"Martia."
Much moved and excited, Barty looked in the glass and did as he was bid, and the north left him; and Johanna brought him his breakfast, and he started for Riffrath.
All through this winter that was so happily spent by Barty in Düsseldorf things did not go very happily inLondon for the Gibsons. Mr. Gibson was not meant for business; nature intended him as a rival to Keeley or Buckstone.
He was extravagant, and so was his wife; they were both given to frequent and most expensive hospitalities; and he to cards, and she to dressing herself and her daughter more beautifully than quite became their position in life. The handsome and prosperous shop in Cheapside—the "emporium," as he loved to call it—was not enough to provide for all these luxuries; so he took another in Conduit Street, and decorated it and stocked it at immense expense, and called it the "Universal Fur Company," and himself the "Head of a West End firm."
Then he speculated, and was not successful, and his affairs got into tangle.
And a day came when he found he could not keep up these two shops and his private house in Tavistock Square as well; the carriage was put down first—a great distress to Mrs. Gibson; and finally, to her intense grief, it became necessary to give up the pretty house itself.
It was decided that their home in future must be over the new emporium in Conduit Street; Mrs. Gibson had a properly constituted English shopkeeper's wife's horror of living over her husband's shop—the idea almost broke her heart; and as a little consolation, while the necessary changes were being wrought for their altered mode of life, Mr. Gibson treated her and Leah and my sister to a trip up the Rhine—and Mrs. Bletchley, the splendid old Jewess (Leah's grandmother), who suffered, or fancied she suffered, in her eyesight, took it into her head that she would like to see the famous Dr. Hasenclever in Riffrath, and elected to journey with them—at all events as far as Düsseldorf. I would have escortedthem, but that my father was ill, and I had to replace him in Barge Yard; besides, I was not yet quite cured of my unhappy passion, though in an advanced stage of convalescence; and I did not wish to put myself under conditions that might retard my complete recovery, or even bring on a relapse. I wished to love Leah as a sister; in time I succeeded in doing so; she has been fortunate in her brother, though I say it who shouldn't—and, O heavens! haven't I been fortunate in my sister Leah?
My own sister Ida wrote to Barty to find rooms and meet them at the station, and fixed the day and hour of their arrival; and commissioned him to take seats for Gluck'sIphigenia.
She thought more ofIphigeniathan of the Drachenfels or Ehrenbreitstein; and was overjoyed at the prospect of once more being with Barty, whom she loved as well as she loved me, if not even better. He was fortunate in his sister, too!
And the Rhine in May did very well as a background to all these delights.
So Mr. Babbage (the friend of the family) and I saw them safely on board theBaron Osy("the Ank‑works package," as Mrs. Gamp called it), which landed them safely in the Place Verte at Antwerp; and then they took train for Düsseldorf, changing at Malines and Verviers; and looked forward eagerly, especially Ida, to the meeting with Barty at the little station by the Rhine.
Barty, as we know, started for Riffrath at Martia's written command, his head full of perplexing thoughts.
Who was Martia? What was she? "A disembodied conscience?" Whose? Not his own, which counselled the opposite course.
He had once seen a man at a show with a thirdrudimentary leg sticking out behind, and was told this extra limb belonged to a twin, the remaining portions of whom had not succeeded in getting themselves begotten and born. Could Martia be a frustrated and undeveloped twin sister of his own, that interested herself in his affairs, and could see with his eyes and hear with his ears, and had found the way of communicating with him during his sleep—and was yet apart from him, as phenomenal twins are apart from each other, however closely linked—and had, moreover, not managed to have any part of her body born into this world at all?
She wrote like him; her epistolary style was his very own, every turn of phrase, every little mannerism. The mystery of it overwhelmed him again, though he had grown somewhat accustomed to the idea during the last twelvemonth.Whywas she so anxious he should marry Julia? Had he, situated as he was, the right to win the love of this splendid creature, in the face of the world's opposition and her family's—he, a beggar and a bastard? Would it be right and honest and fair to her?
And then, again, was he so desperately in love with her, after all, that he should give up the life of art and toil he had planned for himself and go through existence as the husband of a rich and beautiful woman belonging, first of all, to the world and society, of which she was so brilliant an ornament that her husband must needs remain in the background forever, even if he were a gartered duke or a belted earl?
What success of his own would he ever hope to achieve, handicapped as he would be by all the ease and luxury she would bring him? He had grown to love the poverty which ever lends such strenuousness to endeavor. He thought of an engraving he had once taken a fancy to inBrussels, and purchased and hung up in his bedroom.Ihave it now! It is after Gallait, and represents a picturesquely poor violinist and his violin in a garret, and underneath is written "Art et liberté."
Then he thought of Julia's lovely face and magnificent body—and all his manhood thrilled as he recalled the look in her eyes when they met his the day before.
This was the strongest kind of temptation by which his nature could ever be assailed—he knew himself to be weak as water when that came his way, the ten‑thousandth face (and the figure to match)! He had often prayed to Martia to deliver him from such a lure. But here was Martia on the side of the too sweet enemy!
The train stopped for a few minutes at Neanderthal, and he thought he could think better if he got out and walked in that beautiful valley an hour or two—there was no hurry; he would take another train later, in time to meet Julia at Beresford Duff's, where she was sure to be. So he walked among the rocks, the lonely rocks, and sat and pondered in the famous cave where the skull was found—that simple prehistoric cranium which could never have been so pathetically nonplussed by such a dilemma as this when it was a human head!
