Chapter 35

The happiness, the enchantment of it all! Could it be that I was dead, that I had died suddenly in my sleep, at the hotel in the Rue de la Michodière? Could it be that the Duchess of Towers was dead too--had been killed by some accident on her way from St. Cloud to Paris? and that, both having died, so near each other, we had begun our eternal after-life in this heavenly fashion?

That was too good to be true, I reflected; some instinct told me that this was not death, but transcendent earthly life--and also, alas! that it would not endure forever!

I was deeply conscious of every feature in her face, every movement of her body, every detail of her dress,--more so than I could have been in actual life,--and said to myself, "Whatever this is, it is no dream." But I felt there was about me the unspeakable elation which can come to us only in our waking moments when we are at our very best; and then only feebly, in comparison with this, and to many of us never. It never had to me, since that morning when I had found the little wheelbarrow.

I was also conscious, however, that the avenue itself had a slight touch of the dream in it. It was no longer quite right, and was getting out of drawing and perspective, so to speak. I had lost my stay--the touch of her hand.

"Are you still dreaming true, Mr. Ibbetson?"

"I am afraid not quite," I replied.

"You must try by yourself a little--try hard. Look at this house; what is written on the portico?"

I saw written in gold letters the words "Tête Noire," and said so.

She rippled with laughter, and said, "No, try again;" and just touched me with the tip of her finger for a moment.

I tried again, and said "Parvis Notre Dame."

"That's rather better," she said, and touched me again; and I read, "Parva sed Apta," as I had so often read there before in old days.

"And now look at that old house over there," pointing to my old home; "how many windows are there in the top story?"

I said seven.

"No; there are five. Look again!" and there were five; and the whole house was exactly, down to its minutest detail, as it had been once upon a time. I could see Thérèse through one of the windows, making my bed.

"That's better," said the duchess; "you will soon do it--it's very easy--_ce n'est que le premier pas_! My father taught me; you must always sleep on your back with your arms above your head, your hands clasped under it and your feet crossed, the right one over the left, unless you are left-handed; and you must never for a moment cease thinking of where you want to be in your dream till you are asleep and get there; and you must never forget in your dream where and what you were when awake. You must join the dream on to reality. Don't forget. And now I will say good-by; but before I go, give me both your hands, and look round everywhere as far as your eye can see."

It was hard to look away from her; her face drew my eyes, and through them all my heart; but I did as she told me, and took in the whole familiar scene, even to the distant woods of Ville d'Avray, a glimpse of which was visible through an opening in the trees; even to the smoke of a train making its way to Versailles, miles off; and the old telegraph, working its black arms on the top of Mont Valérien.

"Is it all right?" she asked. "That's well. Henceforward, whenever you come here, you will be safe as far as your sight can reach,--from this spot,--all through my introduction. See what it is to have a friend at court! No more little dancing jailers! And then you can gradually get farther by yourself.

"Out there, through that park, leads to the Bois de Boulogne--there's a gap in the hedge you can get through; but mind and make everything plain in front of you--_true_, before you go a step farther, or else you'll have to wake and begin it all over again. You have only to will it, and think yourself as awake, and it will come--on condition, of course, that you have been there before. And mind, also, you must take care how you touch things or people--you may hear, see, and smell; but you mustn't touch, nor pick flowers or leaves, nor move things about. It blurs the dream, like breathing on a window-pane. I don't know why, but it does. You must remember that everything here is dead and gone by. With you and me it is different; we're alive and real--that is, _I_ am; and there would seem to be no mistake about your being real too, Mr. Ibbetson, by the grasp of your hands. But you're _not_; and why you are here, and what business you have in this my particular dream, I cannot understand; no living person has ever come into it before. I can't make it out. I suppose it's because I saw your reality this afternoon, looking out of the window at the Tête Noire, and you are just a stray figment of my over-tired brain--a very agreeable figment, I admit; but you don't exist here just now--you can't possibly; you are somewhere else, Mr. Ibbetson; dancing at Mabille, perhaps, or fast asleep somewhere, and dreaming of French churches and palaces, and public fountains, like a good young British architect--otherwise I shouldn't talk to you like this, you may be sure!

