Chapter XII: Part 12

She and Scatcherd and I between us soon laughed him out of these innocent little literary vagaries, and he remained content with the homely words he had inherited from his barbarian ancestors in England (they speak good English, our barbarians), and the simple phrasing he had learnt from M. Durosier's classe de litterature at the Institution Brossard.

One language helps another; even the smattering of a dead language is better than no extra language at all, and that's why, at such cost of time and labor and paternal cash, we learn to smatter Greek and Latin, I suppose. "Arma virumque cano"--"Tityre tu patulae?"--"Maecenas atavis"--"[Greek: Menin aeide]"--and there you are! It sticks in the memory, and it's as simple as "How d'ye do?"

Anyhow, it is pretty generally admitted, both here and in France, that for grace and ease and elegance and absolute clearness combined, Barty Josselin's literary style has never been surpassed and very seldom equalled; and whatever his other faults, when he was at his ease he had the same graceful gift in his talk, both French and English.

It might be worth while my translating here the record of an impression made by Barty and his surroundings on a very accomplished Frenchman, M. Paroly, of the _Debats_, who paid him a visit in the summer of 1869, at Campden Hill.

I may mention that Barty hated to be interviewed and questioned about his literary work--he declared he was afraid of being found out.

But if once the interviewer managed to evade the lynx-eyed Leah, who had a horror of him, and get inside the studio, and make good his footing there, and were a decently pleasant fellow to boot, Barty would soon get over his aversion--utterly forget he was being interviewed--and talk as to an old friend; especially if the reviewer were a Frenchman or an American.

The interviewer is an insidious and wily person, and often presents himself to the soft-hearted celebrity in such humble and pathetic guise that one really hasn't the courage to snub him. He has come such a long way for such a little thing! it is such a lowly function he plies at the foot of that tall tree whose top you reached at a single bound! And he is supposed to be a "gentleman," and has no other means of keeping body and soul together! Then he is so prostrate in admiration before your Immensity....

So you give way, and out comes the little note-book, and out comes the little cross-examination.

As a rule, you are none the worse and the world is none the better; we know all about you already--all, at least, that we want to know; we have heard it all before, over and over again. But a poor fellow-creature has earned his crust, and goes home the happier for having talked to you about yourself and been treated like a man and a brother.

But sometimes the reviewer is very terrible indeed in his jaunty vulgarization of your distinguished personality, and you have to wince and redden, and rue the day you let him inside your house, and live down those light familiar paragraphs in which he describes you and the way you dress and how you look and what jolly things you say; and on what free and easy terms _he_ is with you, of all people in the world!

But the most terrible of all is the pleasant gentleman from America, who has yearned to know you for _so_ many years, and comes perhaps with a letter of introduction--or even without!--not to interview you or write about you (good heavens! he hates and scorns that modern pest, the interviewer), but to sit at your feet and worship at your shrine, and tell you of all the good you have done him and his, all the happiness you have given them all--"the debt of a lifetime!"

And you let yourself go before him, and so do your family, and so do your old friends; is _he_ not also a friend, though not an old one? You part with him almost in sorrow, he's so nice! And in three weeks some kind person sends you from the other side such a printed account of you and yours--so abominably true, so abominably false--that the remembrance of it makes you wake up in the dead of night, and most unjustly loathe an entire continent for breeding and harboring such a shameless type of press reptile!

I feel hard-hearted towards the interviewer, I own. I wish him, and those who employ him, a better trade; and a better taste to whoever reads what he writes. But Barty could be hard-hearted to nobody, and always regretted having granted the interview when he saw the published outcome of it.

Fortunately, M. Paroly was decently discreet.

"I've got a Frenchman coming this afternoon--a tremendous swell," said Barty, at lunch.

* * * * *

_Leah._ "Who is he?"

_Barty._ "M. Paroly, of the _Debats_."

_Leah._ "What is he when he's at home?"

_Barty._ "A famous journalist; as you'd know if you'd read the French newspapers sometimes, which you never do."

_Leah._ "Haven't got the time. He's coming to interview you, I suppose, and make French newspaper copy out of you."

_Barty._ "Why shouldn't he come just for the pleasure of making my acquaintance?"

_Leah._ "And mine--I'll be there and talk to him, too!"

_Barty._ "My dear, he probably doesn't speak a word of English; and your French, you know! You never _would_ learn French properly, although you've had me to practise on for so many years--not to mention Bob and Ida."

_Leah._ "How unkind of you, Barty! When have I had time to trouble about French? Besides, you always laugh at my French accent and mimic it--and _that's_ not encouraging!"

_Barty._ "My dear, I _adore_ your French accent; it's so unaffected! I only wish I heard it a little oftener."

_Leah._ "You shall hear it this afternoon. At what o'clock is he coming, your Monsieur Paroly?"

_Barty._ "At four-thirty."