And the more he pondered the less he came to a conclusion. It seemed as though there were the "tug of war" between Martia and all that he felt to be best in himself—his own conscience, his independence as a man, his sense of honor. He took her letter out of his pocket to re‑read, and with it came another letter; it was from my sister, Ida Maurice. It told him when they would arrive in Düsseldorf.
He jumped up in alarm—it was that very day. He had quite forgotten!
He ran off to the station, and missed a train, and hadto wait an hour for another; but he got himself to the Rhine station in Düsseldorf a few minutes before the train from Belgium arrived.
Everything was ready for the Gibson party—lodgings and tea and supper to follow—he had seen to all that before; so there he walked up and down, waiting, and still revolving over and over again in his mind the troublous question that so bewildered and oppressed him. Who was Martia? what was she—that he should take her for a guide in the most momentous business of his life; and what were her credentials?
And what was love? Was it love he felt for this young goddess with yellow hair and light‑blue eyes so like his own, who towered in her full‑blown frolicsome splendor among the sons and daughters of men, with her moist, ripe lips so richly framed for happy love and laughter—that royal milk‑white fawn that had only lain in the roses and fed on the lilies of life?
"Oh, Mr. Nobody of Nowhere! be at least a man; let no one ever call you the basest thing an able‑bodied man can become, a fortune‑hunting adventurer!"
Then a bell rang, and the smoke of the coming train was visible—ten minutes late. The tickets were taken, and it slowed into the station and stopped. Ida's head and face were seen peering through one of the second‑class windows, on the lookout, and Barty opened the door and there was a warm and affectionate greeting between them; the meeting was joy to both.
Then he was warmly greeted by Mrs. Gibson, who introduced him to her mother; then he was conscious of somebody he had not seen yet because she stood at his blind side (indeed, he had all but forgotten her existence); namely, the presence of a very tall and most beautiful dark‑haired young lady, holding out herslender gloved hand and gazing up into his face with the most piercing and strangest and blackest eyes that ever were; yet so soft and quick and calm and large and kind and wise and gentle that their piercingness was but an added seduction; one felt they could never pierce too deep for the happiness of the heart they pronged and riddled and perforated through and through!
Involuntarily came into Barty's mind, as he shook the slender hand, a little song of Schubert's he had just learnt:
"Du dist die Ruh', der Friede mild!"
"Du dist die Ruh', der Friede mild!"
And wasn't it odd?—all his doubts and perplexities resolved themselves at once, as by some enchantment, into a lovely, unexpected chord of extreme simplicity; and Martia was gently but firmly put aside, and the divine Julia quietly relegated to the gilded throne which was her fit and proper apanage.
Barty saw to the luggage, and sent it on, and they all went on foot behind it.
The bridge of boats across the Rhine was open in the middle to let a wood‑raft go by down stream. This raft from some distant forest was so long they had to wait nearly twenty minutes; and the prow of it had all but lost itself in the western purple and gold and dun of sky and river while it was still passing the bridge.
All this was new and delightful to the Londoners, who were also delighted with the rooms Barty had taken for them in the König's Allee and the tea that awaited them there. Leah made tea, and gave a cup to Barty. That was a good cup of tea, better even than the tea Julia was making (that very moment, no doubt) at Beresford Duff's.
Then the elder ladies rested, and Barty took Leahand Ida for a walk in the Hof gardens. They were charmed with everything—especially the fire‑flies at dusk. Leah said little; she was not a very talkative person outside her immediate family circle. But Ida and Barty had much to say.
Then home to supper at the Gibsons' lodgings, and Barty sat opposite Leah, and drank in the beauty of her face, which had so wonderfully ripened and accentuated and individualized itself since he had seen her last, three years before.
As he discreetly gazed, whenever she was not looking his way, saying to himself, like Geraint: "'Here by God's rood is the one maid for me,'" he suddenly felt the north, and started with a kind of terror as he remembered Martia. He bade the company a hasty good-night, and went for a long walk by the Rhine, and had a long talk with his Egeria.
"Martia," said he, in a low but audible voice, "it's no good, Ican't; c'est plus fort que moi. I can't sell myself to a woman for gold; besides, I can't fall in love with Julia; I don't know why, but Ican't; I will never marry her. I don't deserve that she should care for me; perhaps she doesn't, perhaps you're quite mistaken, and if she does, it's only a young girl's fancy. What does a girl of that age really know about her own heart? and how base I should be to take advantage of her innocence and inexperience!"
And then he went on in a passionate and eager voice to explain all he had thought of during the day and still further defend his recalcitrancy.
"Give me at least your reasons, Martia; tell me, for God's sake, who you are and what! Are youme? are you the spirit of my mother? Why do you love me, as you say you do, with a love passing the love of woman?What am I to you? Why are you so bent on worldly things?"
This monologue lasted more than an hour, and he threw himself on to his bed quite worn out, and slept at once, in spite of the nightingales, who filled the starlit, breezy, balmy night with their shrill, sweet clamor.
Next morning, as he expected, he found a letter:
"Barty, you are ruining me and breaking my life, and wrecking the plans of many years—plans made before you were, born or thought of.
"Who am I, indeed? Who is this demure young black‑eyed witch that has come between us, this friend of Ida Maurice's?
"She's the cause of all my misery, I feel sure; with Ida's eyes I saw you look at her; you never yet looked at Julia like that!—never at any woman before!
"Who is she? No mate for a man like you, I feel sure. In the first place, she is not rich; I could tell that by the querulous complaints of her middle‑class mother. She's just fit to be some pious Quaker's wife, or a Sister of Charity, or a governess, or a hospital nurse, or a nun—no companion for a man destined to move the world!
