Chapter V: Part 5

Old fogy as I am, and still given to poetical quotations, I never made a more felicitous quotation than that. I little guessed then to what splendor that bony black-eyed damsel would reach in time.

* * * * *

All through this period of high life and low dissipation Barty kept his unalterable good-humor and high spirits--and especially the kindly grace of manner and tact and good-breeding that kept him from ever offending the most fastidious, in spite of his high spirits, and made him many a poor grateful outcast's friend and darling.

I remember once dining with him at Greenwich in very distinguished company; I don't remember how I came to be invited--through Barty, no doubt. He got me many invitations that I often thought it better not to accept. "Ne sutor ultra crepidam!"

It was a fish dinner, and Barty ate and drank a surprising amount--and so did I, and liked it very much.

We were all late and hurried for the last train, some twenty of us--and Barty, Lord Archibald, and I, and a Colonel Walker Lindsay, who has since become a peer and a Field-Marshal (and is now dead), were all pushed together into a carriage, already occupied by a distinguished clergyman and a charming young lady--probably his daughter; from his dress, he was either a dean or a bishop, and I sat opposite to him--in the corner.

Barty was very noisy and excited as the train moved off; he was rather tipsy, in fact--and I was alarmed, on account of the clerical gentleman and his female companion. As we journeyed on, Barty began to romp and play the fool and perform fantastic tricks--to the immense delight of the future Field-Marshal. He twisted two pocket-handkerchiefs into human figures, one on each hand, and made them sing to each other--like Grisi and Mario in the _Huguenots_--and clever drivel of that kind. Lord Archibald and Colonel Lindsay were beside themselves with glee at all this; they also had dined well.

Then he imitated a poor man fishing in St. James's Park and not catching any fish. And this really was uncommonly good and true to life--with wonderful artistic details, that showed keen observation.

I saw that the bishop and his daughter (if such they were) grew deeply interested, and laughed and chuckled discreetly; the young lady had a charming expression on her face as she watched the idiotic Barty, who got more idiotic with every mile--and this was to be the man who wrote _Sardonyx_!

As the train slowed into the London station, the bishop leant forward towards me and inquired, in a whisper,

"May I ask the name of your singularly delightful young friend?"

"His name is Barty Josselin," I answered.

"Not of the Grenadier Guards?"

"Yes."

"Oh, indeed! a--yes--I've heard of him--"

And his lordship's face became hard and stern--and soon we all got out.

Part Fourth

"La cigale ayant chante
Tout l'ete,
Se trouva fort depourvue
Quand la bise fut venue."...

--Lafontaine.

Sometimes I went to see Lord and Lady Archibald, who lived in Clarges Street; and Lady Archibald was kind enough to call on my mother, who was charmed with her, and returned her call in due time.

Also, at about this period (1853) my uncle Charles (Captain Blake, late 17th Lancers), who had been Lord Runswick's crony twenty years before, patched up some feud he had with my father, and came to see us in Brunswick Square.

He had just married a charming girl, young enough to be his daughter.

I took him to see Barty, and they became fast friends. My uncle Charles was a very accomplished man, and spoke French as well as any of us; and Barty liked him, and it ended, oddly enough, in Uncle Charles becoming Lord Whitby's land-agent and living in St. Hilda's Terrace, Whitby.

He was a very good fellow and a thorough man of the world, and was of great service to Barty in many ways. But, alas and alas! he was not able to prevent or make up the disastrous quarrel that happened between Barty and Lord Archibald, with such terrible results to my friend--to both.

It is all difficult even to hint at--but some of it must be more than hinted at.

Lord Archibald, like his nephew, was a very passionate admirer of lovely woman. He had been for many years a faithful and devoted husband to the excellent Frenchwoman who brought him wealth--and such affection! Then a terrible temptation came in his way. He fell in love with a very beautiful and fascinating lady, whose birth and principles and antecedents were alike very unfortunate, and Barty was mixed up in all this: it's the saddest thing I ever heard.

The beautiful lady conceived for Barty one of those frantic passions that must lead to somebody's ruin; it led to his; but he was never to blame, except for the careless indiscretion which allowed of his being concerned in the miserable business at all, and to this frantic passion he did not respond.

"_Spretae injuria formae._"

So at least _she_ fancied; it was not so. Barty was no laggard in love; but he dearly loved his uncle Archie, and was loyal to him all through.

"His honor rooted in dishonor stood,
And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true."

Where he was unfaithful was to his beloved and adoring Lady Archibald--his second mother--at miserable cost of undying remorse to himself for ever having sunk to become Lord Archibald's confidant and love-messenger, and bearer of nosegays and _billets doux_, and singer of little French songs. He was only twenty, and thought of such things as jokes; he had lived among some of the pleasantest, best-bred, and most corrupt people in London.

The beautiful frail lady told the most infamous lies, and stuck to them through thick and thin. The story is not new; it's as old as the Pharaohs. And Barty and his uncle quarrelled beyond recall. The boy was too proud even to defend himself, beyond one simple denial.

