Peter Ibbetson Part 41

But I have seen Mary again--seven times.

And every time she comes she brings a book with her, gilt-edged and bound in green morocco like the Byron we read when we were children, or in red morocco like the _Elegant Extracts_ out of which we used to translate Gray's "Elegy," and the "Battle of Hohenlinden," and Cunningham's "Pastorals" into French.

Such is her fancy!

But inside these books are very different. They are printed in cipher, and in a language I can only understand in my dream. Nothing that I, or any one else, has ever read in any living book can approach, for interest and importance, what I read in these. There are seven of them.

I say to myself when I read them: it is perhaps well that I shall not remember this when I wake, after all!

For I might be indiscreet and injudicious, and either say too much or not enough; and the world might come to a stand-still, all through me.

For who would fardels bear, as Mary said! No! The world must be content to wait for the great guesser!

Thus my lips are sealed.

All I know is this: _that all will be well for us all, and of such a kind that all who do not sigh for the moon will be well content_.

In such wise have I striven, with the best of my ability, to give some account of my two lives and Mary's. We have lived three lives between us--three lives in one.

It has been a happy task, however poorly performed, and all the conditions of its performance have been singularly happy also.

A cell in a criminal lunatic asylum! That does not sound like a bower in the Elysian Fields! It is, and has been for me.

Besides the sun that lights and warms my inner life, I have been treated with a kindness and sympathy and consideration by everybody here, from the governor downward, that fills me with unspeakable grat.i.tude.

Most especially do I feel grateful to my good friends, the doctor, the chaplain, and the priest--best and kindest of men--each of whom has made up his mind about everything in heaven and earth and below, and each in a contrary sense to the two others!

There is but one thing they are neither of them quite c.o.c.ksure about, and that is whether I am mad or sane.

And there is one thing--the only one on which they are agreed; namely, that, mad or sane, I am a great undiscovered genius!

My little sketches, plain or colored, fill them with admiration and ecstasy. Such boldness and facility and execution, such an overwhelming fertility in the choice of subjects, such singular realism in the conception and rendering of past scenes, historical and otherwise, such astounding knowledge of architecture, character, costume, and what not, such local color--it is all as if I had really been there to see!

I have the greatest difficulty in keeping my fame from spreading beyond the walls of the asylum. My modesty is as great as my talent!

No, I do not wish this great genius to be discovered just yet. It must all go to help and ill.u.s.trate and adorn the work of a much greater genius, from which it has drawn every inspiration it ever had.

It is a splendid and delightful task I have before me: to unravel and translate and put in order these voluminous and hastily-penned reminiscences of Mary's, all of them written in the cipher we invented together in our dream--a very transparent cipher when once you have got the key!

It will take five years at least, and I think that, without presumption, I can count on that, strong and active as I feel, and still so far from the age of the Psalmist.

First of all, I intend

_Note_.--Here ends my poor cousin's memoir. He was found dead from effusion of blood on the brain, with his pen still in his hand, and his head bowed down on his unfinished ma.n.u.script, on the margin of which he had just sketched a small boy wheeling a toy wheelbarrow full of stones from one open door to another. One door is labelled _Pa.s.se_, the other _Avenir_.

I arrived in England, after a long life spent abroad, at the time his death occurred, but too late to see him alive. I heard much about him and his latter days. All those whose duties brought them into contact with him seemed to have regarded him with a respect that bordered on veneration.

I had the melancholy satisfaction of seeing him in his coffin. I had not seen him since he was twelve years old.

As he lay there, in his still length and breadth, he appeared gigantic--the most magnificent human being I ever beheld; and the splendor of his dead face will haunt my memory till I die.

MADGE PLUNKET.