"Barty, you don'tknowwhat you are; you have neverthought; you have never yet lookedwithin!
"Barty, with Julia by your side and me at your back, you will be a leader of men, and sway the destinies of your country, and raise it above all other nations, and make it the arbiter of Europe—of the whole world—and your seed will ever be first among the foremost of the earth.
"Will you give up all this for a pair of bright black eyes and a pretty white skin? Isn't Julia white enough for you?
"A painter? What a trade for a man built like you! Take the greatest of them; what have they ever really mattered? What do they matter now, except to those who want to imitate them and can't, or to those who live by buying cheap the fruits of their long labors, and selling them dear as so much wall furniture for the vulgar rich? Besides, you will never be a great painter; you've begun too late!
"Think of yourself ten years hence—a king among men, with the world at your feet, and at those of the glorious woman who will have smoothed your path to greatness and fame and power! Mistress and wife—goddess and queen in one!
"Think of the poor struggling painter, painting his poor little pictures in his obscure corner to feed half a dozen hungry children and the anxious, careworn wife, whose beauty has long faded away in the petty, sordid, hopeless domestic struggle, just as her husband's little talent has long been wasted and used up in wretched pot‑boilers for mere bread; think of poverty, debt, and degradation, and all the miserable ugliness of life—the truest, tritest, and oldest story in the world! Love soon flies out of the window when these wolves snarl at the door.
"Think of all this, Barty, and think of the despair you are bringing on one lost lonely soul who loves you as a mother loves her first‑born, and has founded such hopes on you; dismiss this pretty little middle‑class puritan from your thoughts and go back to Julia.
"I will not hurry your decision; I will come back in exactly a week from to‑night. I am at your mercy.
"Martia."
This letter made Barty very unhappy. It was a strange dilemma.
What is it that now and again makes a woman in a single moment take such a powerful grip of a man's fancy that he can never shake himself free again, and never wants to?
Tunes can be like that, sometimes. Not the pretty little tinkling tunes that please everybody at once; the pleasure of them can fade in a year, a month—even a week, a day! But those from a great mint, and whose charm will last a man his lifetime!
Many years ago a great pianist, to amuse some friends (of whom I was one), played a series of waltzes by Schubert which I had never heard before—the "Soirées de Vienne," I think they were called. They were lovely from beginning to end; but one short measure in particular was full of such extraordinary enchantment for me that it has really haunted me through life. It is as if it were made on purpose for me alone, a little intimate aside à mon intention—the gainliest, happiest thought I had ever heard expressed in music. For nobody else seemed to think those particular bars were more beautiful than all the rest; but, oh! the difference to me!
And said I to myself: "That's Leah; and all the rest is some heavenly garden of roses she's walking in!"
Tempo di valsa:
Rum—tiddle‑iddleumtum tum,Tiddle‑tiddle‑iddle‑iddleumtum, tumTumtiddle iddle‑iddleumtum, tumTiddle‑iddle, iddle‑hay!... etc., etc.
Rum—tiddle‑iddleumtum tum,Tiddle‑tiddle‑iddle‑iddleumtum, tumTumtiddle iddle‑iddleumtum, tumTiddle‑iddle, iddle‑hay!... etc., etc.
That's how the little measure begins, and it goes on just for a couple of pages. I can't write music, unfortunately, and I've nobody by me at just this moment who can; but if the reader is musical and knows the "Soirées de Vienne," he will guess the particular waltz I mean.
Well, the Düsseldorf railway station is not a garden ofroses; but when Leah stepped out of that second‑class carriage and looked straight at Barty,dans le blanc des yeux, he fitted her to the tuneheloved best just then (not knowing the "Soirées de Vienne"), and it's one of the tunes that last forever:
"Du bist die Ruh', der Friede mild!"
"Du bist die Ruh', der Friede mild!"
Barty's senses were not as other men's senses. With his one eye he saw much that most ofuscan't see with two; I feel sure of this. And he suddenly saw in Leah's face, now she was quite grown up, that which bound him to her for life—some veiled promise, I suppose; we can't explain these things.
Barty escorted the Gibson party to Riffrath, and put down Mrs. Bletchley's name for Dr. Hasenclever, and then took them to the woods of Hammerfest, close by, with which they were charmed. On the way back to the hotel they met Lady Jane and Miss Royce and the good Beresford Duff, who all bowed to Barty, and Julia's blue glance crossed Leah's black one.
"Oh, what a lovely girl!" said Leah to Barty. "What a pity she's so tall; why, I'm sure she's half a head taller than even I, and they makemylife a burden to me at home because I'm such a giantess! Who is she? You know her well, I suppose?"
"She's a Miss Julia Royce, a great heiress. Her father's dead; he was a wealthy Norfolk Squire, and she was his only child."
"Then I suppose she's a very aristocratic person; she looks so, I'm sure!"
"Very much so indeed," said Barty.
"Dear me! it seems unfair, doesn't it, having everything like that; no wonder she looks so happy!"
DR. HASENCLEVER AND MRS. BLETCHLEY
Then they went back to the hotel to lunch; and in the afternoon Mrs. Bletchley saw the doctor, who gave her a prescription for spectacles, and said she had nothing to fear; and was charming to Leah and to Ida, who spoke French so well, and to the pretty and lively Mrs. Gibson, who lost her heart to him and spoke the most preposterous French he had ever heard.
He was fond of pretty English women, the good German doctor, whatever French they spoke.
They were quite an hour there. Meanwhile Barty went to Beresford Duff's, and found Julia and Lady Jane drinking tea, as usual at that hour.