Then another thing happened. Lady Archibald died, quite suddenly, of peritonitis--fortunately in ignorance of what was happening, and with her husband and daughter and Barty round her bedside at the end. She died deceived and happy.

Lord Archibald was beside himself with grief; but in six months he married the beautiful lady, and went to the bad altogether--went under, in fact; and Daphne, his daughter of fourteen or fifteen, was taken by the Whitbys.

So now Barty, thoroughly sick of smart society, found himself in an unexpected position--without an allowance, in a crack regiment, and never a penny to look forward to!

For old Lord Whitby, who loved him, was a poor man with a large family; and every penny of Lady Archibald's fortune that didn't go to her husband and daughter went back to her own family of Lonlay-Savignac. She had made no will--no provision for her beloved, her adopted son!

So Barty never went to the Crimea, after all, but sold out, and found himself the possessor of seven or eight hundred pounds--most of which he owed--and with the world before him; but I am going too fast.

* * * * *

In the winter of 1853, just before Christmas, my father fitted up for me a chemical laboratory at the top of the fine old house in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, where his wine business was carried on, a splendid mansion, with panelled rooms and a carved-oak staircase--once the abode of some Dick Whittington, no doubt a Lord Mayor of London; and I began my professional career, which consisted in analyzing anything I could get to analyze for hire, from a sample of gold or copper ore to a poisoned stomach.

Lord Whitby very kindly sent me different samples of soil from different fields on his estate, and I analyzed them carefully and found them singularly like each other. I don't think the estate benefited much by my scientific investigation. It was my first job, and brought me twenty pounds (out of which I bought two beautiful fans--one for my sister, the other for Leah Gibson--and got a new evening suit for myself at Barty's tailor's).

When this job of mine was finished I had a good deal of time on my hands, and read many novels and smoked many pipes, as I sat by my chemical stove and distilled water, and dried chlorate of potash to keep the damp out of my scales, and toasted cheese, and fried sausages, and mulled Burgundy, and brewed nice drinks, hot or cold--a specialty of mine.

I also made my laboratory a very pleasant place. My father wouldn't permit a piano, nor could I afford one; but I smuggled in a guitar (for Barty), and also a concertina, which I could play a little myself. Barty often came with friends of his, of whom my father did not approve--mostly Guardsmen; also friends of my own--medical students, and one or two fellow-chemists, who were serious, and pleased my father. We often had a capital time: chemical experiments and explosions, and fearful stinks, and poisoned waters of enchanting hue; also oysters, lobsters, dressed crab for lunch--and my Burgundy was good, I promise you, whether white or red!

We also had songs and music of every description. Barty's taste had improved. He could sing Beethoven's "Adelaida" in English, German, and Italian, and Schubert's "Serenade" in French--quite charmingly, to his own ingenious accompaniment on the guitar.

We had another vocalist, a little Hebrew art-student, with a heavenly tenor (I've forgotten his name); and Ticklets, the bass; and a Guardsman who could yodel and imitate a woman's voice--one Pepys, whom Barty loved because he was a giant, and, according to Barty, "the handsomest chap in London."

These debauches generally happened when my father was abroad--always, in fact. I'm greatly ashamed of it all now; even then my heart smote me heavily at times when I thought of the pride and pleasure he took in all my scientific appliances, and the money they cost him--twenty guineas for a pair of scales! Poor dear old man! he loved to weigh things in them--a feather, a minute crumb of cork, an infinitesimal wisp of cotton wool!...

However, I've made it all up to him since in many ways; and he has told me that I have been a good son, after all! And that is good to think of now that I am older than he was when he died!

* * * * *

One fine morning, before going to business, I escorted my sister to Bedford Square, calling for Leah Gibson on the way; as we walked up Great Russell Street (that being the longest way round I could think of), we met Barty, looking as fresh as a school-boy, and resplendent as usual. I remember he had on a long blue frock-coat, check trousers, an elaborate waistcoat and scarf, and white hat--as was the fashion--and that he looked singularly out of place (and uncommonly agreeable to the eye) in such an austere and learned neighborhood.

He was coming to call for me in Brunswick Square.

My sister introduced him to her friend, and he looked down at Leah with a surprised glance of delicate fatherly admiration--he might have been fifty.

Then we left the young ladies and went off together citywards; my father was abroad.

"By Jove, what a stunner that girl is! I'm blest if I don't marry her some day--you see if I don't!"

"That's just what _I_ mean to do," said I. And we had a good laugh at the idea of two such desperadoes, as we thought ourselves, talking like this about a little school-girl.

"We'll toss up," says Barty; and we did, and he won.

This, I remember, was before his quarrel with Lord Archibald. She was then about fourteen, and her subtle and singular beauty was just beginning to make itself felt.

