Peter Ibbetson Part 33

Part Six

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Some petty annoyance to which I had been subjected by one of the prison authorities had kept me awake for a little while after I had gone to bed, so that when at last I awoke in "Magna sed Apta," and lay on my couch there (with that ever-fresh feeling of coming to life in heaven after my daily round of work in an earthly jail), I was conscious that Mary was there already, making coffee, the fragrance of which filled the room, and softly humming a tune as she did so--a quaint, original, but most beautiful tune, that thrilled me with indescribable emotion, for I had never heard it with the bodily ear before, and yet it was as familiar to me as "G.o.d save the Queen."

As I listened with rapt ears and closed eyes, wonderful scenes pa.s.sed before my mental vision: the beautiful white-haired lady of my childish dreams, leading a small _female_ child by the hand, and that child was myself; the pigeons and their tower, the stream and the water-mill; the white-haired young man with red heels to his shoes; a very fine lady, very tall, stout, and middle-aged, magnificently dressed in brocaded silk; a park with lawns and alleys and trees cut into trim formal shapes; a turreted castle--all kinds of charming scenes and people of another age and country.

"What on earth is that wonderful tune, Mary?" I exclaimed, when she had finished it.

"It's my favorite tune," she answered; "I seldom hum it for fear of wearing away its charm. I suppose that is why you have never heard it before. Isn't it lovely? I've been trying to lull you awake with it.

"My grandfather, the violinist, used to play it with variations of his own, and made it famous in his time; but it was never published, and it's now forgotten.

"It is called 'Le Chant du Triste Commensal,' and was composed by his grandmother, a beautiful French woman, who played the fiddle too; but not as a profession. He remembered her playing it when he was a child and she was quite an old lady, just as I remember _his_ playing it when I was a girl in Vienna, and he was a white-haired old man. She used to play holding her fiddle downward, on her knee, it seems; and always played in perfect tune, quite in the middle of the note, and with excellent taste and expression; it was her playing that decided his career. But she was like 'Single-speech Hamilton,' for this was the only thing she ever composed. She composed it under great grief and excitement, just after her husband had died from the bite of a wolf, and just before the birth of her twin-daughters--her only children--one of whom was my great-grandmother."

"And what was this wonderful old lady's name?"

"Gatienne Aubery; she married a Breton squire called Budes, who was a _gentilhomme verrier_ near St. Prest, in Anjou--that is, he made gla.s.s--decanters, water-bottles, tumblers, and all that, I suppose--in spite of his n.o.bility. It was not considered derogatory to do so; indeed, it was the only trade permitted to the _n.o.blesse_, and one had to be at least a squire to engage in it.

"She was a very notable woman, _la belle Verriere_, as she was called; and she managed the gla.s.s factory for many years after her husband's death, and made lots of money for her two daughters."

"How strange!" I exclaimed; "Gatienne Aubery! Dame du Brail--Budes--the names are quite familiar to me. Mathurin Budes, Seigneur de Monhoudeard et de Verny le Moustier."

"Yes, that's it. How wonderful that you should know! One daughter, Jeanne, married my greatgrandfather, an officer in the Hungarian army; and Seraskier, the fiddler, was their only child. The other (so like her sister that only her mother could distinguish them) was called Anne, and married a Comte de Bois something."

"Boismorinel. Why, all those names are in my family too. My father used to make me paint their arms and quarterings when I was a child, on Sunday mornings, to keep me quiet. Perhaps we are related by blood, you and I."

"Oh, that would be too delightful!" said Mary. "I wonder how we could find out? Have you no family papers?"

_I_. "There were lots of them, in a horse-hair trunk, but I don't know where they are now. What good would family papers have been to me?

Ibbetson took charge of them when I changed my name. I suppose his lawyers have got them."

_She_. "Happy thought; we will do without lawyers. Let us go round to your old house, and make Gogo paint the quarterings over again for us, and look over his shoulder."