"Who are your uncommonly well‑dressed friends, Barty?" said Mr. Duff. "I never met any of them thatIcan remember."
"Well—they're just from London—the elder lady is a Mrs. Bletchley."
"Not one of the Berkshire Bletchleys, eh?"
"Oh no—she's the widow of a London solicitor."
"Dear me! And the lovely, tall, black‑eyeddamigella—who's she?"
"She's a Miss Gibson, and her father's a furrier in Cheapside."
"And the pretty girl in blue with the fair hair?"
"She's the sister of a very old friend of mine, Robert Maurice—he's a wine merchant."
"You don't say so! Why, I took them for people of condition!" said Mr. Beresford Duff, who was a trifle old‑fashioned in his ways of speech. "Anyhow, they're uncommonly nice to look at."
"Oh yes," said the not too priggishly grammatical Lady Jane; "nowadays those sort of people dress like duchesses, and think themselves as good as any one."
"They're good enough forme, at all events," said Barty, who was not pleased.
"I'm sure Miss Gibson's good enough foranybody in the world!" said Julia. "She's the most beautiful girl I ever saw!" and she gave Barty a cup of tea.
Barty drank it, and felt fond of Julia, and bade them all good‑bye, and went and waited in the hall of the König's Hotel for his friends, and took them back to Düsseldorf.
Next day the Gibsons started for their little trip up the Rhine, and Barty was left to his own reflections, and he reflected a great deal; not about what he meant to do himself, but about how he should tell Martia what he meant to do.
As for himself, his mind was thoroughly made up: he would break at once and forever with a world he did not properly belong to, and fight his own little battle unaided, and be a painter—a good one, if he could. If not, so much the worse for him. Life is short.
When he would have settled his affairs and paid his small debts in Düsseldorf, he would have some ten or fifteen pounds to the good. He would go back to London with the Gibsons and Ida Maurice. There were no friends for him in the world like the Maurices. There was no woman for him in the world like Leah, whether she would ever care for him or not.
Rich or poor, he didn't mind! she was Leah; she had the hands, the feet, the lips, the hair, the eyes! That was enough for him! He was absolutely sure of his own feelings; absolutely certain that this path was not only the pleasant path he liked, but the right one for a man in his position to follow: a thorny path indeed, but the thorns were thorns of roses!
All this time he was busily rehearsing his part in thechorus ofIphigenia; he had applied for the post of second tenor chorister; the conditions were that he should be able to read music at sight. This he could not do, and his utter incapacity was tested at the Mahlcasten, before a crowd of artists, by the conductor. Barty failed signally, amid much laughter; and he impudently sang quite a little tune of his own, an improvisation.
The conductor laughed too; but Barty was admitted all the same; his voice was good, and he must learn his part by heart—that was all; anybody could teach him.
The Gibsons came back to Düsseldorf in time for the performance, which was admirable, in spite of Barty. From his coign of vantage, amongst the second tenors, he could see Julia's head with its golden fleece; Julia, that rose without a thorn—
"Het Roosje uit de dorne!"
"Het Roosje uit de dorne!"
She was sitting between Lady Jane and the Captain.
He looked in vain for the Gibsons, as he sang his loudest, yet couldn't hear himself sing (he was one of a chorus of avenging furies, I believe).
But there were three vacant seats in the same row as the Royces'. Presently three ladies, silken hooded and cloaked—one in yellow, one in pink, and one in blue—made their way to the empty places, just as the chorus ceased, and sat down. Just then Orestes (Stockhausen) stood up and lifted his noble barytone.
"Die Ruhe kehret mir zurück"—
"Die Ruhe kehret mir zurück"—
And the yellow‑hooded lady unhooded a shapely little black head, and it was Leah's.
"Prosit omen!" thought Barty—and it seemed as if his whole heart melted within him.
He could see that Leah and Julia often looked at eachother; he could also see, during the intervals, how many double‑barrelled opera‑glasses were levelled at both; it was impossible to say which of these two lovely women was the loveliest; probably most votes would have been for Julia, the fair‑haired one, the prima donna assoluta, the soprano, the Rowena, who always gets the biggest salary and most of the applause.
The brunette, the contralto, the Rebecca, dazzles less, but touches the heart all the more deeply, perhaps; anyhow, Barty had no doubt as to which of the two voices was the voice for him. His passion was as that of Brian de Bois‑Guilbert for mere strength, except that he was bound by no vows of celibacy. There were no moonlit platonics about Barty's robust love, but all the chivalry and tenderness and romance of a knight‑errant underlay its vigorous complexity. He was a good knight, though not Sir Galahad!
Also he felt very patriotic, as a good knight should ever feel, and proud of a country which could grow such a rose as Julia, and such a lily as Leah Gibson.
Next to Julia sat Captain Reece, romantic and handsome as ever, with manly love and devotion expressed in every line of his face, every movement of his body; and the heaviest mustache and the most beautiful brown whiskers in the world. He was either a hussar or a lancer; I forget which.
"By my halidom," mentally ejaculated Barty, "I sincerely wish thee joy and life‑long happiness, good Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe. Thou art a right fit mate for her, peerless as she may be among women! A benison on you both from your poor Wamba, the son of Witless."
As he went home that night, after the concert, to his tryst with Martia, the north came back to him—through the open window as it were, with the fire‑flies andfragrances, and the song of fifty nightingales. It was for him a moment of deep and harassing emotion and keen anxiety. He leaned over the window‑sill and looked out on the starlit heavens, and whispered aloud the little speech he had prepared:
"Martia, I have done my best. I would make any sacrifice to obey you, but I cannot give up my freedom to love the woman that attracts me as I have never been attracted before. I would sooner live a poor and unsuccessful straggler in the art I have chosen, with her to help me live, than be the mightiest man in England without her—even with Julia, whom I admire as much, and even more!