I never knew till long after how deep had been the impression produced by this glimpse of a mere child on a fast young man about town--or I should not have been amused. For there were times when I myself thought quite seriously of Leah Gibson, and what she might be in the long future! She looked a year or two older than she really was, being very tall and extremely sedate.

Also, both my father and mother had conceived such a liking for her that they constantly talked of the possibility of our falling in love with each other some day. Castles in Spain!

As for me, my admiration for the child was immense, and my respect for her character unbounded; and I felt myself such a base unworthy brute that I couldn't bear to think of myself in such a connection--until I had cleansed myself heart and soul (which would take time)! And as for showing by my manner to her that such an idea had ever crossed my mind, the thought never entered my head.

She was just my dear sister's devoted friend; her petticoat hem was still some inches from the ground, and her hair in a plait all down her back....

Girlish innocence and purity incarnate--that is what she seemed; and what she was. "La plus forte des forces est un coeur innocent," said Victor Hugo--and if you translate this literally into English, it comes to exactly the same, both in rhythm and sense.

* * * * *

When Barty sold out, he first thought he would like to go on the stage, but it turned out that he was too tall to play anything but serious footmen.

Then he thought he would be a singer. We used to go to the opera at Drury Lane, where they gave in English a different Italian opera every night;--and this was always followed by _Acis and Galatea_.

We got our seats in the stalls every evening for a couple of weeks, through the kindness of Mr. Hamilton Braham, whom Barty knew, and who played Polyphemus in Handel's famous serenata.

I remember our first night; they gave _Masaniello_, which I had never seen; and when the tenor sang, "Behold how brightly breaks the morning," it came on us both as a delicious surprise--it was such a favorite song at Brossard's--"_amis! la matinee est belle_...." Indeed, it was one of the songs Barty sang on the boulevard for the poor woman, six or seven years back.

The tenor, Mr. Elliot Galer, had a lovely voice; and that was a moment never to be forgotten.

Then came _Acis and Galatea_, which was so odd and old-fashioned we could scarcely sit it out.

Next night, _Lucia_--charming; then again _Acis and Galatea_, because we had nowhere else to go.

"Tiens, tiens!" says Barty, as the lovers sang "the flocks shall leave the mountains"; "c'est diantrement joli, ca!--ecoute!"

Next night, _La Sonnambula_--then again _Acis and Galatea_.

"Mais, nom d'une pipe--elle est _divine_, cette musique-la!" says Barty.

And the nights after we could scarcely sit out the Italian opera that preceded what we have looked upon ever since as among the divinest music in the world.

So one must not judge music at a first hearing; nor poetry; nor pictures at first sight; unless one be poet or painter or musician one's self--not even then! I may live to love thee yet, oh _Tannhaeuser_!

Lucy Escott, Fanny Huddart, Elliot Galer, and Hamilton Braham--that was the cast; I hear their voices now....

One morning Hamilton Braham tried Barty's voice on the empty stage at St. James's Theatre--made him sing "When other lips."

"Sing _out_, man--sing _out_!" said the big bass. And Barty shouted his loudest--a method which did not suit him. I sat in the pit, with half a dozen Guardsmen, who were deeply interested in Barty's operatic aspirations.

It turned out that Barty was neither tenor nor barytone; and that his light voice, so charming in a room, would never do for the operatic stage; although his figure, in spite of his great height, would have suited heroic parts so admirably.

Besides, three or four years' training in Italy were needed--a different production altogether.

So Barty gave up this idea and made up his mind to be an artist. He got permission to work in the British Museum, and drew the "Discobolus," and sent his drawing to the Royal Academy, in the hope of being admitted there as a student. He was not.

Then an immense overwhelming homesickness for Paris came over him, and he felt he must go and study art there, and succeed or perish.

My father talked to him like a father, my mother like a mother; we all hung about him and entreated. He was as obdurate as Tennyson's sailor-boy whom the mermaiden forewarned so fiercely!

He was even offered a handsome appointment in the London house of Vougeot-Conti & Co.

But his mind was made up, and to my sorrow, and the sorrow of all who knew him, he fixed the date of his departure for the 2d of May (1856),--this being the day after a party at the Gibsons'--a young dance in honor of Leah's fifteenth birthday, on the 1st--and to which my sister had procured him an invitation.

He had never been to the Gibsons' before. They belonged to a world so different to anything he had been accustomed to--indeed, to a class that he then so much disliked and despised (both as ex-Guardsman and as the descendant of French toilers of the sea, who hate and scorn the bourgeois)--that I was curious to see how he would bear himself there; and rather nervous, for it would have grieved me that he should look down on people of whom I was getting very fond. It was his theory that all successful business people were pompous and purse-proud and vulgar.

I admit that in the fifties we very often were.

There may perhaps be a few survivals of that period: _old_ nouveaux riches, who are still modestly jocose on the subject of each other's millions when they meet, and indulge in pompous little pleasantries about their pet economics, and drop a pompous little _h_ now and then, and pretend they only did it for fun. But, dear me, there are other things to be vulgar about in this world besides money and uncertain aspirates.