_Leah._ "Oh, Barty, _don't_ give yourself away--don't talk to him about your writings, or about yourself, or about your family. He'll vulgarize you all over France. Surely you've not forgotten that nice 'gentleman' from America who came to see you, and who told you that _he_ was no interviewer, not _he_! but came merely as a friend and admirer--a distant but constant worshipper for many years! and how you talked to him like a long-lost brother, in consequence! 'There's nobody in the world like the best Americans,' you said. You adored them _all_, and wanted to be an American yourself--till a month after, when he published every word you said, and more, and what sort of cravat you had on, and how silent and cold and uncommunicative your good, motherly English wife was--you, the brilliant and talkative Barty Josselin, who should have mated with a countrywoman of his own! and how your bosom friend was a huge, overgrown everyday Briton with a broken nose! _I_ saw what he was at, from the low cunning in his face as he listened; and felt that every single unguarded word you dropped was a dollar in his pocket! How we've all had to live down that dreadfully facetious and grotesque and familiar article he printed about us all in those twenty American newspapers that have got the largest circulation in the world! and how you stamped and raved, Barty, and swore that never another American 'gentleman' should enter your house! What names you called him: 'cad!' 'sweep!' 'low-bred, little Yankee penny-a-liner!' Don't you remember? Why, he described you as a quite nice-looking man somewhat over the middle height!"

"Oh yes; damn him, _I_ remember!" said Barty, who was three or four inches over six feet, and quite openly vain of his good looks.

_Leah._ "Well, then, pray be cautious with this Monsieur Paroly you think so much of because he's French. Let _him_ talk--interview _him_--ask him all about his family, if he's got one--his children, and all that; play a game of billiards with him--talk French politics--dance 'La Paladine'--make him laugh--make him smoke one of those strong Trichinopoli cigars Bob gave you for the tops of omnibuses--make him feel your biceps--teach him how to play cup and ball--give him a sketch--then bring him in to tea. Madame Cornelys will be there, and Julia Ironsides, and Ida, who'll talk French by the yard. Then we'll show him the St. Bernards and Minerva, and I'll give him an armful of Gloire de Dijon roses, and shake him warmly by the hand, so that he won't feel ill-natured towards us; and we'll get him out of the house as quick as possible."

* * * * *

Thus prepared, Barty awaited M. Paroly, and this is a free rendering of what M. Paroly afterwards wrote about him:

"With a mixture of feelings difficult to analyze and define, I bade
adieu to the sage and philosopher of Cheyne Row, and had myself
transported in my hansom to the abode of the other great _sommite
litteraire_ in London, the light one--M. Josselin, to whom we in
France also are so deeply in debt.

"After a longish drive through sordid streets we reached a bright
historic vicinity and a charming hill, and my invisible Jehu guided
me at the great trot by verdant country lanes. We turned through
lodge gates into a narrow drive in a well-kept garden where there
was a lawn of English greenness, on which were children and nurses
and many dogs, and young people who played at the lawn-tennis.

"The door of the house was opened by a charming young woman in black
with a white apron and cap, like a waitress at the Bouillon Duval,
who guided me through a bright corridor full of pictures and
panoplies, and then through a handsome studio to a billiard-room,
where M. Josselin was playing at _the_ billiard to himself all
alone.

"M. Josselin receives me with jovial cordiality; he is enormously
tall, enormously handsome, like a drum-major of the Imperial Guard,
except that his lip and chin are shaved and he has slight whiskers;
very well dressed, with thick curly hair, and regular features, and
a singularly sympathetic voice: he is about thirty-five.

"I have to decline a game of billiards, and refuse a cigar, a very
formidable cigar, very black and very thick and very long. I don't
smoke, and am no hand at a cue. Besides, I want to talk about
_Etoiles Mortes_, about _Les Trepassees de Francois Villon_, about
_Dejanire et Dalila_!

"M. Josselin speaks French as he writes it, in absolute perfection;
his mother, he tells me, was from Normandy--the daughter of
fisherfolk in Dieppe; he was at school in Paris, and has lived there
as an art student.

"He does not care to talk about _Les Trepassees_ or _Les Etoiles_,
or any of his immortal works.

"He asks me if I'm a good swimmer, and can do _la coupe_ properly;
and leaning over his billiard-table he shows me how it ought to be
done, and dilates on the merits of that mode of getting through the
water. He confides to me that he suffers from a terrible
nostalgia--a consuming desire to do _la coupe_ in the swimming-baths
of Passy against the current; to take a header _a la hussarde_ with
his eyes open and explore the bed of the Seine between Grenelle and
the Ile des Cygnes--as he used to do when he was a school-boy--and
pick up mussels with his teeth.

"Then he explains to me the peculiar virtues of his stove, which is
almost entirely an invention of his own, and shows me how he can
regulate the heat of the room to the fraction of a degree
centigrade, which he prefers to Fahrenheit--just as he prefers
metres and centimetres to inches and feet--and ten to twelve!

"After this he performs some very clever tricks with billiard-balls;
juggles three of them in each hand simultaneously, and explains to
me that this is an exceptional achievement, as he only sees out of
one eye, and that no acrobat living could do the same with one eye
shut.

"I quite believe him, and wonder and admire, and his face beams with
honest satisfaction--and this is the man who wrote _La quatrieme
Dimension_!

"Then he tells me some very funny French school-boy stories; he
delights in my hearty laughter; they are capital stories, but I had
heard them all before--when I was at school.

"'And now, M. Josselin,' I say, 'a propos of that last story you've
just told me; in the _Trepassees de Francois Villon_ you have
omitted "la tres-sage Heloise" altogether.'

