MARTY
have got on without her; they would have had to come, too—brothers, sisters, young husbands, grandchildren, and all.
Never but once did she give way. It was one June evening, when I was reading to her some favorite short poems out of Browning'sMen and Womenon a small lawn surrounded with roses, and of which she was fond.
The rest of the family were on the river, except her father and mother, who were dressing to go and dine with some neighbors; for a wonder, as they seldom dined away from home.
The carriage drove up to the door to fetch them, and they came out on the lawn to wish us good‑night.
Never had I been more struck with the splendor of Barty and his wife, now verging towards middle age, as they bent over to kiss their daughter, and he cut capers and cracked little jokes to make her laugh.
Leah's hair was slightly gray and her magnificent figure somewhat matronly, but there were no other signs of autumn; her beautiful white skin was still as delicate as a baby's, her jet‑black eyes as bright and full, her teeth just as they were thirty years back.
Tall as she was, her husband towered over her, the finest and handsomest man of his age I have ever seen. And Marty gazed after them with her heart in her eyes as they drove off.
"How splendid they are, Uncle Bob!"
Then she looked down at her own shrunken figure and limbs—her long, wasted legs and her thin, slight feet that were yet so beautifully shaped.
And, hiding her face in her hands, she began to cry:
"And I'm their poor little daughter—oh dear, oh dear!"
She wept silently for a while, and I said nothing, but endured an agony such as I cannot describe.
Then she dried her eyes and smiled, and said:
"What a goose I am," and, looking at me—
"Oh! Uncle Bob, forgive me; I've made you very unhappy—it shall never happen again!"
Suddenly the spirit moved me to tell her the story of Martia.
Leah and Barty and I had often discussed whether she should be told this extraordinary thing, in which we never knew whether to believe or not, and which, if there were a possibility of its being true, concerned Marty so directly.
They settled that they would leave it entirely to me—to tell her or not, as my own instinct would prompt me, should the opportunity occur.
My instinct prompted me to do so now. I shall not forget that evening.
The full moon rose before the sun had quite set, and I talked on and on. The others came in to dinner. She and I had some dinner brought to us out there, and on I talked—and she could scarcely eat for listening. I wrapped her well up, and lit pipe after pipe, and went on talking, and a nightingale sang, but quite unheard by Marty Josselin.
She did not even hear her sister Mary, whose voice went lightly up to heaven through the open window:
"Oh that we two were maying!"
"Oh that we two were maying!"
And when we parted that night she thanked and kissed me so effusively I felt that I had been happily inspired.
"I believe every word of it's true; I know it, I feel it! Uncle Bob, you have changed my life; I have often desponded when nobody knew—but never again! Dear papa! Only think of him! As if any human being alive could write what he has written without help from above or outside. Of course it's all true; I sometimes think I can almost remember things.... I'm sure I can."
Barty and Leah were well pleased with me when they came home that night.
That Marty was doomed to an early death did not very deeply distress them. It is astonishing how lightly they thought of death, these people for whom life seemed so full of joy; but that she should ever be conscious of the anguish of her lot while she lived was to them intolerable—a haunting preoccupation.
To me, a narrower and more selfish person, Marty had almost become to me life itself—her calamity had made her mine forever; and life without her had become a thing not to be conceived: her life was my life.
That life of hers was to be even shorter than we thought, and I love to think that what remained of it was made so smooth and sweet by what I told her that night.
I read all Martia's blaze letters to her, and helped her to read them for herself, and so did Barty. She got to know them by heart—especially the last; she grew to talk as Martia wrote; she told me of strange dreams she had often had—dreams she had told Sparrow and her own brothers and sisters when she was a child—wondrous dreams, in their seeming confirmation of what seemed to us so impossible. Her pains grew slighter and ceased.
And now her whole existence had become a dream—a tranquil, happy dream; it showed itself in her face, its transfigured, unearthly beauty—in her cheerful talk, her eager sympathy; a kind of heavenly pity she seemed to feel for those who had to go on living out their normallength of days. And always the old love of fun and frolic and pretty tunes.
Her father would make her laugh till she cried, and the same fount of tears would serve when Mary sang Brahms and Schubert and Lassen to her—and Roberta played Chopin and Schumann by the hour.
So she might have lived on for a few years—four or five—even ten. But she died at seventeen, of mere influenza, very quickly and without much pain. Her father and mother were by her bedside when her spirit passed away, and Dr. Knight, who had brought her into the world.
She woke from a gentle doze and raised her head, and called out in a clear voice:
"Barty—Leah—come, to me, come!"
And fell back dead.
Barty bowed his head and face on her hand, and remained there as if asleep. It was Leah who drew her eyelids down.
An hour later Dr. Knight came to me, his face distorted with grief.
"It's all over?" I said.
"Yes, it's all over."
"And Leah?"
"Mrs. Josselin is with her husband. She's a noble woman; she seems to bear it well."
"And Barty?"
"Barty Josselin is no more."