Peter Ibbetson Part 27

The facetious postman, Yverdon, went in at the gate of my old garden; the bell rang as he pushed it, and I followed him.

Under the apple-tree, which was putting forth shoots of blossom in profusion, sat my mother and Monsieur le Major. My mother took the letter from the postman's hand as he said, "Pour Vous? Oh yes, Madame Pasquier, G.o.d sev ze Kveen!" and paid the postage. It was from Colonel Ibbetson, then in Ireland, and not yet a colonel.

Medor lay snoring on the gra.s.s, and Gogo and Mimsey were looking at the pictures in the _musee des familles._

In a garden chair lolled Dr. Seraskier, apparently asleep, with his long porcelain pipe across his knees.

Madame Seraskier, in a yellow nankeen gown with gigot sleeves, was cutting curl-papers out of the _Const.i.tutionnel_.

I gazed on them all with unutterable tenderness. I was gazing on them perhaps for the last time.

I called out to them by name.

"Oh, speak to me, beloved shades! Oh, my father! oh, mother, I want you so desperately! Come out of the past for a few seconds, and give me some words of comfort! I'm in such woful plight! If you could only _know_ ..."

But they could neither hear nor see me.

Then suddenly another figure stepped forth from behind the apple-tree--no old-fas.h.i.+oned, unsubstantial shadow of by-gone days that one can only see and hear, and that cannot hear and see one back again; but one in all the splendid fulness of life, a pillar of help and strength--Mary, d.u.c.h.ess of Towers!

I fell on my knees as she came to me with both hands extended.

"Oh, Mr. Ibbetson, I have been seeking and waiting for you here night after night! I have been frantic! If you hadn't come at last, I must have thrown everything to the winds, and gone to see you in Newgate, waking and before the world, to have a talk with you--an _abboccamento_.

I suppose you couldn't sleep, or were unable to dream."

I could not answer at first. I could only cover her hands with kisses, as I felt her warm life-current mixing with mine--a rapture!

And then I said--

"I swear to you by all I hold most sacred--by _my_ mother's memory and _yours_--by yourself--that I never meant to take Ibbetson's life, or even strike him; the miserable blow was dealt...."

"As if you need tell me that! As if I didn't know you of old, my poor friend, kindest and gentlest of men! Why, I am holding your hands, and see into the very depths of your heart!"

(I put down all she said as she said it. Of course I am not, and never have been, what her old affectionate regard made me seem in her eyes, any more than I am the bloodthirsty monster I pa.s.sed for. Woman-like, she was the slave of her predilections.)

"And now, Mr. Ibbetson," she went on, "let me first of all tell you, for a certainty, that the sentence will be commuted. I saw the Home Secretary three or four hours ago. The real cause of your deplorable quarrel with your uncle is an open secret. His character is well known.

A Mrs. Gregory (whom you knew in Hops.h.i.+re as Mrs. Deane) has been with the Home Secretary this afternoon. Your chivalrous reticence at the trial...."

"Oh," I interrupted, "I don't care to live any longer! Now that I have met you once more, and that you have forgiven me and think well of me in spite of everything, I am ready to die. There has never been anybody but you in the world for _me_--never a ghost of a woman, never even a friend since my mother died and yours. Between that time and the night I first saw you at Lady Cray's concert, I can scarcely be said to have lived at all. I fed on sc.r.a.ps of remembrance. You see I have no talent for making new friends, but oh, such a genius for fidelity to old ones! I was waiting for Mimsey to come back again, I suppose, the one survivor to me of that sweet time, and when she came at last I was too stupid to recognize her. She suddenly blazed and dazzled into my poor life like a meteor, and filled it with a maddening love and pain. I don't know which of the two has been the sweetest; both have been my life. You cannot realize what it has been. Trust me, I have lived my fill. I am ready and willing to die. It is the only perfect consummation I can think of.

Nothing can ever equal this moment--nothing on earth or in heaven. And if I were free to-morrow, life would not be worth having without _you_.

I would not take it as a gift."

She sat down by me on the gra.s.s with her hands clasped across her knees, close to the unconscious shadows of our kith and kin, within hearing of their happy talk and laughter.

Suddenly we both heard Mimsey say to Gogo--

"O, ils sont joliment bien ensemble, le Prince Charmant et la fee Tarapatapoum!"

We looked at each other and actually laughed aloud. The d.u.c.h.ess said--

"Was there ever, since the world began, such a _muse en scene_, and for such a meeting, Mr. Ibbetson? Think of it! Conceive it! _I_ arranged it all. I chose a day when they were all together. As they would say in America, _I_ am the boss of this particular dream."

And she laughed again, through her tears, that enchanting ripple of a laugh that closed her eyes and made her so irresistible.