"'Oh, have I? How stupid of me!--Abelard and all that! Ah
well--there's plenty of time--nous allons arranger tout ca! All that
sort of thing comes to me in the night, you know, when I'm half
asleep in bed--a--a--I mean after lunch in the afternoon, when I
take my siesta.'

"Then he leads me into his studio and shows me pencil studies from
the life, things of ineffable beauty of form and expression--things
that haunt the memory.

"'Show me a study for Dejanire,' I say.

"'Oh! I'll draw Dejanire for you,' and he takes a soft pencil and a
piece of smooth card-board, and in five minutes draws me an outline
of a naked woman on a centaur's back, a creature of touching beauty
no other hand in the world could produce--so aristocratically
delicately English and of to-day--so severely, so nobly and
classically Greek. C'est la chastete meme--mais ce n'est pas
Dejanire!

"He gives me this sketch, which I rechristen Godiva, and value as I
value few things I possess.

"Then he shows me pencil studies of children's heads, from nature,
and I exclaim:

"'O Heaven, what a dream of childhood! Childhood is never so
beautiful as that.'

"'Oh yes it is, in England, I assure you,' says he. 'I'll show you
_my_ children presently; and you, have you any children?'

"'Alas! no,' I reply; 'I am a bachelor.'

"I remark that from time to time, just as the moon veils itself
behind a passing cloud, the radiance of his brilliant and jovial
physiognomy is eclipsed by the expression of a sadness immense,
mysterious, infinite; this is followed by a look of angelic candor
and sweetness and gentle heroism, that moves you strangely, even to
the heart, and makes appeal to all your warmest and deepest
sympathies--the look of a very masculine Joan of Arc! You don't know
why, but you feel you would make any sacrifice for a man who looks
at you like that, follow him to the death--lead a forlorn hope at
his bidding.

"He does not exact from me anything so arduous as this, but passing
round my neck his powerful arm, he says:

"'Come and drink some tea; I should like to present you to my wife.'

"And he leads me through another corridor to a charming drawing-room
that gives on to the green lawn of the garden.

"There are several people there taking the tea.

"He presents me first to Madame Josselin. If the husband is
enormously handsome, the wife is a beauty absolutely divine; she,
also, is very tall--tres elegante; she has soft wavy black hair, and
eyes and eyebrows d'un noir de jais, and a complexion d'une
blancheur de lis, with just a point of carmine in the cheeks. She
does not say much--she speaks French with difficulty; but she
expresses with her smiling eyes so cordial and sincere a welcome
that one feels glad to be in the same room with her, one feels it is
a happy privilege, it does one good--one ceases to feel one may
possibly be an intruder--one almost feels one is wanted there.

"I am then presented to three or four other ladies; and it would
seem that the greatest beauties of London have given each other
rendezvous in Madame Josselin's salon--this London, where are to be
found the most beautiful women in the world and the ugliest.

"First, I salute the Countess of Ironsides--ah, mon Dieu, la Diane
chasseresse--la Sapho de Pradier! Then Madame Cornelys, the wife of
the great sculptor, who lives next door--a daughter of the ancient
gods of Greece! Then a magnificent blonde, an old friend of theirs,
who speaks French absolutely like a Frenchwoman, and says thee and
thou to M. Josselin, and introduces me to her brother, un vrai type
de colosse bon enfant, d'une tenue irreprochable [thank you, M.
Paroly], who also speaks the French of France, for he was at school
there--a school-fellow of our host.

"There are two or three children, girls, more beautiful than
anything or anybody else in the house--in the world, I think! They
give me tea and cakes, and bread and butter; most delicious
tartines, as thin as wafers, and speak French well, and relate to me
the biographies of their animals, une vraie menagerie which I
afterwards have to visit--immense dogs, rabbits, hedgehogs,
squirrels, white mice, and a gigantic owl, who answers to the name
of Minerva.

"I find myself, ma foi, very happy among these wonderful people, and
preserve an impression of beauty, of bonhomie, of naturalness and
domestic felicity quite unlike anything I have ever been privileged
to see--an impression never to be forgotten.

"But as for _Etoiles Mortes_ and _Les Trepassees de Francois
Villon_, I really have to give them up; the beautiful big dogs are
more important than all the books in the world, even the
master's--even the master himself!

"However, I want no explanation to see and understand how M.
Josselin has written most of his chefs-d'oeuvre from the depths of a
happy consciousness habituated to all that is most graceful and
charming and seductive in real life--and a deeply sympathetic,
poignant, and compassionate sense of the contrast to all this.

"Happy mortal, happy family, happy country where grow (poussent)
such people, and where such children flourish! The souvenir of that
so brief hour spent at Gretna Lodge is one of the most beautiful
souvenirs of my life--and, above all, the souvenir of the belle
chatelaine who filled my hansom with beautiful roses culled by her
own fair hand, which gave me at parting that cordial English
pressure so much more suggestive of _Au revoir_ than _Adieu_!

"It is with sincere regret one leaves people who part with one so
regretfully.

"Alphonse Paroly."

* * * * *

Except that good and happy women have no history, I should almost like to write the history of Barty's wife, and call it the history of the busiest and most hard-working woman in Great Britain.

Barty left everything to her--to the very signing of cheques. He would have nothing to do with any business of any kind.

He wouldn't even carve at lunch or dinner. Leah did, unless _I_ was there.

