We could each be Gatienne for a space (though never
both of us together), and when we resumed our own personality again we
carried back with it a portion of hers, never to be lost again--a
strange phenomenon, if the reader will but think of it, and
constituting the germ of a comparative personal immortality on earth.
At my work in prison, even, I could distinctly remember having been
Gatienne; so that for the time being, Gatienne, a provincial French
woman who lived a hundred years ago, was contentedly undergoing penal
servitude in an English jail during the latter half of the
nineteenth century.
A questionable privilege, perhaps.
But to make up for it, when she was not alive in me she could be brought
to life in Mary (only in one at a time, it seemed), and travel by rail
and steamer, and know the uses of gas and electricity, and read the
telegrams of "our special correspondents" in the _Times_, and taste her
nineteenth century under more favorable conditions.
Thus we took _la belle Verrière_ by turns, and she saw and heard things
she little dreamed of a hundred years ago. Besides, she was made to
share in the glories of "Magna sed Apta."
And the better we knew her the more we loved her; she was a very nice
person to descend from, and Mary and I were well agreed that we could
not have chosen a better great-great-grandmother, and wondered what each
of our seven others was like, for we had fifteen of these between us,
and as many great-great-grandfathers.
Thirty great-great-grandfathers and great-great-grandmothers had made us
what we were; it was no good fighting against them and the millions at
their backs.
Which of them all, strong, but gentle and shy, and hating the very
sight of blood, yet saw scarlet when he was roused, and thirsted for the
blood of his foe?
Which of them all, passionate and tender, but proud, high-minded, and
chaste, and with the world at her feet, was yet ready to "throw her cap
over the windmills," and give up all for love, deeming the world
well lost?
* * * * *
That we could have thus identified ourselves, only more easily and
thoroughly, with our own more immediate progenitors, we felt certain
enough. But after mature thought we resolved to desist from any further
attempt at such transfusion of identity, for sacred reasons of
discretion which the reader will appreciate.
But that this will be done some day (now the way has been made clear),
and also that the inconveniences and possible abuses of such a faculty
will be obviated or minimized by the ever-active ingenuity of mankind,
is to my mind a foregone conclusion.
It is too valuable a faculty to be left in abeyance, and I leave the
probable and possible consequences of its culture to the reader's
imagination--merely pointing out to him (as an inducement to cultivate
that faculty in himself) that if anything can keep us well within the
thorny path that leads to happiness and virtue, it is the certainty that
those who come after us will remember having been ourselves, if only in
a dream--even as the newly-hatched chicken has remembered in its egg the
use of eyes and ears and the rest, out of the fulness of its long
antenatal experience; and more fortunate than the helpless human infant
in this respect, can enter on the business and pleasures of its brief,
irresponsible existence at once!
* * * * *
Wherefore, oh reader, if you be but sound in mind and body, it most
seriously behooves you (not only for the sake of those who come after
you, but your own) to go forth and multiply exceedingly, to marry early
and much and often, and to select the very best of your kind in the
opposite sex for this most precious, excellent, and blessed purpose;
that all your future reincarnations (and hers), however brief, may be
many; and bring you not only joy and peace and pleasurable wonderment
and recreation, but the priceless guerdon of well-earned self-approval!
For whoever remembers having once been you, wakes you for the nonce out
of--nirvana, shall we say? His strength, his beauty, and his wit are
yours; and the felicity he derives from them in this earthly life is for
you to share, whenever this subtle remembrance of you stirs in his
consciousness; and you can never quite sink back again into--nirvana,
till all your future wakers shall cease to be!
It is like a little old-fashioned French game we used to play at Passy,
and which is not bad for a dark, rainy afternoon: people sit all round
in a circle, and each hands on to his neighbor a spill or a
lucifer-match just blown out, but in which a little live spark still
lingers; saying, as he does so--
_"Petit bonhomme vit encore!"_
And he, in whose hand the spark becomes extinct, has to pay forfeit and
retire--"Hélas! petit bonhomme n'est plus! ... Pauv' petit bonhomme!"
Ever thus may a little live spark of your own individual consciousness,
when the full, quick flame of your actual life here below is
extinguished, be handed down mildly incandescent to your remotest
posterity. May it never quite go out--it need not! May you ever be able
to say of yourself, from generation to generation, "Petit bonhomme vit
encore!" and still keep one finger at least in the pleasant earthly pie!