"Never mind. I am very glad to dream that I have been of use to you, and you are very welcome here, if it amuses you to come--especially as you are only a false dream of mine, for what else _can_ you be? And now I must leave you: so good-by."

She disengaged her hands and laughed her angelic laugh, and then turned towards the park. I watched her tall straight figure and blowing skirts, and saw her follow some ladies and children into a thicket that I remembered well, and she was soon out of sight.

I felt as if all warmth had gone out of my life; as if a joy had taken flight; as if a precious something had withdrawn itself from my possession, and the gap in my periphery had closed again.

Long I stood in thought, with my eyes fixed on the spot where she had disappeared; and I felt inclined to follow, but then considered this would not have been discreet. For although she was only a false dream of mine, a mere recollection of the exciting and eventful day, a stray figment of my over-tired and excited brain--a _more_ than agreeable figment (what else _could_ she be!)--she was also a great lady, and had treated me, a perfect stranger and a perfect nobody, with singular courtesy and kindness; which I repaid, it is true, with a love so deep and strong that my very life was hers to do what she liked with, and always had been since I first saw her, and always would be as long as there was breath in my body! But this did not constitute an acquaintance without a proper introduction, even in France--even in a dream. Even in dreams one must be polite, even to stray figments of one's tired, sleeping brain.

And then what business had _she_ in _this_, _my_ particular dream--as she herself had asked of me?

But _was_ it a dream? I remembered my lodgings at Pentonville, that I had left yesterday morning. I remembered what I was--why I came to Paris; I remembered the very bedroom at the Paris hotel where I was now fast asleep, its loudly ticking clock, and all the meagre furniture. And here was I, broad awake and conscious in the middle of an old avenue that had long ceased to exist--that had been built over by a huge brick edifice covered with newly painted trellis-work. I saw it,--this edifice,--myself, only twelve hours ago. And yet here was everything as it had been when I was a child; and all through the agency of this solid phantom of a lovely young English duchess, whose warm gloved hands I had only this minute been holding in mine! The scent of her gloves was still in my palm. I looked at my watch; it marked twenty-three minutes to twelve. All this had happened in less than three-quarters of an hour!

Pondering over all this in hopeless bewilderment, I turned my steps towards my old home, and to my surprise, was just able to look over the garden wall, which I had once thought about ten feet high.

Under the old apple-tree in full bloom sat my mother, darning small socks; with her flaxen side-curls (as it was her fashion to wear them) half concealing her face. My emotion and astonishment were immense. My heart beat fast. I felt its pulse in my temples, and my breath was short.

At a little green table that I remembered well sat a small boy, rather quaintly dressed in a bygone fashion, with a frill round his wide shirt collar, and his golden hair cut quite close at the top, and rather long at the sides and back. It was Gogo Pasquier. He seemed a very nice little boy. He had pen and ink and copy-book before him, and a gilt-edged volume bound in red morocco. I knew it at a glance; it was 'Elegant Extracts.' The dog Médor lay asleep in the shade. The bees were droning among the nasturtiums and convolvulus.

A little girl ran up the avenue from the porter's lodge and pushed the garden gate, which rang the bell as it opened, and she went into the garden, and I followed her; but she took no notice of me, nor did the others. It was Mimsey Seraskier.

I went and sat at my mother's feet, and looked long in her face.

I must not speak to her nor touch her--not even touch her busy hand with my lips, or I should "blur the dream."

I got up and looked over the boy Gogo's shoulder. He was translating Gray's Elegy into French; he had not got very far, and seemed to be stumped by the line--

"And leaves the world to darkness and to me."

Mimsey was silently looking over his other shoulder, her thumb in her mouth, one arm on the back of his chair. She seemed to be stumped also; it was an awkward line to translate.