It is but fair to say he worked as hard as any man I know. When he was not writing or drawing, he was thinking about drawing or writing; when they got to Marsfield, he hardly ever stirred outside the grounds.

There he would garden with gardeners or cut down trees, or do carpenter's work at his short intervals of rest, or groom a horse.

How often have I seen him suddenly drop a spade or axe or saw or curry-comb, and go straight off to a thatched gazebo he had built himself, where writing materials were left, and write down the happy thought that had occurred; and then, pipe in mouth, back to his gardening or the rest!

I also had a gazebo close to his, where I read blue-books and wrote my endless correspondence with the help of a secretary--only too glad, both of us, to be disturbed by festive and frolicsome young Bartys of either sex--by their dogs--by their mother!

Leah's province it was to attend to all the machinery by which life was carried on in this big house, and social intercourse, and the education of the young, and endless hospitalities.

She would even try to coach her boys in Latin and Euclid during their preparation times for the school where they spent the day, two miles off. Such Latin! such geometry! She could never master the ablative absolute, nor what used to be called at Brossard's _le que retranche_, nor see the necessity of demonstrating by A + B what was sufficiently obvious to her without.

"Who helps you in your Latin, my boy?" says the master, with a grin.

"My father," says Geoffrey, too loyal to admit it was his mother who had coached him wrong.

"Ah, I suppose he helps you with your Euclid also?" says the master, with a broader grin still.

"Yes, sir," says Geoffrey.

"Your father's French, I suppose?"

"I dare say, sir," says Geoffrey.

"Ah, I thought so!"

All of which was very unfair to Barty, whose Latin, like that of most boys who have been brought up at a French school, was probably quite as good as the English school-master's own, except for its innocence of quantities; and Blanchet and Legendre are easier to learn than Euclid, and stick longer in the memory; and Barty remembered well.

Then, besides the many friends who came to the pleasant house to stay, or else for lunch or tea or dinner, there were pious pilgrims from all parts of the world, as to a shrine--from Paris, from Germany, Italy, Norway, and Sweden; from America especially. Leah had to play the hostess almost every day of her life, and show off her lion and make him roar and wag his tail and stand on his hind legs--a lion that was not always in the mood to tumble and be shown off, unless the pilgrims were pretty and of the female sex.

Barty was a man's man par excellence, and loved to forgather with men. The only men he couldn't stand were those we have agreed to call in modern English the Philistines and the prigs--or both combined, as they can sometimes be; and this objection of his would have considerably narrowed his circle of male acquaintances but that the Philistines and the prigs, who so detest each other, were so dotingly fond of Barty, and ran him to earth in Marsfield.

The Philistines loved him for his world-wide popularity; the prigs in spite of it! They loved him for himself alone--because they couldn't help it, I suppose--and lamented over him as over a fallen angel.

He was happiest of all with the good denizens of Bohemia, who have known want and temptation and come unscathed out of the fire, but with their affectations and insincerities and conventionalities all burnt away.

Good old Bohemia--alma mater dolorosa; stern old gray she-wolf with the dry teats--maratre au coeur de pierre! It is not a bad school in which to graduate, if you can do so without loss of principle or sacrifice of the delicate bloom of honor and self-respect.

Next to these I think he loved the barbarians he belonged to on his father's side, who, whatever their faults, are seldom prigs or Philistines; and then he loved the proletarians, who had good, straightforward manners and no pretension--the laborer, the skilled artisan, especially the toilers of the sea.

In spite of his love of his own sex, he was of the kind that can go to the devil for a pretty woman.

He did not do this; he married one instead, fortunately for himself and for his children and for her, and stuck to her and preferred her society to any society in the world. Her mere presence seemed to have an extraordinarily soothing influence on him; it was as though life were short, and he could never see enough of her in the allotted time and space; the chronic necessity of her nearness to him became a habit and a second nature--like his pipe, as he would say.

Still, he was such a slave to his own aesthetic eye and ever-youthful heart that the sight of lovely woman pleased him more than the sight of anything else on earth; he delighted in her proximity, in the rustle of her garments, in the sound of her voice; and lovely woman's instinct told her this, so that she was very fond of Barty in return.

He was especially popular with sweet, pretty young girls, to whom his genial, happy, paternal manner always endeared him. They felt as safe with Barty as with any father or uncle, for all his facetious love-making; he made them laugh, and they loved him for it, and they forgot his Apolloship, and his Lionhood, and his general Immensity, which he never remembered himself.

It is to be feared that women who lacked the heavenly gift of good looks did not interest him quite so much, whatever other gifts they might possess, unless it were the gift of making lovely music. The little brown nightingale outshone the brilliant bird of paradise if she were a true nightingale; if she were very brown indeed, he would shut his eyes and listen with all his ears, rapt, as in a heavenly dream. And the closed lids would moisten, especially the lid that hid the eye that couldn't see--the emotional one!--although he was the least lachrymose of men, since it was with such a dry eye he wrote what I could scarcely read for my tears.

But his natural kindliness and geniality made him always try and please those who tried to please him, beautiful or the reverse, whether they succeeded or not; and he was just as popular with the ducks and geese as with the swans and peacocks and nightingales and birds of paradise. The dull, commonplace dames who prosed and buzzed and bored, the elderly intellectual virgins who knew nothing of life but what they had read--or written--in "Tendenz" novels, yet sadly rebuked him, more in sorrow than in anger, for this passage or that in his books, about things out of their ken altogether, etc.