"One can't help these things. They may be fancies, and one may live to repent them; but while they last they are imperious, not to be resisted. It's an instinct, I suppose; perhaps even a form of insanity! But I love Leah's little‑finger nail better than Julia's lovely face and splendid body and all her thousands.
"Besides, I will not drag Julia down from her high position in the world's eye, even for a day, nor owe anything to either man or woman except love and fidelity! It grieves me deeply to disappoint you, though I cannot understand your motives. If you love me as you say you do, you ought to think of my happiness and honor before my worldly success and prosperity, about which I don't care a button, except for Leah's sake.
"Besides, I know myself better than you know me. I'm not one of those hard, strong, stern, purposeful, Napoleonic men, with wills of iron, that clever, ambitious women conceive great passions for!
"I'm only a 'funny man'—agringalet‑jocrisse!And now that I'm quite grown up, and all my little funniments are over, I'm only fit to sit and paint, with my one
"'MARTIA, I HAVE DONE MY BEST'"
eye, in my little corner, with a contented little wife, who won't want me to do great things and astonish the world. There's no place like home; faire la popotte ensemble au coin du feu—c'est le ciel!
"And if I'm half as clever as you say, it'll all come out in my painting, and I shall be rich and famous, and all off my own bat. I'd sooner be Sir Edwin Landseer than Sir Robert Peel, or Pam, or Dizzy!
"Even to retain your love and protection and interest in me, which I value almost as much as I value life itself, I can't do as you wish. Don't desert me, Martia. I may be able to make it all up to you some day; after all, you can't foresee and command the future, nor can I. It wouldn't be worth living for if we could! It would all be discounted in advance!
"I may yet succeed in leading a useful, happy life; and that should be enough for you if it's enough for me, since I am your beloved, and as you love me as your son.... Anyhow, my mind is made up for good and all, and...."
Here the sensation of the north suddenly left him, and he went to his bed with the sense of bereavement that had punished him all the preceding week: desperately sad, all but heart‑broken, and feeling almost like a culprit, although his conscience, whatever that was worth, was thoroughly at ease, and his intent inflexible.
A day or two after this he must have received a note from Julia, making an appointment to meet him at the Ausstellung, in the Allee Strasse, a pretty little picture‑gallery, since he was seen there sitting in deep conversation with Miss Royce in a corner, and both seeming much moved; neither the Admiral nor Lady Jane was with them, and there was some gossip about it in the British colony both in Düsseldorf and Riffrath.
Barty, who of late years has talked to me so much, and with such affectionate admiration, of "Julia Countess," as he called her, never happened to have mentioned this interview; he was very reticent about his love‑makings, especially about any love that was made to him.
I made so bold as to write to Julia, Lady Ironsides, and ask her if it were true they had met like this, and if I might print her answer, and received almost by return of post the following kind and characteristic letter:
"96Grosvenor Square.
"Dear Sir Robert,—You're quite right; I did meet him, and I've no objection whatever to telling you how it all happened—and you may do as you like.
"It happened just like this (you must remember that I was only just out, and had always had my own way in everything).
"Mamma and I and Uncle James (the Admiral) and Freddy Reece (Ironsides, you know) went to the Musikfest in Düsseldorf. Barty was singing in the chorus. I saw him opening and shutting his mouth and could almost fancy I heard him, poor dear boy.
"Leah Gibson, as she was then, sat near to me, with her mother and your sister. Leah Gibson looked like—well,youknow what she looked like in those days. By‑the‑way, I can't make out how it is you weren't over head and ears in love with her yourself! I thought her the loveliest girl I had ever seen, and felt very unhappy.
"We slept at the hotel that night, and on the way back to Riffrath next morning Freddy Reece proposed to me.
"I told him I couldn't marry him—but that I loved him as a sister, and all that; I really was very fond of him indeed, but I didn't want to marry him; I wantedto marry Barty, in fact; and make him rich and famous, as I felt sure he would be some day, whether I married him or not.
"But there was that lovely Leah Gibson, the furrier's daughter!
"When we got home to Riffrath mamma found she'd got a cold, and had a fancy for a French thing called a 'loch'; I think her cold was suddenly brought on by my refusing poor Freddy's offer!
"I went with Grissel, the maid (who knew aboutlochs), to the Riffrath chemist's, but he didn't even know what we meant—so I told mamma I would go and get alochin Düsseldorf next day if she liked, with Uncle James. Mamma was only too delighted, for next day was Mr. Josselin's day for coming to Riffrath; but he didn't, for I wrote to him to meet me at twelve at a little picture‑gallery I knew of in the Allee Strasse—as I wanted to have a talk with him.
"Uncle James had caught a cold too, so I went with Grissel; and found a chemist who'd been in France, and knew what a loch was and made one for me; and then I went to the gallery, and there was poor Barty sitting on a crimson velvet couch, under a picture of Milton dictatingParadise Lostto his daughters (I bought it afterwards, and I've got it now).
"We said how d'ye do, and sat on the couch together, and I felt dreadfully nervous and ashamed.
"Then I said:
"'You must think me very odd, Mr. Josselin, to ask you to meet me like this!'
"'I think it's a very great honor!' he said; 'I only wish I deserved it.'
"And then he said nothing for quite five minutes, and I think he felt as uncomfortable as I did.
AM RHEIN"LED WE NOT THERE A JOLLY LIFE BETWIXT THE SUN AND SHADE?"