If to be pompous and pretentious and insincere is to be vulgar, I really think the vulgar of our time are not these old plutocrats--not even their grandsons, who hunt and shoot and yacht and swagger with the best--but those solemn little prigs who have done well at school or college, and become radicals and agnostics before they've even had time to find out what men and women are made of, or what sex they belong to themselves (if any), and loathe all fun and sport and athletics, and rave about pictures and books and music they don't understand, and would pretend to despise if they did--things that were not even _meant_ to be understood. It doesn't take three generations to make a prig--worse luck!

At the Gibsons' there was neither pompousness nor insincerity nor pretension of any kind, and therefore no real vulgarity. It is true they were a little bit noisy there sometimes, but only in fun.

When we arrived at that most hospitable house the two pretty drawing-rooms were already crammed with young people, and the dancing was in full swing.

I presented Barty to Mrs. Gibson, who received him with her usual easy cordiality, just as she would have received one of her husband's clerks, or the Prime Minister; or the Prince Consort himself, for that matter. But she looked up into his face with such frank unabashed admiration that I couldn't help laughing--nor could he!

She presented him to Mr. Gibson, who drew himself back and folded his arms and frowned; then suddenly, striking a beautiful stage attitude of surprised emotion, with his hand on his heart, he exclaimed:

"Oh! Monsewer! Esker-voo ker jer dwaw lah vee?--ah! kel bonnure!"

And this so tickled Barty that he forgot his manners and went into peals of laughter. And from that moment I ceased to exist as the bright particular star in Mr. Gibson's firmament of eligible young men: for in spite of the kink in my nose, and my stolid gravity, which was really and merely the result of my shyness, he had always looked upon me as an exceptionally presentable, proper, and goodly youth, and a most exemplary--that is, if my sister was to be trusted in the matter; for she was my informant.

I'm afraid Barty was not so immediately popular with the young cavaliers of the party--but all came right in due time. For after supper, which was early, Barty played the fool with Mr. Gibson, and taught him how to do a mechanical wax figure, of which he himself was the showman; and the laughter, both baritone and soprano, might have been heard in Russell Square. Then they sang an extempore Italian duet together which was screamingly droll--and so forth.

Leah distinguished herself as usual by being attentive to the material wants of the company: comfortable seats, ices, syrups, footstools for mammas, and wraps; safety from thorough draughts for grandpapas--the inherited hospitality of the clan of Gibson took this form with the sole daughter of their house and home; she had no "parlor tricks."

We remained the latest. It was a full moon, or nearly so--as usual on a balcony; for I remember standing on the balcony with Leah.

A belated Italian organ-grinder stopped beneath us and played a tune from _I Lombardi_, called "La mia letizia." Leah's hair was done up for the first time--in two heavy black bands that hid her little ears and framed her narrow chinny face--with a yellow bow plastered on behind. Such was the fashion then, a hideous fashion enough--but we knew no better. To me she looked so lovely in her long white frock--long for the first time--that Tavistock Square became a broad Venetian moonlit lagoon, and the dome of University College an old Italian church, and "La mia letizia" the song of Adria's gondolier.

I asked her what she thought of Barty.

"I really don't know," she said. "He's not a bit romantic, _is_ he?"

"No; but he's very handsome. Don't you think so?"

"Oh yes, indeed--much too handsome for a man. It seems such waste. Why, I now remember seeing him when I was quite a little girl, three or four years ago, at the Duke of Wellington's funeral. He had his bearskin on. Papa pointed him out to us, and said he looked like such a pretty girl! And we all wondered who he could be! And so sad he looked! I suppose it was for the Duke.

"I couldn't think where I'd seen him before, and now I remember--and there's a photograph of him in a stall at the Crystal Palace. Have you seen it? Not that he looks like a girl now! Not a bit! I suppose you're very fond of him? Ida is! She talks as much about Mr. Josselin as she does about you! _Barty_, she calls him."

"Yes, indeed; he's like our brother. We were boys at school together in France. My sister calls him _thee_ and _thou_; in French, you know."

"And was he always like that--funny and jolly and good-natured?"

"Always; he hasn't changed a bit."

"And is he very sincere?"

Just then Barty came on to the balcony: it was time to go. My sister had been fetched away already (in her gondola).

So Barty made his farewells, and bent his gallant, irresistible look of mirthful chivalry and delicate middle-aged admiration on Leah's upturned face, and her eyes looked up more piercing and blacker than ever; and in each of them a little high light shone like a point of interrogation--the reflection of some white window-curtain, I suppose; and I felt cold all down my back.

(Barty's daughter, Mary Trevor, often sings a little song of De Musset's. It is quite lovely, and begins:

"Beau chevalier qui partez pour la guerre,
Qu'allez-vous faire
Si loin d'ici?
Voyez-vous pas que la nuit est profonde,
Et que le monde
N'est que souci?"