And, reader, remember so to order your life on earth that the memory of
you (like that of Gatienne, la belle Verrière de Verny le Moustier) may
smell sweet and blossom in the dust--a memory pleasant to recall--to
this end that its recallings and its recallers may be as numerous as
filial love and ancestral pride can make them....
And oh! looking _backward_ (as _we_ did), be tender to the failings of
your forbears, who little guessed when alive that the secrets of their
long buried hearts should one day be revealed to _you_! Their faults are
really your own, like the faults of your innocent, ignorant childhood,
so to say, when you did not know better, as you do now; or will
soon, thanks to
_"Le Chant du Triste Commensal!"_
* * * * *
Wherefore, also, beware and be warned in time, ye tenth transmitters of
a foolish face, ye reckless begetters of diseased or puny bodies, with
hearts and brains to match! Far down the corridors of time shall
club-footed retribution follow in your footsteps, and overtake you at
every turn! Most remorselessly, most vindictively, will you be aroused,
in sleepless hours of unbearable misery (future-waking nightmares), from
your false, uneasy dream of death; to participate in an inheritance of
woe still worse than yours--worse with all the accumulated interest of
long years and centuries of iniquitous self-indulgence, and poisoned by
the sting of a self-reproach that shall never cease till the last of
your tainted progeny dies out, and finds his true nirvana, and yours, in
the dim, forgetful depths of interstellar space!
* * * * *
And here let me most conscientiously affirm that, partly from my keen
sense of the solemnity of such an appeal, and the grave responsibility I
take upon myself in making it; but more especially in order to impress
you, oh reader, with the full significance of this apocalyptic and
somewhat minatory utterance (that it may haunt your finer sense during
your midnight hours of introspective self-communion), I have done my
best, my very best, to couch it in the obscurest and most unintelligible
phraseology I could invent. If I have failed to do this, if I have
unintentionally made any part of my meaning clear, if I have once
deviated by mistake into what might almost appear like sense--mere
common-sense--it is the fault of my half-French and wholly imperfect
education. I am but a poor scribe!
Thus roughly have I tried to give an account of this, the most
important of our joint discoveries in the strange new world revealed to
us by chance. More than twenty years of our united lives have been
devoted to the following out of this slender clew--with what surprising
results will, I trust, be seen in subsequent volumes.
We have not had time to attempt the unravelling of our English ancestry
as well--the Crays, and the Desmonds, the Ibbetsons, and Biddulphs,
etc.--which connects us with the past history of England. The farther we
got back into France, the more fascinating it became, and the
easier--and the more difficult to leave.
What an unexampled experience has been ours! To think that we have
seen--actually seen--_de nos propres yeux vu_--Napoleon Bonaparte
himself, the arch-arbiter of the world, on the very pinnacle of his
pride and power; in his little cocked hat and gray double-breasted
overcoat, astride his white charger, with all his staff around him, just
as he has been so often painted! Surely the most impressive,
unforgettable, ineffaceable little figure in all modern history, and
clothed in the most cunningly imagined make-up that ever theatrical
costumier devised to catch the public eye and haunt the public memory
for ages and ages yet to come!
It is a singularly new, piquant, and exciting sensation to stare in
person, and as in the present, at bygone actualities, and be able to
foretell the past and remember the future all in one!
To think that we have even beheld him before he was first consul--slim
and pale, his lank hair dangling down his neck and cheeks, if possible
more impressive still as innocent as a child of all that lay before him!
Europe at his feet--the throne--Waterloo-St. Helena--the Iron English
Duke--the pinnacle turned into a pillory so soon!
_"O corse à cheveux plats, que la France était belle Au soleil de
Messidor!"_
And Mirabeau and Robespierre, and Danton and Marat and Charlotte Corday!
we have seen them too; and Marie Antoinette and the fish-wives, and "the
beautiful head of Lamballe" (on its pike!) ... and watched the tumbrils
go by to the Place du Carrousel, and gazed at the guillotine by
moonlight--silent and terror-stricken, our very hearts in our mouths....