"'Captain Graham‑Reece has asked me to be his wife, and I refused,' I said.
"'Why did you refuse? He's one of the best fellows I've ever met,' said Barty.
"'He's to be so rich, and so am I,' I said.
"No answer.
"'It would be right for me to marry apoorman—man with brains and no money, you know, and help him to make his way.'
"'Reece has plenty of brains too,' said Barty.
"'Oh, Mr. Josselin—don't misunderstand me'—and then I began to stammer and look foolish.
"'Miss Royce—I've only got £15 in the world, and with that I mean to go to London and be an artist; and comfort myself during the struggle by the delightful remembrance of Riffrath and Reece and yourself—and the happy hope of meeting you both again some day, when I shall no longer be the poor devil I am now, and am quite content to be! And when you and he are among the great of the earth, if you will give me each a commission to paint your portraits I will do my very best!' (and he smiled his irresistible smile). 'You will be kind, I am sure, to Mr. Nobody of Nowhere, the famous portrait‑painter—who doesn't even bear his father's name—as he has no right to it.'
"I could have flung my arms round his neck and kissed him! What didIcare about his father's name?
"'Will you think me dreadfully bold and indiscreet, Mr. Josselin, if I—if I—' (I stammered fearfully.)
"'If youwhat, Miss Royce?'
"'If I—if I ask you if you—if you—think Miss Gibson the most beautiful girl you ever saw?'
"'Honestly, I thinkyouthe most beautiful girl I ever saw!'
"'Oh, that'snonsense, Mr. Josselin, although I ought to have known you would say that! I'm not fit to tie her shoes. What I mean is—a—a—oh! forgive me—are you veryfondof her, as I'm sure she deserves, you know?'
"'Oh yes, Miss Royce, very fond of her indeed; she's poor, she's of no family, she's Miss Nobody of Nowhere, you know; she's all that I am, except that she has a right to her honest father's name—'
"'Does sheknowyou're very fond of her?'
"'No; but I hope to tell her so some day.'
"Then we were silent, and I felt very red, and very much inclined to cry, but I managed to keep in my tears.
"Then I got up, and so did he—and he made some joke about Grissel and the loch‑bottle; and we both laughed quite naturally and looked at the pictures, and he told me he was going back to London with the Gibsons that very week, and thanked me warmly for my kind interest in him, and assured me he thoroughly deserved it—and talked so funnily and so nicely that I quite forgave myself. I really don't think he guessed for one moment what I had been driving at all the while; I got back all my self‑respect; I felt so grateful to him that I was fonder of him than ever, though no longer so idiotically in love. He was not for me. He had somehow laughed me into love with him, and laughed me out of it.
"Then I bade him good‑bye, and squeezed his hand with all my heart, and told him how much I should like some day to meet Miss Gibson and be her friend if she would let me.
"Then I went back to Riffrath and took mamma her loch; but she no longer wanted it, for I told her I hadchanged my mind about Freddy, and that cured her like magic; and she kissed me on both cheeks and called me her dear, darling, divine Julia. Poor, sweet mamma!
"I had given her many a bad quarter of an hour, but this good moment made up for them all.
"She was eighty‑two last birthday, and can still read Josselin's works in the cheap edition without spectacles—thanks, no doubt, to the famous Doctor Hasenclever! She reads nothing else!
"Et voilà comment ça s'est passé.
"It's I that'll be the proud woman when I read this letter, printed, in your life of Josselin.
"Yours sincerely,"Julia Ironsides.
"P. S.—I've actually just told mamma—and I'm still her dear, darling, divine Julia!"
Charming as were Barty's remembrances of Düsseldorf, the most charming of all was his remembrance of going aboard the little steamboat bound for Rotterdam, one night at the end of May, with old Mrs. Bletchley, Mrs. Gibson and her daughter, and my sister Ida.
The little boat was crowded; the ladies found what accommodation they could in what served for a ladies' cabin, and expostulated and bribed their best; fortunately for them, no doubt, there were no English on board to bribe against them.
Barty spent the night on deck, supine, with a carpet‑bag for a pillow; we will take the full moon for granted. From Düsseldorf to Rotterdam there is little to see on either side of a Rhine steamboat, except the Rhine—especially at night.
Next day, after breakfast, he made the ladies as comfortable as he could on the after‑deck, and read to them
"'DOES SHEKNOWYOU'RE VERY FOND OF HER?'"
fromMaud, from theIdylls of the King, from theMill on the Floss. Then windmills came into sight—Dutch windmills; then Rotterdam, almost too soon. They went to the big hotel on the Boompjes and fed, and then explored Rotterdam, and found it a most delightful city.
Next day they got on board the steamboat bound for St. Katharine's wharf; the wind had freshened and they soon separated, and met at breakfast next morning in the Thames.
Barty declared he smelt Great Britain as distinctly as one can smell a Scotch haggis, or a Welsh rabbit, or an Irish stew, and the old familiar smell made him glad. However little you may be English, if you are English at all you are more English than anything else,et plus royaliste que le Roi!
According to Heine, an Englishman loves liberty as a good husband loves his wife; that is also how he loves the land of his birth; at all events, England has a kind of wifely embrace for the home‑coming Briton, especially if he comes home by the Thames.
It is not unexpected, nor madly exciting, perhaps; but it is singularly warm and sweet if the conjugal relations have not been strained in the meanwhile. And as the Thames narrows itself, the closer, the more genial, the more grateful and comforting this long‑anticipated and tenderly intimate uxorious dalliance seems to grow.