It is called "La Chanson de Barberine," and I never hear it but I think of that sweet little white virginal _point d'interrogation_, and Barty going away to France.)

Then he thanked Mrs. Gibson and said pretty things, and finally called Mr. Gibson dreadful French fancy-names: "Cascameche--moutardier du pape, tromblon-bolivard, vieux coquelicot"; to each of which the delighted Mr. G. answered:

"Voos ayt oon oter--voos ayt oon oter!"

And then Barty whisked himself away in a silver cloud of glory. A good exit!

Outside was a hansom waiting, with a carpet-bag on the top, and we got into it and drove up to Hampstead Heath, to some little inn called the Bull and Bush, near North-end.

Barty lit his pipe, and said:

"What capital people! Hanged if they're not the nicest people I ever met!"

"Yes," said I.

And that's all that was said during that long drive.

At North-end we found two or three other hansoms, and Pepys and Ticklets and the little Hebrew tenor art student whose name I've forgotten, and several others.

We had another supper, and made a night of it. There was a piano in a small room opening on to a kind of little terrace, with geraniums, over a bow-window. We had music and singing of all sorts. Even _I_ sang--"The Standard-bearer"--and rather well. My sister had coached me; but I did not obtain an encore.

The next day dawned, and Barty had a wash and changed his clothes, and we walked all over Hampstead Heath, and saw London lying in a dun mist, with the dome and gilded cross of St. Paul's rising into the pale blue dawn; and I thought what a beastly place London would be without Barty--but that Leah was there still, safe and sound asleep in Tavistock Square!

Then back to the inn for breakfast. Barty, as usual, fresh as paint. Happy Barty, off to Paris!

And then we all drove down to London Bridge to see him safe into the Boulogne steamer. All his luggage was on board. His late soldier-servant was there--a splendid fellow, chosen for his length and breadth as well as his fidelity; also the Snowdrop, who was lachrymose and in great grief. It was a most affectionate farewell all round.

"Good-bye, Bob. _I_ won that toss--_didn't_ I?"

Oddly enough, _I_ was thinking of that, and didn't like it.

"What rot! it's only a joke, old fellow!" said Barty.

All this about an innocent little girl just fifteen, the daughter of a low-comedy John Gilpin: a still somewhat gaunt little girl, whose budding charms of color, shape, and surface were already such that it didn't matter whether she were good or bad, gentle or simple, rich or poor, sensible or an utter fool.

C'est toujours comme ca!

We watched the steamer pick its sunny way down the Thames, with Barty waving his hat by the man at the wheel; and I walked westward with the little Hebrew artist, who was so affected at parting with his hero that he had tears in his lovely voice. It was not till I had complimented him on his wonderful B-flat that he got consoled; and he talked about himself, and his B-flat, and his middle G, and his physical strength, and his eye for color, all the way from the Mansion House to the Foundling Hospital; when we parted, and he went straight to his drawing-board at the British Museum--an anticlimax!

I found my mother and sister at their late breakfast, and was scolded; and I told them Barty had got off, and wouldn't come back for long--it might not be for years!

"Thank Heaven!" said my dear mother, and I was not pleased.

Says my sister:

"Do you know, he's actually stolen Leah's photograph, that she gave me for my birthday. He asked me for it and I wouldn't give it him--and it's gone!"

Then I washed and put on my work-a-day clothes, and went straight to Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, and made myself a bed on the floor with my great-coat, and slept all day.

* * * * *

Oh heavens! what a dull book this would be, and how dismally it would drag its weary length along, if it weren't all about the author of _Sardonyx_!

But is there a lost corner anywhere in this planet where English is spoken (or French) in which _The Martian_ won't be bought and treasured and spelt over and over again like a novel by Dickens or Scott (or Dumas)--for Josselin's dear sake! What a fortune my publishers would make if I were not a man of business and they were not the best and most generous publishers in the world! And all Josselin's publishers--French, English, German, and what not--down to modern Sanscrit! What millionaires--if it hadn't been for this little busy bee of a Bob Maurice!

Poor Barty! I am here! a bon chat, bon rat!

And what on earth do _I_ want a fortune for? Barty's dead, and I've got so much more than I need, who am of a frugal mind--and what I've got is all going to little Josselins, who have already got so much more than _they_ need, what with their late father and me; and my sister, who is a widow and childless, and "riche a millions" too! and cares for nobody in all this wide world but little Josselins, who don't care for money in the least, and would sooner work for their living--even break stones on the road--anything sooner than loaf and laze and loll through life. We all have to give most of it away--not that I need proclaim it from the house-tops! It is but a dull and futile hobby, giving away to those who deserve; they soon leave off deserving.