I stooped and put my hand to Médor's nose, and felt his warm breath. He wagged his rudiment of a tail, and whimpered in his sleep. Mimsey said:--

"Regarde Médor, comme il remue la queue! _C'est le Prince Charmant qui lui chatouille le bout du nez._"

Said my mother, who had not spoken hitherto:--

"Do speak English, Mimsey, please."

O my God! My mother's voice, so forgotten, yet so familiar, so unutterably dear! I rushed to her and threw myself on my knees at her feet, and seized her hand and kissed it, crying, "Mother, mother!"

A strange blur came over everything; the sense of reality was lost. All became as a dream--a beautiful dream, but only a dream; and I woke.

BARTY JOSSELIN AT SCHOOL

From 'The Martian'

From Harper's Magazine. Copyright, 1896, by Harper & Brothers

Indeed, even from his early boyhood, he was the most extraordinarily gifted creature I have ever known, or even heard of; a kind of spontaneous humorous Crichton to whom all things came easily--and life itself as an uncommonly good joke. During that summer term of 1847 I did not see very much of him. He was in the class below mine, and took up with Laferté and little Bussy-Rabutin, who were first-rate boys, and laughed at everything he said, and worshiped him. So did everybody else, sooner or later; indeed, it soon became evident that he was a most exceptional little person.

In the first place, his beauty was absolutely angelic, as will be readily believed by all who have known him since. The mere sight of him as a boy made people pity his father and mother for being dead!

Then he had a charming gift of singing little French and English ditties, comic or touching, with his delightful fresh young pipe, and accompanying himself quite nicely on either piano or guitar without really knowing a note of music. Then he could draw caricatures that we boys thought inimitable, much funnier than Cham's or Bertall's or Gavarni's, and collected and treasured up. I have dozens of them now--they make me laugh still, and bring back memories of which the charm is indescribable; and their pathos to me!

And then how funny he was himself, without effort, and with a fun that never failed! He was a born buffoon of the graceful kind,--more whelp or kitten than monkey--ever playing the fool, in and out of season, but somehow always apropos; and French boys love a boy for that more than anything else; or did in those days.

* * * * *

His constitution, inherited from a long line of frugal seafaring Norman ancestors (not to mention another long line of well-fed, well-bred Yorkshire squires), was magnificent. His spirits never failed. He could see the satellites of Jupiter with the naked eye; this was often tested by M. Dumollard, maître de mathématiques (et de cosmographie), who had a telescope, which, with a little good-will on the gazer's part, made Jupiter look as big as the moon, and its moons like stars of the first magnitude.

His sense of hearing was also exceptionally keen. He could hear a watch tick in the next room, and perceive very high sounds to which ordinary human ears are deaf (this was found out later); and when we played blindman's buff on a rainy day, he could, blindfolded, tell every boy he caught hold of--not by feeling him all over like the rest of us, but by the mere smell of his hair, or his hands, or his blouse! No wonder he was so much more alive than the rest of us! According to the amiable, modest, polite, delicately humorous, and ever tolerant and considerate Professor Max Nordau, this perfection of the olfactory sense proclaims poor Barty a degenerate! I only wish there were a few more like him, and that I were a little more like him myself!

By the way, how proud young Germany must feel of its enlightened Max, and how fond of him, to be sure! _Mes compliments!_

But the most astounding thing of all (it seems incredible, but all the world knows it by this time, and it will be accounted for later on) is that at certain times and seasons Barty knew by an infallible instinct _where the north was_, to a point. Most of my readers will remember his extraordinary evidence as a witness in the "Rangoon" trial, and how this power was tested in open court, and how important were the issues involved, and how he refused to give any explanation of a gift so extraordinary.

It was often tried at school by blindfolding him, and turning him round and round till he was giddy, and asking him to point out where the North Pole was, or the North Star, and seven or eight times out of ten the answer was unerringly right. When he failed, he knew beforehand that for the time being he had lost the power, but could never say why. Little Doctor Larcher could never get over his surprise at this strange phenomenon, nor explain it; and often brought some scientific friend from Paris to test it, who was equally nonplussed.