Barty felt very happy as he stood leaning over the bulwarks in the sunshine, between Ida and Leah, and looked at Rotherhithe, and promised himself he would paint it some day, and even sell the picture!
Then he made himself so pleasant to the custom‑house officers that they all but forgot to examine the Gibson luggage.
Was I delighted to grasp his hand at St. Katharine's wharf, after so many months? Ah!...
Mr. Gibson was there, funny as ever, and the Gibsons went home with him to Conduit Street in a hired fly. Alas! poor Mrs. Gibson's home‑coming was the saddest part for her of the delightful little journey.
And Barty and Ida and I went our own way in a four‑wheeler to eat the fatted calf in Brunswick Square, washed down with I will not say what vintage. There were so many available from all the wine‑growing lands of Europe that I've forgotten which was chosen to celebrate the wanderers' return!
Let us say Romané‑Conti, which is the "cru" that Barty loved best.
Next morning Barty left us early, with a portfolio of sketches under his arm, and his heart full of sanguine expectation, and spent the day in Fleet Street, or there‑abouts, calling on publishers of illustrated books and periodicals, and came back to us at dinner‑time very fagged, and with a long and piteous but very droll story of his ignominious non‑success: his weary waitings in dull, dingy, little business back rooms, the patronizing and snubbing he and his works had met with, the sense that he had everything to learn—he, who thought he was going to take the publishing world by storm.
Next day it was just the same, and the day after, and the day after that—every day of the week he spent under our roof.
Then he insisted on leaving us, and took for himself a room in Newman Street—a studio by day, a bedroom by night, a pleasant smoking‑room at all hours, and very soon a place of rendezvous for all sorts and conditions of jolly fellows, old friends and new, fromGuardsmen to young stars of the art world, mostly idle apprentices.
Gradually boxing‑gloves crept in, and foils and masks, and the faithful Snowdrop (whose condition three or four attacks of delirium tremens during Barty's exile had not improved).
And fellows who sang, and told good stories, and imitated popular actors—all as it used to be in the good old days of St. James's Street.
But Barty was changed all the same. These amusements were no longer the serious business of life for him. In the midst of all the racket he would sit at his small easel and work. He declared he couldn't find inspiration in silence and solitude, and, bereft of Martia, he could not bear to be alone.
Then he looked up other old friends, and left cards and got invitations to dinners and drums. One of his first visits was to his old tailor in Jermyn Street, to whom he still owed money, and who welcomed him with open arms—almost hugged him—and made him two or three beautiful suits; I believe he would have dressed Barty for nothing, as a mere advertisement. At all events, he wouldn't hear of payment "for many years to come! The finest figure in the whole Household Brigade!—the idea!"
Soon Barty got a few sketches into obscure illustrated papers, and thought his fortune was made. The first was a little sketch in the manner of John Leech, which he took to theBritish Lion, just started as a rival toPunch. TheBritish Liondied before the sketch appeared, but he got a guinea for it, and bought a beautiful volume of Tennyson, illustrated by Millais, Holman Hunt, Rossetti, and others, and made a sketch on the fly‑leaf of a lovely female with black hair and black eyes,and gave it to Leah Gibson. It was his old female face of ten years ago; yet, strange to say, the very image of Leah herself (as it had once been that of his mother).
The great happiness of his life just then was to go to the opera with Mrs. Gibson and Leah and Mr. Babbage (the family friend), who could get a box whenever he liked, and then to sup with them afterwards in Conduit Street, over the Emporium of the "Universal Fur Company," and to imitate Signor Giuglini for the delectation of Mr. Gibson, whose fondness for Barty soon grew into absolute worship!
And Leah, so reserved and self‑contained in general company, would laugh till the tears ran down her cheeks; and the music of her laughter, which was deep and low, rang more agreeably to Barty's ear than even the ravishing strains of Adelina Patti—the last of the great prime donne of our time, I think—whose voice still stirs me to the depths, with vague remembrance of fresh girlish innocence turned into sound.
Long life to her and to her voice! Lovely voices should never fade, nor pretty faces either!
Sometimes I replaced Mr. Babbage and escorted Mrs. Gibson to the opera, leaving Leah to Barty; for on fine nights we walked there, and the ladies took off their bonnets and shawls in the box, which was generally on the upper tier, and we looked down on Scatcherd and my mother and sister in the stalls. Then back to Conduit Street to supper. It was easy with half an eye to see the way things were going. I can't say I liked it. No man would, I suppose. But I reconciled myself to the inevitable, and bore up like a stoic.
L'amitié est l'amour sans ailes! A happy intimate friendship, a wingless love that has lasted more than thirty years without a break, is no bad substitute fortumultuous passions that have missed their mark! I have been as close a friend to Barty's wife as to Barty himself, and all the happiness I have ever known has come from them and theirs.
Walking home, poor Mrs. Gibson would confide to me her woes and anxieties, and wail over the past glories of Tavistock Square and all the nice people who lived there, and in Russell Square and Bedford Street and Gower Street, many of whom had given up calling on her now that she lived over a shop. Not all the liveliness of Bond Street and Regent Street combined (which Conduit Street so broadly and genially connected with each other) could compensate her for the lost gentility, the aristocratic dullness and quiet and repose, "almost equal to that of a West End square."
Then she believed that business was not going on well, since Mr. Gibson talked of giving up his Cheapside establishment; he said it was too much for him to look after. But he had lost much of his fun, and seemed harassed and thin, and muttered in his sleep; and the poor woman was full of forebodings, some of which were to be justified by the events that followed.