His playful amenity disarmed the most aggressive bluestocking, orthodox or Unitarian, Catholic or Hebrew--radicals, agnostics, vegetarians, teetotalers, anti-vaccinationists, anti-vivisectionists--even anti-things that don't concern decent women at all, whether married or single.

It was only when his privacy was invaded by some patronizing, loud-voiced nouvelle-riche with a low-bred physiognomy that no millions on earth could gild or refine, and manners to match; some foolish, fashionable, would-be worldling, who combined the arch little coquetries and impertinent affectations of a spoilt beauty with the ugliness of an Aztec or an Esquimau; some silly, titled old frump who frankly ignored his tea-making wife and daughters and talked to _him_ only--and only about her grotesque and ugly self--and told him of all the famous painters who had wanted to paint her for the last hundred years--it was only then he grew glum and reserved and depressed and made an unfavorable impression on the other sex.

What it must have cost him not to express his disgust more frankly! for reticence on any matter was almost a torture to him.

Most of us have a mental sanctum to which we retire at times, locking the door behind us; and there we think of high and beautiful things, and hold commune with our Maker; or count our money, or improvise that repartee the gods withheld last night, and shake hands with ourselves for our wit; or caress the thought of some darling, secret wickedness or vice; or revel in dreams of some hidden hate, or some love we mustn't own; and curse those we have to be civil to whether we like them or not, and nurse our little envies till we almost get to like them.

There we remember all the stupid and unkind things we've ever said or thought or done, and all the slights that have ever been put on us, and secretly plan the revenge that never comes off--because time has softened our hearts, let us hope, when opportunity serves at last!

That Barty had no such holy of holies to creep into I feel pretty sure--unless it was the wifely heart of Leah; whatever came into his head came straight out of his mouth; he had nothing to conceal, and thought aloud, for all the world to hear; and it does credit, I think, to the singular goodness and guilelessness of his nature that he could afford to be so outspoken through life and yet give so little offence to others as he did. His indiscretion did very little harm, and his naive self-revelation only made him the more lovable to those who knew him well.

They were poor creatures, the daws who pecked at that manly heart, so stanch and warm and constant.

As for Leah, it was easy to see that she looked upon her husband as a fixed star, and was well pleased to tend and minister and revolve, and shine with no other light than his; it was in reality an absolute adoration on her part. But she very cleverly managed to hide it from him; she was not the kind of woman that makes a doormat of herself for the man she loves. She kept him in very good order indeed.

It was her theory that female adoration is not good for masculine vanity, and that he got quite enough of it outside his own home; and she would make such fun of him and his female adorers all over the world that he grew to laugh at them himself, and to value a pat on the back and a hearty "Well done, Barty!" from his wife more than

"The blandishments of all the womankind
In Europe and America combined."

Gentle and kind and polite as she was, however, she could do battle in defence of her great man, who was so backward at defending himself; and very effective battle too.

As an instance among many, illustrating her method of warfare: Once at an important house a very immense personage (who had an eye for a pretty woman) had asked to be introduced to her and had taken her down to supper; a very immense personage indeed, whose fame had penetrated to the uttermost ends of the earth and deservedly made his name a beloved household word wherever our tongue is spoken, so that it was in every Englishman's mouth all over the world--as Barty's is now.

Leah was immensely impressed, and treated his elderly Immensity to a very full measure of the deference that was his due; and such open homage is not always good for even the Immensest Immensities--it sometimes makes them give themselves immense airs. So that this particular Immensity began mildly but firmly to patronize Leah. This she didn't mind on her own account, but when he said, quite casually:

"By-the-way, I forget if I _know_ your good husband; _do_ I?"

--she was not pleased, and immediately answered:

"I really can't say; I don't think I ever heard him mention your name!"

This was not absolutely veracious on Leah's part; for to Barty in those days this particular great man was a god, and he was always full of him. But it brought the immense one back to his bearings at once, and he left off patronizing and was almost humble.

Anyhow, it was a lie so white that the recording angel will probably delete what there is of it with a genial smile, and leave a little blank in its place.

* * * * *

In an old diary of Leah's I find the following entry:

"March 6th, 1874.--Mamma and Ida Scatcherd came to stay. In the evening our sixth daughter and eighth child was born."

Julia (Mrs. Mainwaring) was this favored person--and is still. Julia and her predecessors have all lived and flourished up to now.

The Josselins had been exceptionally fortunate in their children; each new specimen seemed an even finer specimen than the last. The health of this remarkable family had been exemplary--measles, and mumps, and whooping-cough their only ailments.

During the month of Leah's confinement Barty's nocturnal literary activity was unusually great. Night after night he wrote in his sleep, and accumulated enough raw material to last him a lifetime; for the older he grew and the more practised his hand the longer it took him to give his work the shape he wished; he became more fastidious year by year as he became less of an amateur.

One morning, a day or two before his wife's complete recovery, he found a long personal letter from Martia by his bedside--a letter that moved him very deeply, and gave him food for thought during many weeks and months and years:

* * * * *

"My Beloved Barty,--The time has come at last when I must bid you
farewell.