When cross-examined, Barty would merely say:--

"Quelquefois je sais--quelquefois je ne sais pas--mais quand je sais, je sais, et il n'y pas à s'y tromper!"

Indeed, on one occasion that I remember well a very strange thing happened; he not only pointed out the north with absolute accuracy, as he stood carefully blindfolded in the gymnastic ground, after having been turned and twisted again and again--but still blindfolded, he vaulted the wire fence and ran round to the refectory door, which served as the home at rounders, all of us following; and there he danced a surprising dance of his own invention, that he called 'La Paladine,' the most humorously graceful and grotesque exhibition I ever saw; and then, taking a ball out of his pocket, he shouted, "À l'amandier!" and threw the ball. Straight and swift it flew, and hit the almond tree, which was quite twenty yards off; and after this he ran round the yard from base to base, as at "la balle au camp," till he reached the camp again.

"If ever he goes blind," said the wondering M. Mérovée, "he'll never need a dog to lead him about."

"He must have some special friend above!" said Madame Germain (Mérovée's sister, who was looking on).

_Prophetic words!_ I have never forgotten them, nor the tear that glistened in each of her kind eyes as she spoke. She was a deeply religious and very emotional person, and loved Barty almost as if he were a child of her own.

Such women have strange intuitions.

Barty was often asked to repeat this astonishing performance before skeptical people--parents of boys, visitors, etc.--who had been told of it, and who believed he could not have been properly blindfolded; but he could never be induced to do so.

There was no mistake about the blindfolding--I helped in it myself; and he afterwards told me the whole thing was "aussi simple que bonjour" if once he felt the north--for then, with his back to the refectory door, he knew exactly the position and distance of every tree from where he was.

"It's all nonsense about my going blind and being able to do without a dog," he added; "I should be just as helpless as any other blind man, unless I was in a place I knew as well as my own pocket--like this play-ground! Besides, _I_ shan't go blind; nothing will ever happen to _my_ eyes--they're the strongest and best in the whole school!"

He said this exultingly, dilating his nostrils and chest; and looked proudly up and around, like Ajax defying the lightning.

"But what _do_ you feel when you feel the north, Barty--a kind of tingling?" I asked.

"Oh--I feel where it is--as if I'd got a mariner's compass trembling inside my stomach--and as if I wasn't afraid of anybody or anything in the world--as if I could go and have my head chopped off and not care a fig."

"Ah, well--I can't make it out--I give it up," I exclaimed.

"So do I," exclaims Barty.

"But tell me, Barty," I whispered--"_have_ you--have you _really_ got a--a--_special friend above_?"

"Ask no questions and you'll get no lies," said Barty, and winked at me one eye after the other--and went about his business, and I about mine.

WILLIAM DUNBAR

(1465?-1530?)

A picturesque figure in a picturesque age is that of William Dunbar, court minstrel to James IV., and as Sir Walter Scott declared, "a poet unrivaled by any that Scotland has ever produced." Little of his personal history is known. Probably he was a native of East Lothian, a member of the family of the Earl of March, and a graduate of St. Andrews University about the year 1479. After his college days he joined the order of Franciscans and became a mendicant friar, preaching the queer sermons of his time, and begging his way through England and France. Yet in these pilgrimages the young scholar learned useful habits of self-denial, saw new phases of human character, and above all enjoyed that close communion with nature which is the need of the poet. Over and over there is a reflection of this life in that fanciful verse, which has caught the color of the morning hours when the hedgerows are wet and the grass dewy, when the wild roses scent the roadside and the lark is at matins--verse full of the joy of life and the hope of youth.