"Was there ever," said I--"ever since the world began, such ecstasy as I feel now? After this what can there be for me but death--well earned and well paid for? Welcome and lovely death!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"You have not yet thought, Mr. Ibbetson--you have not realized what life may have in store for you if--if all you have said about your affection for me is true. Oh, it is too terrible for me to think of, I know, that you, scarcely more than a boy, should have to spend the rest of your life in miserable confinement and unprofitable monotonous toil. But there is _another_ side to that picture.

"Now listen to your old friend's story--poor little Mimsey's confession.

I will make it as short as I can.

"Do you remember when you first saw me, a sickly, plain, sad little girl, at the avenue gate, twenty years ago?

"Le Pere Francois was killing a fowl--cutting its throat with a clasp-knife--and the poor thing struggled frantically in his grasp as its blood flowed into the gutter. A group of boys were looking on in great glee, and all the while Pere Francois was gossiping with M. le Cure, who didn't seem to mind in the least. I was fainting with pity and horror. Suddenly you came out of the school opposite with Alfred and Charlie Plunket, and saw it all, and in a fit of n.o.ble rage you called Pere Francois a 'sacred pig of a.s.sa.s.sin'--which, as you know, is very rude in French--and struck him as near his face as you could reach.

"Have you forgotten that? Ah, _I_ haven't! It was not an effectual deed, perhaps, and certainly came too late to save the fowl. Besides, Pere Francois struck you back again, and left some of the fowl's blood on your cheek. It was a baptism! You became on the spot my hero--my angel of light. Look at Gogo over there. Is he beautiful enough? That was _you_, Mr. Ibbetson.

"M. le Cure said something about 'ces _Anglais_' who go mad if a man whips his horse, and yet pay people to box each other to death. Don't you really remember? Oh, the recollection to _me!_

"And that little language we invented and used to talk so fluently!

Don't you _rappel_ it to yourself? 'Ne le _recollectes_ tu pas?' as we would have said in those days, for it used to be _thee_ and _thou_ with us then.

"Well, at all events, you must remember how for five happy years we were so often together; how you drew for me, read to me, played with me; took my part in everything, right or wrong; carried me pickaback when I was tired. Your drawings--I have them all. And oh! you were so funny sometimes! How you used to make mamma laugh, and M. le Major! Just look at Gogo again. Have you forgotten what he is doing now? I haven't.... He has just changed the _musee des familles_ for the _Penny Magazine_, and is explaining Hogarth's pictures of the 'Idle and Industrious Apprentices' to Mimsey, and they are both agreed that the idle one is much the less objectionable of the two!

"Mimsey looks pa.s.sive enough, with her thumb in her mouth, doesn't she?

Her little heart is so full of grat.i.tude and love for Gogo that she can't speak. She can only suck her thumb. Poor, sick, ungainly child!

She would like to be Gogo's slave--she would die for Gogo. And her mother adores Gogo too; she is almost jealous of dear Madame Pasquier for having so sweet a son. In just one minute from now, when she has cut that last curl-paper, poor long-dead mamma will call Gogo to her and give him a good 'Irish hug,' and make him happy for a week. Wait a minute and see. _There!_ What did I tell you?

"Well, all that came to an end. Madame Pasquier went away and never came back, and so did Gogo. Monsieur and Madame Pasquier were dead, and dear mamma died in a week from the cholera. Poor heartbroken Mimsey was taken away to St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Leipsic, Venice, all over Europe, by her father, as heart-broken as herself.

"It was her wish and her father's that she should become a pianist by profession, and she studied hard for many years in almost every capital, and under almost every master in Europe, and she gave promise of success.

"And so, wandering from one place to another, she became a young woman--a greatly petted and spoiled and made-much-of young woman, Mr.

Ibbetson, although she says it who shouldn't; and had many suitors of all kinds and countries.

"But the heroic and angelic Gogo, with his lovely straight nose, and his hair _aux enfants d'Edouard_, and his dear little white silk chimney-pot hat and Eton jacket, was always enshrined in her memory, in her inmost heart, as the incarnation of all that was beautiful and brave and good.

But alas! what had become of this Gogo in the mean time? Ah, he was never even heard of--he was dead!

"Well, this long-legged, tender-hearted, grown-up young Mimsey of nineteen was attracted by a very witty and accomplished English attache at Vienna--a Mr. Harcourt, who seemed deeply in love with her, and wished her to be his wife.

"He was not rich, but Dr. Seraskier liked and trusted him so much that he dispossessed himself of almost everything he had to enable this young couple to marry--and they did. And truth compels me to admit that for a year they were very happy and contented with fate and each other.

"Then a great misfortune befell them both. In a most unexpected manner, through four or five consecutive deaths in Mr. Harcourt's family, he became, first, Lord Harcourt, and then the Duke of Towers. And since then, Mr. Ibbetson, I have not had an hour's peace or happiness.

"In the first place a son was born to me--a cripple, poor dear! and deformed from his birth; and as he grew older it soon became evident that he was also born without a mind.

"Then my unfortunate husband changed completely; he drank and gambled and worse, till we came to live together as strangers, and only spoke to each other in public and before the world...."