And in the midst of it all, ridiculous stray memories of Madame Tussaud
would come stealing into our ghastly dream of blood and retribution,
mixing up past and present and future in a manner not to be described,
and making us smile through our tears!
Then we were present (several times!) at the taking of the Bastille, and
indeed witnessed most of the stormy scenes of that stormy time, with our
Carlyle in our hands; and often have we thought, and with many a hearty
laugh, what fun it must be to write immortal histories, with never an
eye-witness to contradict you!
And going further back we have haunted Versailles in the days of its
splendor, and drunk our fill of all the glories of the court of
Louis XIV!
What imposing ceremonials, what stupendous royal functions have we not
attended--where all the beauty, wit, and chivalry of France, prostrate
with reverence and awe (as in the very presence of a god), did loyal
homage to the greatest monarch this world has ever seen--while we sat
by, on the very steps of his throne, as he solemnly gave out his royal
command! and laughed aloud under his very nose--the shallow, silly,
pompous little snob--and longed to pull it! and tried to disinfect his
greasy, civet-scented, full-bottomed wig with wholesome whiffs from a
nineteenth-century regalia!
Nothing of that foolish but fascinating period escaped us. Town, hamlet,
river, forest, and field; royal palace, princely castle, and starving
peasants' hut; pulpit, stage, and salon; port, camp, and marketplace;
tribunal and university; factory, shop, studio, smithy; tavern and
gambling-hell and den of thieves; convent and jail, torture-chamber and
gibbet-close, and what not all!
And at every successive step our once desponding, over-anxious,
over-burdened latter-day souls have swelled with joy and pride and hope
at the triumphs of our own day all along the line! Yea, even though we
have heard the illustrious Bossuet preach, and applauded Molière in one
of his own plays, and gazed at and listened to (and almost forgiven)
Racine and Corneille, and Boileau and Fénélon, and the good
Lafontaine--those five ruthless persecutors of our own innocent French
childhood!
And still ascending the stream of time, we have hobnobbed with Montaigne
and Rabelais, and been personally bored by Malherbe, and sat at
Ronsard's feet, and ridden by Froissart's side, and slummed with
François Villon--in what enchanted slums! ...
François Villon! Think of that, ye fond British bards and bardlets
of to-day--ye would-be translators and imitators of that
never-to-be-translated, never-to-be-imitated lament, the immortal
_Ballade des Dames du Temps jadis_!
And while I speak of it, I may as well mention that we have seen them
too, or some of them--those fair ladies _he_ had never seen, and who had
already melted away before his coming, like the snows of yester year,
_les neiges d'antan!_ Bertha, with the big feet; Joan of Arc, the good
Lorrainer (what would she think of her native province now!); the very
learned Héloïse, for love of whom one Peter Esbaillart, or Abélard (a
more luckless Peter than even I!), suffered such cruel indignities at
monkish hands; and that haughty, naughty queen, in her Tower of Nesle,
_"Qui commanda que Buridan Fut jecté en ung Sac en Seine...."_
Yes, we have seen them with the eye, and heard them speak and sing, and
scold and jest, and laugh and weep, and even pray! And I have sketched
them, as you shall see some day, good reader! And let me tell you that
their beauty was by no means maddening: the standard of female
loveliness has gone up, even in France! Even _la très sage Héloïs_ was
scarcely worth such a sacrifice as--but there! Possess your soul in
patience; all that, and it is all but endless, will appear in due time,
with such descriptions and illustrations as I flatter myself the world
has never bargained for, and will value as it has never valued any
historical records yet!
Day after day, for more than twenty years, Mary has kept a voluminous
diary (in a cipher known to us both); it is now my property, and in it
every detail of our long journey into the past has been set down.
Contemporaneously, day by day (during the leisure accorded to me by the
kindness of Governor----) I have drawn over again from memory the
sketches of people and places I was able to make straight from nature
during those wonderful nights at "Magna sed Apta." I can guarantee the
correctness of them, and the fidelity of their likenesses; no doubt
their execution leaves much to be desired.
Both her task and mine (to the future publication of which this
autobiography is but an introduction) have been performed with the
minutest care and conscientiousness; no time or trouble have been
spared. For instance, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew alone, which we
were able to study from seventeen different points of view, cost us no
less than two months' unremitting labor.
