Peter Ibbetson. George du Maurier
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"Plus oblige, et peut davantage Un beau visage Qu'un homme armé— Et rien n'est meilleur que d'entendre Air doux et tendre Jadis aimé!"
My mother soon became the passionately devoted friend of the divine Madame Seraskier; and I, what would I not have done—what danger would I not have faced—what death would I not have died for her!
I did not die; I lived her protestant to be, for nearly fifty years. For nearly fifty years to recollect the rapture and the pain it was to look at her; that inexplicable longing ache, that dumb, delicious, complex, innocent distress, for which none but the greatest poets have ever found expression; and which, perhaps, they have not felt half so acutely, these glib and gifted ones, as I did, at the susceptible age of seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve.
She had other slaves of my sex. The five Napoleonic heroes did homage each after his fashion: the good Major with a kind of sweet fatherly tenderness touching to behold; the others with perhaps less unselfish adoration; notably the brave Capitaine Audenis, of the fair waxed mustache and beautiful brown tail coat, so tightly buttoned with gilt buttons across his enormous chest, and imperceptible little feet so tightly imprisoned in shiny tipped female cloth boots, with buttons of mother-of-pearl; whose hobby was, I believe, to try and compensate himself for the misfortunes of war by more successful attempts in another direction. Anyhow he betrayed a warmth that made my small bosom a Gehenna, until she laughed and snubbed him into due propriety and shamefaced self-effacement.
It soon became evident that she favored two, at least, out of all this little masculine world—the Major myself; and a strange trio we made.
Her poor little daughter, the object of her passionate solicitude, a very clever and precocious child, was the reverse of beautiful, although she would have had fine eyes but for her red lashless lids. She wore her thick hair cropped short, like a boy, and was pasty and sallow in complexion, hollow-cheeked, thick-featured, and overgrown, with long thin hands and feet, and arms and legs of quite pathetic length and tenuity; a silent and melancholy little girl, who sucked her thumb perpetually, and kept her own counsel. She would have to lie in bed for days together, and when she got well enough to sit up, I (to please her mother) would read to her Le Robinson Suisse, Sandford and Merton, Evenings at Home, Les Contes de Madame Perrault, the shipwreck from "Don Juan," of which we never tired, and the "Giaour," the "Corsair," and "Mazeppa"; and last, but not least, Peter Parleys Natural History, which we got to know by heart.
And out of this latter volume I would often declaim for her benefit what has always been to me the most beautiful poem in the world, possibly because it was the first I read for myself, or else because it is so intimately associated with those happy days. Under an engraving of a wild duck (after Bewick, I believe) were quoted W.C. Bryant's lines "To a Water-fowl." They charmed me then and charm me now as nothing else has quite charmed me; I become a child again as I think of them, with a child's virgin subtlety of perception and magical susceptibility to vague suggestions of the Infinite.
Poor little Mimsey Seraskier would listen with distended eyes and quick comprehension. She had a strange fancy that a pair of invisible beings, "La fée Tarapatapoum," and "Le Prince Charmant" (two favorite characters of M. le Major's) were always in attendance upon us—upon her and me—and were equally fond of us both; that is, "La fée Tarapatapoum" of me, and "Le Prince Charmant" of her—and watched over us and would protect us through life.
"O! ils sont joliment bien ensemble, tous les deux—ils sont inséparables!" she would often exclaim, apropos of these visionary beings; and apropos of the water-fowl she would say—
"Il aime beaucoup cet oiseau-là, le Prince Charmant! dis encore, quand il vole si haut, et qu'il fait froid, et qu'il est fatigué, et que la nuit vient, mais qu'il ne veut pas descendre!"
And I would re-spout—
"'All day thy wings have fanned, At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, Though the dark night be near!'"
And poor, morbid, precocious, overwrought Mimsey's eyes would fill, and she would meditatively suck her thumb and think unutterable things.
And then I would copy Bewick's wood-cuts for her, as she sat on the arm of my chair and patiently watched; and she would say: "La fée Tarapatapoum trouve que tu dessines dans la perfection!" and treasure up these little masterpieces—"pour l'album de la fée Tarapatapoum!"
[Illustration]
There was one drawing she prized above all others—a steel engraving in a volume of Byron, which represented two beautiful beings of either sex, walking hand in hand through a dark cavern. The man was in sailor's garb; the lady, who went barefoot and lightly clad, held a torch; and underneath was written—
"And Neuha led her Torquil by the hand, And waved along the vaults her flaming brand."
I spent hours in copying it for her, and she preferred the copy to the original, and would have it that the two figures were excellent portraits of her Prince and Fairy.
Sometimes during these readings and sketchings under the apple-tree on the lawn, the sleeping Médor (a huge nondescript sort of dog, built up of every breed in France, with the virtues of all and the vices of none) would wag his three inches of tail, and utter soft whimperings of welcome in his dream; and she would say—
"C'est le Prince Charmant qui lui dit; 'Médor donne la patte!'"
Or our old tomcat would rise from his slumbers with his tail up, and rub an imaginary skirt; and it was—
"Regarde Mistigris! La fée Tarapatapoum est en train de lui frotter les oreilles!'"
We mostly spoke French, in spite of strict injunctions to the contrary from our fathers and mothers, who were much concerned lest we should forget our English altogether.
In time we made a kind of ingenious compromise; for Mimsey, who was full of resource, invented a new language, or rather two, which we called Frankingle and Inglefrank, respectively. They consisted in anglicizing French nouns and verbs and then conjugating and pronouncing them Englishly, or vice versâ.
For instance, it was very cold, and the school-room window was open, so she would say in Frankingle—
"Dispeach yourself to ferm the feneeter, Gogo. It geals to pier-fend! we shall be inrhumed!" or else, if I failed to immediately understand—"Gogo, il frise a splitter les stonnes—maque aste et chute le vindeau; mais chute—le donc vite! Je snize déjà!" which was Inglefrank.
With this contrivance we managed to puzzle and mystify the uninitiated, English and French alike. The intelligent reader, who sees it all in print, will not be so easily taken in.
When Mimsey was well enough, she would come with my cousins and me into the park, where we always had a good time—lying in ambush for red Indians, rescuing Madge Plunket from a caitiff knight, or else hunting snakes and field-mice and lizards, and digging for lizard's eggs, which we would hatch at home—that happy refuge for all manner of beasts, as well as little boys and girls. For there were squirrels, hedgehogs, and guinea-pigs; an owl, a raven, a monkey, and white mice; little birds that had strayed from the maternal nest before they could fly (they always died!), the dog Médor, and any other dog who chose; not to mention a gigantic rocking-horse made out of a real stuffed pony—the smallest pony that had ever been!
Often our united high spirits were too boisterous for Mimsey. Dreadful headaches would come on, and she would sit in a corner, nursing a hedgehog with one arm and holding her thumb in her mouth with the other. Only when we were alone together was she happy, and then, moult tristement!
On summer evenings whole parties of us, grown-up and small, would walk through the park and the Bois de Boulogne to the "Mare d'Auteuil"; as we got near enough for Médor to scent the water, he would bark and grin and gyrate, and go mad with excitement, for he had the gift of diving after stones, and liked to show it off.
There we would catch huge olive-colored water-beetles, yellow