"I have outstayed my proper welcome on earth as a disembodied
conscience by just a hundred years, and my desire for reincarnation
has become an imperious passion not to be resisted.

"It is more than a desire--it is a duty as well, a duty far too long
deferred.

"Barty, I am going to be your next child. I can conceive no greater
earthly felicity than to be a child of yours and Leah's. I should
have been one long before, but that you and I have had so much to do
together for this beautiful earth--a great debt to pay: you, for
being as you are; I, for having known you.

"Barty, you have no conception what you are to me and always have
been.

"I am to you but a name, a vague idea, a mysterious inspiration;
sometimes a questionable guide, I fear. You don't even believe all I
have told you about myself--you think it all a somnambulistic
invention of your own; and so does your wife, and so does your
friend.

"O that I could connect myself in your mind with the shape I wore
when I was last a living thing! No shape on earth, not either yours
or Leah's or that of any child yet born to you both, is more
beautiful to the eye that has learned how to see than the fashion of
that lost face and body of mine.

"_You_ wore the shape once, and so did your father and mother, for
you were Martians. Leah was a Martian, and wore it too; there are
many of them here--they are the best on earth, the very salt
thereof. I mean to be the best of them all, and one of the happiest.
Oh, help me to that!

"Barty, when I am a splendid son of yours or a sweet and lovely
daughter, all remembrance of what I was before will have been wiped
out of me until I die. But _you_ will remember, and so will Leah,
and both will love me with such a love as no earthly parents have
ever felt for any child of theirs yet.

"Think of the poor loving soul, lone, wandering, but not lost, that
will so trustfully look up at you out of those gleeful innocent
eyes!

"How that soul has suffered both here and elsewhere you don't know,
and never will, till the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed;
and I am going to forget it myself for a few decades--sixty,
seventy, eighty years perhaps; such happy years, I hope--with you
for my father and Leah for my mother during some of them at
least--and sweet grandchildren of yours, I hope, for my sons and
daughters! Why, life to me now will be almost a holiday.

"Oh, train me up the way I should go! Bring me up to be healthy and
chaste and strong and brave--never to know a mean ambition or think
an ungenerous thought--never to yield to a base or unworthy
temptation.

"If I'm a boy--and I want to be a boy very much (although, perhaps,
a girl would be dearer to your heart)--don't let me be either a
soldier or a sailor, however much I may wish it as a Josselin or a
Rohan; don't bring me up to buy or sell like a Gibson, or deal in
law like a Bletchley.

"Bring me up to invent, or make something useful, if it's only
pickles or soap, but not to buy and sell them; bring me up to build
or heal or paint or write or make music--to help or teach or please.

"If I'm a girl, bring me up to be as much like Leah as you can, and
marry me to just such another as yourself, if you can find him.
Whether I'm a girl or a boy, call me Marty, that my name may rhyme
with yours.

"When my conscience re-embodies itself, I want it never to know
another pang of self-reproach. And when I'm grown up, if you think
it right to do so, tell me who and what I once was, that I may love
you both the more; tell me how fondly I loved you when I was a
bland and fleeting little animalcule, without a body, but making my
home in yours--so that when you die I may know how irrevocably bound
up together we must forever be, we three; and rejoice the more in
your death and Leah's and my own. Teach me over again all I've ever
taught you, Barty--over and over again!

"Alas! perhaps you don't believe all this! How can I give you a
sign.

"There are many ways; but a law, of necessity inexorable, forbids
it. Such little entity as I possess would cease to be; it was all
but lost when I saved your life--and again when I told you that you
were the beloved of Julia Royce. It would not do for us Martians to
meddle with earthly things; the fat would soon be in the fire, I can
tell you!

"Try and trust me, Barty, and give me the benefit of any doubt.

"You have work planned out for many years to come, and are now
yourself so trained that you can do without me. You know what you
have still to say to mankind; never write a line about which you are
not sure.

"For another night or two you will be my host, and this splendid
frame of yours my hostelry; on y est tres bien. Be hospitable still
for a little while--make the most of me; hug me tight, squeeze me
warm!

"As soon as Leah is up and about and herself again you will know me
no more, and no more feel the north.

"Ah! you will never realize what it is for me to bid you good-bye,
my Barty, my Barty! All that is in your big heart and powerful brain
to feel of grief belongs to me, now that you are fast asleep. And
your genius for sorrow, which you have never really tested yet, is
as great as any gift you possess.

"Happy Barty, who have got to forty years without sounding the great
depths, and all through me! what will you do without your poor
devoted unknown Martia to keep watch over you and ward--to fight for
you like a wild-cat, if necessary?

"Leah must be your wild-cat now. She has it in her to be a tigress
when you are concerned, or any of her children! Next to you, Leah is
the darling of my heart; for it's your heart I make use of to love
her with.

"I want you to tell the world all about your Martia some day. They
may disbelieve, as you do; but good fruit will come of it in the
future. Martians will have a freer hand with you all, and that will
be a good thing for the earth; they were trained in a good hard
school--they are the Spartans of our universe.

"Such things will come to pass, before many years are over, as are
little dreamt of now, and all through your wanting to swallow that
dose of cyanide at No. 36 Rue des Ursulines Blanches, and my having
the gumption to prevent you!