After some years of this vagabond life, Dunbar left the Franciscans and attached himself to the court, where he speedily became a favorite. His day was one of pageant and show, of masque and spectacle, and into its gay assemblage of knights and courtiers, ladies and great nobles, Dunbar fitted perfectly. When an embassy was sent to England to negotiate the royal marriage with Margaret Tudor, Dunbar went along, being specially accredited by the king. He became a favorite with the young Princess, and a poem written in honor of the city of London, and one descriptive of the Queen's Progress, afford a faithful and valuable memorial of this mission. History is fortunate when she secures a poet as her scribe. Dunbar is principally known by his three poems 'The Thistle and the Rose,' 'The Golden Targe,' and 'The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins.'

The first of these is an allegory celebrating the nuptials of the king. It suggests of course the allegories of Chaucer; but Dunbar's muse is his own, and the poem springs fresh and clear from native fonts. The poet represents himself as awakened by Aurora on a spring morning and told to do homage to May. Through the symbolism of the court of Nature, who crowns the Lion and Eagle, commissions the Thistle and Rose as her handmaidens, and orders their praises sung by the assembled birds of earth, the political significance of the allegory appears. But 'The Thistle and the Rose,' which is thus made to illustrate the union between the two great houses of Scotland and England, is far more than the poem of an occasion. It is full of the melody and fragrance of spring, saturated with that sensuous delight which at this bountiful season fills the veins of Nature. Here Dunbar is no longer the court laureate, but the begging friar, wandering through the green lanes and finding bed and board under the free skies.

'The Golden Targe' is more artificial in construction. It is another allegory, descriptive of an encounter between Cupid and Reason, who is defended by a golden targe or shield from the attacks of love. Here again the rural landscape forms a background to his mimic action. Amazons dressed in green fight the battle of Cupid, and vanquish Reason, then magically vanish and leave the poet to awake from his dream. 'The Golden Targe' was a poem to be read in the royal presence, when the court assembled after a day's hunting or an afternoon of archery; but it is filled with the ethereal loveliness which only the true poet beholds.

It is in 'The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins' that Dunbar touches the note of seriousness, which characterizes his race and his individual genius. This satire is not so unsparing an indictment as the vision of Piers Ploughman, and yet it provokes inevitable comparison with the older poem. In a dream the poet sees heaven and hell opened. It is the eve of Ash Wednesday, and the Devil has commanded a dance to be performed by those spirits that had never received absolution. In obedience to this command the Seven Deadly Sins present a masque before his Satanic Majesty, and it is in the description of this grisly performance that Dunbar reveals a new aspect of power. The comedy here is not comic, but grotesque and horrid. The vision of the Scot is the vision that came to the poets of the 'Inferno' and 'Paradise Lost,' and it shows that his imagination was capable of the loftiest flights.

After the melancholy day of Flodden Field, the Scottish laureateship ceased to exist, but it is remarkable that so prominent a man as Dunbar should so completely have disappeared from contemporary view that his subsequent career and the time of his death are matters of doubt. His period is given as between the years 1465 and 1530, but these dates are only approximate.

Had Dunbar held his genius in hand as completely as did Chaucer, his accomplishment would doubtless have been greater than it was. Yet his place in literature is that of one of the most important poets of the fifteenth century, the age of Caxton and bookmaking, the time of that first flush of radiance which ushered in the full day of Spenser and Shakespeare.

THE THISTLE AND THE ROSE

Quhen Merche wes with variand windis past, And Appryle had, with her silver schouris, Tane leif at Nature with ane orient blast, And lusty May, that muddir is of flouris, Had maid the birdis to begyn thair houris Amang the tendir odouris reid and quhyt, Quhois armony to heir it wes delyt:

In bed at morrow, sleiping as I lay, Me thocht Aurora with hir cristall ene In at the window lukit by the day, And halsit me, with visage paill and grene; On quhois hand a lark sang fro the splene:-- Awalk, luvaris, out of you slomering; Sé hou the lusty morrow dois up spring.

Me thocht fresche May befoir my bed up stude, In weid depaynt of mony diverss hew, Sobir, benyng, and full of mansuetude, In brycht atteir of flouris forgit new, Hevinly of color, quhyt, reid, broun and blew, Balmit in dew, and gilt with Phebus bemys; Quhyll all the house illumynit of her lemys.