How fortunate that so much money is really wanted by people who don't deserve it any more than I do; and who, besides, are so weak and stupid and lazy and honest--or so incurably dishonest--that they can't make it for themselves! I have to look after a good many of these people. Barty was fond of them, honest or not. They are so incurably prolific; and so was he, poor dear boy! but, oh, the difference! Grapes don't grow on thorns, nor figs on thistles!

I'm a thorn, alas! in my own side, more often than not--and a thistle in the sides of a good many donkeys, whom I feed because they're too stupid or too lazy to feed themselves! But at least I know my place, and the knowledge is more bother to me than all my money, and the race of Maurice will soon be extinct.

* * * * *

When Barty went to foreign parts, on the 2d of May, 1856, I didn't trouble myself about such questions as these.

Life was so horribly stale in London without Barty that I became a quite exemplary young man when I woke up from that long nap on the floor of my laboratory in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury; a reformed character: from sheer grief, I really believe!

I thought of many things--ugly things--very ugly things indeed--and meant to have done with them. I thought of some very handsome things too--a pair of beautiful crown-jewels, each rare as the black tulip--and in each of them a bright little sign like this:?

I don't believe I ever gave my father another bad quarter of an hour from that moment. I even went to church on Sunday mornings quite regularly; not his own somewhat severe place of worship, it is true! But the Foundling Hospital. There, in the gallery, would I sit with my sister, and listen to Miss Dolby and Miss Louisa Pyne and Mr. Lawler the bass--and a tenor and alto whose names I cannot recall; and I thought they sang as they ought to have sung, and was deeply moved and comforted--more than by any preachments in the world; and just in the opposite gallery sat Leah with her mother; and I grew fond of nice clean little boys and girls who sing pretty hymns in unison; and afterwards I watched them eat their roast beef, small mites of three and four or five, some of them, and thought how touching it all was--I don't know why! Love or grief? or that touch of nature that makes the whole world kin at about 1 P.M. on Sunday?

One would think that Barty had exerted a bad influence on me, since he seems to have kept me out of all this that was so sweet and new and fresh and wholesome!

He would have been just as susceptible to such impressions as I; even more so, if the same chance had arisen for him--for he was singularly fond of children, the smaller and the poorer the better, even gutter children! and their poor mothers loved him, he was so jolly and generous and kind.

Sometimes I got a letter from him in Blaze, my father's shorthand cipher; it was always brief and bright and hopeful, and full of jokes and funny sketches. And I answered him in Blaze that was long and probably dull.

All that I will tell of him now is not taken from his Blaze letters, but from what he has told me later, by word of mouth--for he was as fond of talking of himself as I of listening--since he was droll and sincere and without guile or vanity; and would have been just as sympathetic a listener as I, if I had cared to talk about Mr. Robert Maurice, of Barge Yard, Bucklersbury. Besides, I am good at hearing between the words and reading between the lines, and all that--and love to exercise this faculty.

* * * * *

Well, he reached Paris in due time, and took a small bedroom on a third floor in the Rue du Faubourg Poissonniere--over a cheap hatter's--opposite the Conservatoire de Musique.

On the first night he was awoke by a terrible invasion--such malodorous swarms of all sizes, from a tiny brown speck to a full-grown lentil, that they darkened his bed; and he slept on the tiled floor after making an island of himself by pouring cold water all round him as a kind of moat; and so he slept for a week of nights, until he had managed to poison off most of these invaders with _poudre insecticide_ ... "mort aux punaises!"

In the daytime he first of all went for a swim at the Passy baths--an immense joy, full of the ghosts of bygone times; then he would spend the rest of his day revisiting old haunts--often sitting on the edge of the stone fountain in the rond-point of the Avenue du Prince Imperial, or de l'Imperatrice, or whatever it was--to gaze comfortably at the outside of the old school, which was now a pensionnat de demoiselles: soon to be pulled down and make room for a new house altogether. He did not attempt to invade these precincts of maiden innocence; but gazed and gazed, and remembered and realized and dreamt: it all gave him unspeakable excitement, and a strange tender wistful melancholy delight for which there is no name. Je connais ca! I also, ghostlike, have paced round the haunts of my childhood.

When the joy of this faded, as it always must when indulged in too freely, he amused himself by sitting in his bedroom and painting Leah's portrait, enlarged and in oils; partly from the very vivid image he had preserved of her in his mind, partly from the stolen photograph. At first he got it very like; then he lost all the likeness and could not recover it; and he worked and worked till he got stupid over it, and his mental image faded quite away.

But for a time this minute examination of the photograph (through a powerful lens he bought on purpose), and this delving search into his own deep consciousness of her, into his keen remembrance of every detail of feature and color and shade of expression, made him realize and idealize and foresee what the face might be some day--and what its owner might become.

And a horror of his life in London came over him like a revelation--a blast--a horrible surprise! Mere sin is ugly when it's no more; and _so_ beastly to remember, unless the sinner be thoroughly acclimatized; and Barty was only twenty-two, and hated deceit and cruelty in any form. Oh, poor, weak, frail fellow-sinner--whether Vivien or Guinevere! How sadly unjust that loathing and satiety and harsh male contempt should kill man's ruth and pity for thee, that wast so kind to man! What a hellish after-math!