"It's a good seed that we have sown, you and I. It was not right
that this beautiful planet should go much longer drifting through
space without a single hope that is not an illusion, without a
single hint of what life should really be, without a goal.

"Why such darkness under so bright a sun! such blindness to what is
so patent! such a deaf ear to the roaring of that thunderous harmony
which you call the eternal silence!--you of the earth, earthy, who
can hear the little trumpet of the mosquito so well that it makes
you fidget and fret and fume all night, and robs you of your rest.
Then the sun rises and frightens the mosquitoes away, and you think
that's what the sun is for and are thankful; but why the deuce a
mosquito should sting you, you can't make out!--mystery of
mysteries!

"At the back of your brain is a little speck of perishable matter,
Barty; it is no bigger than a needle's point, but it is bigger in
you than in anybody else I know, except in Leah; and in your
children it is bigger still--almost as big as the point of a pin!

"If they pair well, and it is in them to do so if they follow their
inherited instinct, their children and their children's children
will have that speck still bigger. When that speck becomes as big as
a millet-seed in your remote posterity, then it will be as big as in
a Martian, and the earth will be a very different place, and man of
earth greater and even better than the Martian by all the greatness
of his ampler, subtler, and more complex brain; his sense of the
Deity will be as an eagle's sense of the sun at noon in a cloudless
tropical sky; and he will know how to bear that effulgence without a
blink, as he stands on his lonely summit, ringed by the azure world.

"Indeed, there will be no more Martians in Mars by that time; they
are near the end of their lease; all good Martians will have gone to
Venus, let us hope; if not, to the Sun itself!

"Man has many thousands of years before him yet ere his little ball
of earth gets too cold for him; the little speck in his brain may
grow to the size of a pea, a cherry, a walnut, an egg, an orange!
He will have in him the magnetic consciousness of the entire solar
system, and hold the keys of time and space as long and as far as
the sun shines for us all--and then there will be the beginning of
everything. And all through that little episode in the street of
those White Ursulines! And the seed of Barty and Leah will overflow
to the uttermost ends of the earth, and finally blossom and bear
fruit for ever and ever beyond the stars.

"What a beginning for a new order of things! what a getting
up-stairs! what an awakening! what an annunciation!

"Do you remember that knock at the door?

"'Il est dix heures, savez-vous? Voulez-vous votre cafe dans votre
chambre?'

"She little knew, poor little Frau! humble little Finche Torfs,
lowly Flemish virgin, who loved you as the moth loves the star;
vilain mangeur de coeurs que vous etes!

"Barty, I wish your wife to hear nothing of this till the child who
once was your Martia shall have seen the light of day with eyes of
its own; tell her that I have left you at last, but don't tell her
why or how; tell her some day, years hence, if you think she will
love me the better for it; not otherwise.

"When you wake, Barty, I shall still be inside you; say to me in
your mezza voce all the kind things you can think of--such things as
you would have said to your mother had she lived till now, and you
were speeding her on a long and uncertain journey.

"How you would have loved your mother! She was most beautiful, and
of the type so dear to you. Her skin was almost as white as Leah's,
her eyes almost as black, her hair even blacker; like Leah, she was
tall and slim and lithe and graceful. She might have been Leah's
mother, too, for the likeness between them. How often you remind me
of her when you laugh or sing, and when you're funny in French;
those droll, quick gestures and quaint intonations, that ease and
freedom and deftness as you move! And then you become English in a
moment, and your big, burly, fair-haired father has come back with
his high voice, and his high spirits, and his frank blue eyes, like
yours, so kind and brave and genial.

"And _you_, dear, what a baby you were--a very prince among babies;
ah! if I can only be like that when I begin again!

"The people in the Tuileries garden used to turn round and stare and
smile at you when Rosalie with the long blue streamers bore you
along as proudly as if Louis Philippe were your grandfather and she
the royal wet-nurse; and later, after that hideous quarrel about
nothing, and the fatal fight by the 'mare aux biches,' how the good
fisher people of Le Pollet adored you! 'Un vrai petit St. Jean! il
nous portera bonheur, bien sur!'

"You have been thoroughly well loved all your life, my Barty, but
most of all by me--never forget that!

"I have been your father and your mother when they sat and watched
your baby-sleep; I have been Rosalie when she gave you the breast; I
have been your French grandfather and grandmother quarrelling as to
which of the two should nurse you as they sat and sunned themselves
on their humble doorstep in the Rue des Guignes!

"I have been your doting wife when you sang to her, your children
when you made them laugh till they cried. I've been Lady Archibald
when you danced the Dieppoise after tea, in Dover, with your little
bare legs; and Aunt Caroline, too, as she nursed you in Malines
after that silly duel where you behaved so well; and I've been by
turns Merovee Brossard, Bonzig, old Laferte, Mlle. Marceline, Finche
Torfs, poor little Marianina, Julia Royce, Father Louis, the old
Abbe, Bob Maurice--all the people you've ever charmed, or amused, or
been kind to--a legion; good heavens! I have been them all! What a
snowball made up of all these loves I've been rolling after you all
these years! and now it has all got to melt away in a single night,
and with it the remembrance of all I've ever been during ages
untold.

