Incredible as it may appear, however, most of our conversation was about very common and earthly topics—her homes and refuges, the difficulties of their management, her eternal want of money, her many schemes and plans and experiments and failures and disenchantments—in all of which I naturally took a very warm interest. And then my jail, and all that occurred there—in all of which I became interested myself because it interested her so passionately; she knew every corner of it that I knew, every detail of the life there—the name, appearance, and history of almost every inmate, and criticised its internal economy with a practical knowledge of affairs; a business-like sagacity at which I never ceased to marvel.
One of my drollest recollections is of a visit she paid there in the flesh, by some famous philanthropists of both sexes. I was interviewed by them all as the model prisoner, who, for his unorthodoxy, was a credit to the institution. She listened demurely to my intelligent answers when I was questioned as to my bodily health, etc., and asked whether I had any complaints to make. Complaints! Never was jail-bird so thoroughly satisfied with his nest—so healthy, so happy, so well-behaved. She took notes all the time.
[Illustration: MARY, DUCHESS OF TOWERS. From a photograph by
Strlkzchuski, Warsaw.]
Eight hours before we had been strolling hand in hand through the Uffizi Gallery in Florence; eight hours later we should be in each other's arms.
* * * * *
Strange to relate, this happiness of ours—so deep, so acute, so transcendent, so unmatched in all the history of human affection—was not always free of unreasonable longings and regrets. Man is never so blessed but what he would have his blessedness still greater.
The reality of our close companionship, of our true possession of each other (during our allotted time), was absolute, complete, and thorough. No Darby that ever lived can ever have had sweeter, warmer, more tender memories of any Joan than I have now of Mary Seraskier! Although each was, in a way, but a seeming illusion of the other's brain, the illusion was no illusion for us. It was an illusion that showed the truth, as does the illusion of sight. Like twin kernels in one shell ("Philipschen," as Mary called it), we touched at more points and were closer than the rest of mankind (with each of them a separate shell of his own). We tried and tested this in every way we could devise, and never found ourselves at fault, and never ceased to marvel at so great a wonder. For instance, I received letters from her in jail (and answered them) in an intricate cipher we had invented and perfected together entirely during sleep, and referring to things that had happened to us both when together.[A]
[Footnote A: Note.—Several of these letters are in my possession.
MADGE PLUNKET.]
Our privileges were such as probably no human beings could have ever enjoyed before. Time and space were annihilated for us at the mere wish of either—we lived in a palace of delight; all conceivable luxuries were ours—and, better than all, and perennially, such freshness and elation as belong only to the morning of life—and such a love for each other (the result of circumstances not to be paralleled) as time could never slake or quench till death should come and part us. All this, and more, was our portion for eight hours out of twenty-four.
So what must we do sometimes, but fret that the sixteen hours which remained did not belong to us well; that we must live two-thirds of our lives apart; that we could not share the toils and troubles of our work-a-day, waking existence, as we shared the blissful guerdon of our seeming sleep—the glories of our common dream.