Poor Barty hadn't the ghost of a notion how to set to work about becoming a painter, and didn't know a soul in Paris he cared to go and consult, although there were many people he might have discovered whom he had known: old school-fellows, and friends of the Archibald Rohans--who would have been only too glad.

So he took to wandering listlessly about, lunching and dining at cheap suburban restaurants, taking long walks, sitting on benches, leaning over parapets, and longing to tell people who he was, his age, how little money he'd got, what lots of friends he had in England, what a nice little English girl he knew, whose portrait he didn't know how to paint--any idiotic nonsense that came into his head, so at least he might talk about something or somebody that interested him.

There is no city like Paris, no crowd like a Parisian crowd, to make you feel your solitude if you are alone in its midst!

At night he read French novels in bed and drank eau sucree and smoked till he was sleepy; then he cunningly put out his light, and lit it again in a quarter of an hour or so, and exploded what remained of the invading hordes as they came crawling down the wall from above. Their numbers were reduced at last; they were disappearing. Then he put out his candle for good, and went to sleep happy--having at least scored for once in the twenty-four hours. Mort aux punaises!

Twice he went to the Opera Comique, and saw _Richard Coeur de Lion_ and _le Pre aux Clercs_ from the gallery, and was disappointed, and couldn't understand why _he_ shouldn't sing as well as that--he thought he could sing much better, poor fellow! he had a delightful voice, and charm, and the sense of tune and rhythm, and could please quite wonderfully--but he had no technical knowledge whatever, and couldn't be depended upon to sing a song twice the same! He trusted to the inspiration of the moment--like an amateur.

Of course he had to be very economical, even about candle ends, and almost liked such economy for a change; but he got sick of his loneliness, beyond expression--he was a fish out of water.

Then he took it into his head to go and copy a picture at the Louvre--an old master; in this he felt he could not go wrong. He obtained the necessary permission, bought a canvas six feet high, and sat himself before a picture by Nicolas Poussin, I think: a group of angelic women carrying another woman though the air up to heaven.

They were not very much to his taste, but more so than any others. His chief notion about women in pictures was that they should be very beautiful--since they cannot make themselves agreeable in any other way; and they are not always so in the works of the great masters. At least, _he_ thought not. These are matters of taste, of course.

He had no notion of how to divide his canvas into squares--a device by which one makes it easier to get the copy into proper proportion, it seems. He began by sketching the head of the principal woman roughly in the middle of his canvas, and then he wanted to begin painting it at once--he was so impatient.

Students, female students especially, came and interested themselves in his work, and some _rapins_ asked him questions, and tried to help him and give him tips. But the more they told him, the more helpless and hopeless he grew. He soon felt conscious he was becoming quite a funny man again--a centre of interest--in a new line; but it gave him no pleasure whatever.

After a week of this mistaken drudgery he sat despondent one afternoon on a bench in the Champs Elysees and watched the gay people, and thought himself very down on his luck; he was tired and hot and miserable--it was the beginning of July. If he had known how, he would almost have shed tears. His loneliness was not to be borne, and his longing to feel once more the north had become a chronic ache.

A tall, thin, shabby man came and sat by his side, and made himself a cigarette, and hummed a tune--a well-known quartier-latin song--about "Mon Aldegonde, ma blonde," and "Ma Rodogune, ma brune."

Barty just glanced at this jovial person and found he didn't look jovial at all, but rather sad and seedy and out at elbows--by no means of the kind that the fair Aldegonde or her dark sister would have much to say to.

Also that he wore very strong spectacles, and that his brown eyes, when turned Barty's way, vibrated with a quick, tremulous motion and sideways, as if they had the "gigs."

Much moved and excited, Barty got up and put out his hand to the stranger, and said:

"Bonjour, Monsieur Bonzig! comment allez-vous?"

Bonzig opened his eyes at this well-dressed Briton (for Barty had clothes to last him a French lifetime).

"Pardonnez-moi, monsieur--mais je n'ai pas l'honneur de vous remettre!"

"Je m'appelle Josselin--de chez Brossard!"

"Ah! Mon Dieu, mon cher, mon tres-cher!" said Bonzig, and got up and seized Barty's both hands--and all but hugged him.

"Mais quel bonheur de vous revoir! Je pense a vous si souvent, et a Ouittebe! comme vous etes change--et quel beau garcon vous etes! Qui vous aurait reconnu! Dieu de Dieu--c'est un reve! Je n'en reviens pas!" etc., etc....

And they walked off together, and told the other each an epitome of his history since they parted; and dined together cheaply, and spent a happy evening walking up and down the boulevards, and smoking many cigarettes--from the Madeleine to the Porte St.-Martin and back--again and again.