"And I've no voice to bid you good-bye, my beloved; no arms to hug
you with, no eyes to weep--I, a daughter of the most affectionate,
and clinging, and caressing race of little people in existence! Such
eyes as I once had, too; such warm, soft, furry arms, and such a
voice--it would have wanted no words to express all that I feel now;
that voice--nous savons notre orthographie en musique la bas!

"How it will please, perhaps, to remember even this farewell some
day, when we're all together again, with nothing to come between!

"And now, my beloved, there is no such thing as good-bye; it is a
word that has no real meaning; but it is so English and pretty and
sweet and child-like and nonsensical that I could write it over and
over again--just for fun!

"So good-bye! good-bye! good-bye! till I wake up once more after a
long living sleep of many years, I hope; a sleep filled with happy
dreams of you, dear, delightful people, whom I've got to live with
and love, and learn to lose once more; and then--no more good-byes!

"Martia."

* * * * *

So much for Martia--whoever or whatever it was that went by that name in Barty's consciousness.

After such close companionship for so many years, the loss of her--or it--was like the loss of a sixth and most valuable sense, worse almost than the loss of his sight would have been; and with this he was constantly threatened, for he most unmercifully taxed his remaining eye, and the field of his vision had narrowed year by year.

But this impending calamity did not frighten him as in the old days. His wife was with him now, and as long as she was by his side he could have borne anything--blindness, poverty, dishonor--anything in the world. If he lost her, he would survive her loss just long enough to put his affairs in order, and no more.

But most distressfully he missed the physical feeling of the north--even in his sleep. This strange bereavement drew him and Leah even more closely together, if that were possible; and she was well content to reign alone in the heart of her fractious, unreasonable but most affectionate, humorous, and irresistible great man. Although her rival had been but a name and an idea, a mere abstraction in which she had never really believed, she did not find it altogether displeasing to herself that the lively Martia was no more; she has almost told me as much.

And thus began for them both the happiest and most beautiful period of their joint lives, in spite of sorrows yet to come. She took such care of him that he might have been as blind as Belisarius himself, and he seemed almost to depend upon her as much--so wrapt up was he in the work of his life, so indifferent to all mundane and practical affairs. What eyesight was not wanted for his pen and pencil he reserved to look at her with--at his beloved children, and the things of beauty in and outside Marsfield: pictures, old china, skies, hills, trees, and river; and what wits remained he kept to amuse his family and his friends--there was enough and to spare.

The older he grew the more he teemed and seethed and bubbled and shone--and set others shining round him--even myself. It is no wonder Marsfield became such a singularly agreeable abode for all who dwelt there, even for the men-servants and the maid-servants, and the birds and the beasts, and the stranger within its gates--and for me a kind of earthly paradise.

* * * * *

And now, gentle reader, I want very badly to talk about myself a little, if you don't mind--just for half a dozen pages or so, which you can skip if you like. Whether you do so or not, it will not hurt you--and it will do me a great deal of good.

I feel uncommonly sad, and very lonely indeed, now that Barty is gone; and with him my beloved comrade Leah.

The only people left to me that I'm really fond of--except my dear widowed sister, Ida Scatcherd--are all so young. They're Josselins, of course--one and all--and they're all that's kind and droll and charming, and I adore them. But they can't quite realize what this sort of bereavement means to a man of just my age, who has still got some years of life before him, probably--and is yet an old man.

The Right Honorable Sir Robert Maurice, Bart., M. P., etc., etc., etc. That's me. I take up a whole line of manuscript. I might be a noble lord if I chose, and take up two!

I'm a liberal conservative, an opportunist, a pessi-optimist, an in-medio-tutissimist, and attend divine service at the Temple Church.

I'm a Philistine, and not ashamed; so was Moliere--so was Cervantes. So, if you like, was the late Martin Farquhar Tupper--and those who read him; we're of all sorts in Philistia, the great and the small, the good and the bad.

I'm in the sixties--sound of wind and limb--only two false teeth--one at each side, bicuspids, merely for show. I'm rather bald, but it suits my style; a little fat, perhaps--a pound and a half over sixteen stone! but I'm an inch and a half over six feet, and very big-boned. Altogether, diablement bien conserve! I sleep well, the sleep of the just; I have a good appetite and a good digestion, and a good conceit of myself still, thank Heaven--though nothing like what it used to be! One can survive the loss of one's self-respect; but of one's vanity, never.

What a prosperous and happy life mine has been, to be sure, up to a few short months ago--hardly ever an ache or a pain!--my only real griefs, my dear mother's death ten years back, and my father's in 1870. Yes, I have warmed both hands at the fire of life, and even burnt my fingers now and then, but not severely.

One love disappointment. The sting of it lasted a couple of years, the compensation more than thirty! I loved her all the better, perhaps, that I did not marry her. I'm afraid it is not in me to love a very good wife of my own as much as I really ought!

And I love her children as well as if they'd been mine, and her grandchildren even better. They are irresistible, these grandchildren of Barty's and Leah's--mine wouldn't have been a patch on them; besides, I get all the fun and none of the bother and anxiety. Evidently it was my true vocation to remain single--and be a tame cat in a large, warm house, where there are lots of nice children.

O happy Bob Maurice! O happy sexagenarian!

"O me fortunatum, mea si bona norim!" (What would Pere Brossard say at this? he would give me a twisted pinch on the arm--and serve me right!)