Happy thought, indeed! We drank our coffee and went straight to my old house, with the wish (immediate father to the deed) that Gogo should be there, once more engaged in his long forgotten accomplishment of painting coats of arms.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and we found Gogo hard at work at a small table by an open window. The floor was covered with old deeds and parchments and family papers; and le beau Pasquier, at another table, was deep in his own pedigree, making notes on the margin--an occupation in which he delighted--and unconsciously humming as he did so. The sunny room was filled with the penetrating soft sound of his voice, as a conservatory is filled with the scent of its flowers.

By the strangest inconsistency my dear father, a genuine republican at heart (for all his fancied loyalty to the white lily of the Bourbons), a would-be scientist, who in reality was far more impressed by a clever and industrious French mechanic than by a prince (and would, I think, have preferred the former's friends.h.i.+p and society), yet took both a pleasure and a pride in his quaint old parchments and obscure quarterings. So would I, perhaps, if things had gone differently with me--for what true democrat, however intolerant of such weakness in others, ever thinks lightly of his own personal claims to aristocratic descent, shadowy as these may be!

He was fond of such proverbs and aphorisms as "n.o.blesse oblige," "bon sang ne sait mentir," "bon chien cha.s.se de race," etc., and had even invented a little aphorism of his own, to comfort him when he was extra hard up, "bon gentilhomme n'a jamais honte de la misere." All of which sayings, to do him justice, he reserved for home consumption exclusively, and he would have been the first to laugh on hearing them in the mouth of any one else.

Of his one great gift, the treasure in his throat, he thought absolutely nothing at all.

"Ce que c'est que de nous!"

Gogo was coloring the quarterings of the Pasquier family--_la maison de Pasquier_, as it was called--in a printed book (_Armorial General du Maine et de l'Anjou_), according to the instructions that were given underneath. He used one of Madame Liard's three-sou boxes, and the tints left much to be desired.

We looked over his shoulder and read the picturesque old jargon, which sounds even prettier and more comforting and more idiotic in French than in English. It ran thus--

"Pasquier (branche des Seigneurs de la Mariere et du Hirel), party de 4 pieces et coupe de 2.

"Au premier, de Herault, qui est de ecartele de gueules et d'argent.

"Au deux, de Budes, qui est d'or au pin de sinople.

"Au trois, d'Aubery--qui est d'azur a trois croissants d'argent.

"Au quatre, de Busson qui est d'argent au lyon de sable arme couronne et lampa.s.se d'or," And so on, through the other quarterings: Bigot, Epinay, Malestroit, Mathefelon. And finally, "Sur le tout, de Pasquier qui est d'or a trois lyons d'azur, au franc quartier ecartele des royames de Castille et de Leon."

Presently my mother came home from the English chapel in the Rue Marboeuf, where she had been with Sarah, the English maid. Lunch was announced, and we were left alone with the family papers. With infinite precautions, for fear of blurring the dream, we were able to find what we wanted to find--namely, that we were the great-great-grandchildren and only possible living descendants of Gatienne, the fair gla.s.smaker and composer of "Le Chant du Triste Commensal."

Thus runs the descent--

Jean Aubery, Seigneur du Brail, married Anne Busson. His daughter, Gatienne Aubery, Dame du Brail, married Mathurin Budes, Seigneur de Verny le Moustier et de Monhoudeard.

Anne Budes, Dame de Jeanne Budes, Dame du Verny le Moustier, married Brail et de Monhoudeard, Guy Herault, Comte married Ulric de Boismorinel. Seraskier.

Jeanne Francois Herault de Otto Seraskier, violinist, Boismorinel married married Teresa Pulci.

Francois Pasquier de la Mariere.

Jean Pasquier de la Mariere Johann Seraskier, M.D., married Catherine married Laura Desmond.

Ibbetson-Biddulph.

Pierre Pasquier de la Mariere Mary Seraskier, d.u.c.h.ess of (_alias_ Peter Ibbetson, Towers.

convict).

We walked back to "Magna sed Apta" in great joy, and there we celebrated our newly-discovered kins.h.i.+p by a simple repast, out of _my_ repertoire 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 a 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 verriere 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 Herault, Comtesse de Boismorinel (_nee_ Budes), while the small child Jeanne de Boismorinel (afterwards Dame Pasquier de la Mariere) 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 gla.s.s-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 gla.s.s-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 Chateau du Brail, the manor of the Auberys, had become a farm-house.