About this time Leah, who had forebodings too, took it into her head to attend a class for book‑keeping, and in a short time thoroughly mastered the science in all its details. I'm afraid she was better at this kind of work than at either drawing or music, both of which she had been so perseveringly taught. She could read off any music at sight quite glibly and easily, it is true—the result of hard plodding—but could never play to give real pleasure, and she gave it up. And with singing it was the same; her voice was excellent and had been well trained, but when she heard the untaught Barty she felt she was no singer, and never would be,and left off trying. Yet nobody got more pleasure out of the singing of others—especially Barty's and that of young Mr. Santley, who was her pet and darling, and whom she far preferred to that sweetest and suavest of tenors, Giuglini, about whom we all went mad. I agreed with her. Giuglini's voice was like green chartreuse in a liqueur‑glass; Santley's like a bumper of the very best burgundy that ever was! Oh that high G! Romané‑Conti, again; and in a quart‑pot! En veux‑tu? en voilà!
And as for her drawing, it was as that of all intelligent young ladies who have been well taught, but have no original talent whatever; nor did she derive any special pleasure from the masterpieces in the National Gallery; the Royal Academy was far more to her taste; and to mine, I frankly admit; and, I fear, to Barty's taste also, in those days. Enough of the Guardsman still remained in him to quite unfit his brain and ear and eye for what was best in literature and art. He was mildly fond of the "Bacchus and Ariadne," and Rembrandt's portrait of himself, and a few others; as he was of the works of Shakespeare and Milton. But Mantegna and Botticelli and Signorelli made him sad, and almost morose.
The only great things he genuinely loved and revered were the Elgin Marbles. He was constantly sketching them. And I am told that they have had great influence on his work and that he owes much to them. I have grown to admire them immensely myself in consequence, though I used to find that part of the British Museum a rather dreary lounge in the days when Barty used to draw there.
I am the proud possessor of a Velasquez, two Titians, and a Rembrandt; but, as a rule, I like to encouragethe art of my own time and country and that of modern France.
And I suppose there's hardly a great painter living, or recently dead, some of whose work is not represented on my walls, either in London, Paris, or Scotland; or at Marsfield, where so much of my time is spent; although the house is not mine, it's my real home; and thither I have always been allowed to send my best pictures, and my best bric‑à‑brac, my favorite horses and dogs, and the oldest and choicest liquors that were ever stored in the cellars of Vougeot‑Conti & Co. Old bachelor friends have their privileges, and Uncle Bob has known how to make himself at home in Marsfield.
Barty soon got better off, and moved into better lodgings in Berners Street; a sitting‑room and bedroom at No. 12B, which has now disappeared.
And there he worked all day, without haste and without rest, and at last in solitude; and found he could work twice as well with no companion but his pipe and his lay figure, from which he made most elaborate studies of drapery, in pen and ink; first in the manner of Sandys and Albert Dürer! later in the manner of Millais, Walker, and Keene.
Also he acquired the art of using the living model for his little illustrations. It had become the fashion; a new school had been founded withOnce a Weekand theCornhill Magazine, it seems; besides those already named, there were Lawless, du Maurier, Poynter, not to mention Holman Hunt and F. Leighton; and a host of new draughtsmen, most industrious apprentices, whose talk and example soon weaned Barty from a mixed and somewhat rowdy crew.
And all became more or less friends of his; a very good thing, for they were admirable in industry andtalent, thorough artists and very good fellows all round. Need I say they have all risen to fame and fortune—as becomes poetical justice?
He also kept in touch with his old brother officers, and that was a good thing too.
But there were others he got to know, rickety, unwholesome geniuses, whose genius (such as it was) had allied itself to madness; and who were just as conceited about the madness as about the genius, and took more pains to cultivate it. It brought them a quicker kudos, and was so much more visible to the naked eye.
At first Barty was fascinated by the madness, and took the genius on trust, I suppose. They made much of him, painted him, wrote music and verses about him, raved about his Greekness, his beauty, his yellow hair, and his voice and what not, as if he had been a woman. He even stood that, he admired them so! or rather, this genius of theirs.
He introduced me to this little clique, who called themselves a school, and each other "master": "the neo‑priapists," or something of that sort, and they worshipped the tuberose.
They disliked me at sight, and I them, and we did not dissemble!
Like Barty, I am fond of men's society; but at least I like them to be unmistakably men of my own sex, manly men, and clean; not little misshapen troglodytes with foul minds and perverted passions, or self‑advertising little mountebanks with enlarged and diseased vanities; creatures who would stand in a pillory sooner than not be stared at or talked about at all.
Whatever their genius might be, it almost made me sick—it almost made me kick, to see the humorous and masculine Barty prostrate in admiration before theseinspired epicenes, these gifted epileptoids, these anæmic little self‑satisfied nincompoops, whose proper place, it seemed to me, was either Earlswood, or Colney Hatch, or Broadmoor. That is, if their madness was genuine, which I doubt. He and I had many a quarrel about them, till he found them out and cut them for good and all—a great relief to me; for one got a bad name by being friends with such nondescripts.
"Dis‑moi qui tu hantes, je te dirai ce que tu es!"
Need I say they all died long ago, without leaving the ghost of a name?—and nobody cared. Poetical justice again! How encouraging it is to think there are no such people now, and that the breed has been thoroughly stamped out!1
Barty never succeeded as an illustrator on wood. He got into a way of doing very slight sketches of pretty people in fancy dress and coloring them lightly, and sold them at a shop in the Strand, now no more. Then he made up little stories, which he illustrated himself, something like the picture‑books of the later Caldecott, and I found him a publisher, and he was soon able to put aside a few pounds and pay his debts.