As we reached further and further back through the stream of time, the
task became easier in a way; but we have had to generalize more, and
often, for want of time and space, to use types in lieu of individuals.
For with every successive generation the number of our progenitors
increased in geometrical progression (as in the problem of the nails in
the horseshoe) until a limit of numbers was reached--namely, the sum of
the inhabitants of the terrestrial globe. In the seventh century there
was not a person living in France (not to mention Europe) who was not in
the line of our direct ancestry, excepting, of course, those who had
died without issue and were mere collaterals.
[Illustration: "THE MAMMOTH."]
We have even just been able to see, as in a glass darkly, the faint
shadows of the Mammoth and the cave bear, and of the man who hunted and
killed and ate them, that he might live and prevail.
The Mammoth!
We have walked round him and under him as he browsed, and even _through_
him where he lay and rested, as one walks through the dun mist in a
little hollow on a still, damp morning; and turning round to look (at
the proper distance) there was the unmistakable shape again, just thick
enough to blot out the lines of the dim primeval landscape beyond, and
make a hole in the blank sky. A dread silhouette, thrilling our hearts
with awe--blurred and indistinct like a composite photograph--merely the
_type_, as it had been seen generally by all who had ever seen it at
all, every one of whom _(exceptis excipiendis)_ was necessarily an
ancestor of ours, and of every man now living.
There it stood or reclined, the monster, like the phantom of an
overgrown hairy elephant; we could almost see, or fancy we saw, the
expression of his dull, cold, antediluvian eye--almost perceive a
suggestion of russet-brown in his fell.
Mary firmly believed that we should have got in time to our hairy
ancestor with pointed ears and a tail, and have been able to ascertain
whether he was arboreal in his habits or not. With what passionate
interest she would have followed and studied and described him! And I!
With what eager joy, and yet with what filial reverence, I would have
sketched his likeness--with what conscientious fidelity as far as my poor
powers would allow! (For all we know to the contrary he may have been
the most attractive and engaging little beast that ever was, and far
less humiliating to descend from than many a titled yahoo of the
present day.)
Fate, alas, has willed that it should be otherwise, and on others, duly
trained, must devolve the delightful task of following up the clew we
have been so fortunate as to discover.
* * * * *
And now the time has come for me to tell as quickly as I may the story
of my bereavement--a bereavement so immense that no man, living or dead,
can ever have experienced the like; and to explain how it is that I have
not only survived it and kept my wits (which some people seem to doubt),
but am here calmly and cheerfully writing my reminiscences, just as if I
were a famous Academician, actor, novelist, statesman, or general
diner-out--blandly garrulous and well-satisfied with myself and
the world.
During the latter years of our joint existence Mary and I engrossed by
our fascinating journey through the centuries, had seen little or
nothing of each other's outer lives, or rather I had seen nothing of
hers (for she still came back sometimes with me to my jail); I only saw
her as she chose to appear in our dream.
Perhaps at the bottom of this there may have been a feminine dislike on
her part to be seen growing older, for at "Magna sed Apta" we were
always twenty-eight or thereabouts--at our very best. We had truly
discovered the fountain of perennial youth, and had drunk thereof! And
in our dream we always felt even younger than we looked; we had the
buoyancy of children and their freshness.
Often had we talked of death and separation and the mystery beyond, but
only as people do for whom such contingencies are remote; yet in reality
time flew as rapidly for us as for others, although we were less
sensible of its flight.
There came a day when Mary's exuberant vitality, so constantly
overtaxed, broke down, and she was ill for a while; although that did
not prevent our meeting as usual, and there was no perceptible
difference in her when we met. But I am certain that in reality she was
never quite the same again as she had been, and the dread possibility of
parting any day would come up oftener in our talk; in our minds, only
too often, and our minds were as one.
She knew that if I died first, everything I had brought into "Magna sed
Apta" (and little it was) would be there no more; even to my body, ever
lying supine on the couch by the enchanted window, it she had woke by
chance to our common life before I had, or remained after I had been
summoned away to my jail.
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 passion 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 gratitude and relief!
[Illustration: "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, Duchess 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 quantities--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 button 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....
* * * * *