"Non, mon cher Josselin," said Bonzig, in answer to a question of Barty's--"non, I hare not yet seen the sea ..; it will come in time. But at least I am no longer a damned usher (un sacre pion d'etudes); I am an artist--un peintre de marines--at last! It is a happy existence. I fear my talent is not very imposing, but my perseverance is exceptional, and I am only forty-five. Anyhow, I am able to support myself--not in splendor, certainly; but my wants are few and my health is perfect. I will put you up to many things, my dear boy.... We will storm the citadel of fame together...."

Bonzig had a garret somewhere, and painted in the studio of a friend, not far from Barty's lodging. This friend, one Lirieux, was a very clever young man--a genius, according to Bonzig. He drew illustrations on wood with surprising quickness and facility and verve, and painted little oil-pictures of sporting life--a garde champetre in a wood with his dog, or with his dog on a dusty road, or crossing a stream, or getting over a stile, and so forth. The dog was never left out; and these things he would sell for twenty, thirty, even fifty francs. He painted very quick and very well. He was also a capital good fellow, industrious and cultivated and refined, and full of self-respect.

Next to his studio he had a small bedroom which he shared with a younger brother, who had just got a small government appointment that kept him at work all day, in some ministere. In this studio Bonzig painted his marines--still helping himself from _La France Maritime_, as he used to do at Brossard's.

He was good at masts and cordage against an evening sky--"l'heure ou le jaune de Naples rentre dans la nature," as he called it. He was also excellent at foam, and far-off breakers, and sea-gulls, but very bad at the human figure--sailors and fishermen and their wives. Sometimes Lirieux would put one in for him with a few dabs.

As soon as Bonzig had finished a picture, which didn't take very long, he carried it round, still wet, to the small dealers, bearing it very carefully aloft, so as not to smudge it. Sometimes (if there were a sailor by Lirieux) he would get five or even ten francs for it; and then it was "Mon Aldegonde" with him all the rest of the day; for success always took the form, in his case, of nasally humming that amorous refrain.

But it very often happened that he was dumb, poor fellow--no supper, no song!

Lirieux conceived such a liking for Barty that he insisted on taking him into his studio as a pupil-assistant, and setting him to draw things under his own eye; and Barty would fill Bonzig's French sea pieces with Whitby fishermen, and Bonzig got to sing "Mon Aldegonde" much oftener than before.

And chumming with these two delightful men, Barty grew to know a clean, quiet happiness which more than made up for lost past splendors and dissipations and gay dishonor. He wasn't even funny; they wouldn't have understood it. Well-bred Frenchmen don't understand English fun--not even in the quartier latin, as a general rule. Not that it's too subtle for them; _that's_ not why!

Thus pleasantly August wore itself away, Bonzig and Barty nearly always dining together for about a franc apiece, including the waiter, and not badly. Bonzig knew all the cheap eating-houses in Paris, and what each was specially renowned for--"bonne friture," "fricassee de lapin," "pommes sautees," "soupe aux choux," etc., etc.

Then, after dinner, a long walk and talk and cigarettes--or they would look in at a cafe chantant, a bal de barriere, the gallery of a cheap theatre--then a bock outside a cafe--et bonsoir la compagnie!

On September the 1st, Lirieux and his brother went to see their people in the south, leaving the studio to Bonzig and Barty, who made the most of it, though greatly missing the genial young painter, both as a companion and a master and guide.

One beautiful morning Bonzig called for Barty at his cremerie, and proposed they should go by train to some village near Paris and spend a happy day in the country, lunching on bread and wine and sugar at some little roadside inn. Bonzig made a great deal of this lunch. It had evidently preoccupied him.

Barty was only too delighted. They went on the imperiale of the Versailles train and got out at Ville d'Avray, and found the kind of little pothouse they wanted. And Barty had to admit that no better lunch for the price could be than "small blue wine" sweetened with sugar, and a hunch of bread sopped in it.

Then they had a long walk in pretty woods and meadows, sketching by the way, chatting to laborers and soldiers and farm-people, smoking endless cigarettes of caporal; and finally they got back to Paris the way they came--so hungry that Barty proposed they should treat themselves for once to a "prix-fixe" dinner at Carmagnol's, in the Passage Choiseul, where they gave you hors-d'oeuvres, potage, three courses and dessert and a bottle of wine, for two francs fifty--and everything scrupulously clean.

So to the Passage Choiseul they went; but just on the threshold of the famous restaurant (which filled the entire arcade with its appetizing exhalations) Bonzig suddenly remembered, to his great regret, that close by there lived a young married couple of the name of Lousteau, who were great friends of his, and who expected him to dine with them at least once a week.

"I haven't been near them for a fortnight, mon cher, and it is just their dinner hour. I am afraid I must really just run in and eat an _aile de poulet_ and a _peche au vin_ with them, and give them of my news, or they will be mortally offended. I'll be back with you just when you are '_entre la poire et le fromage_'--so, sans adieu!" and he bolted.

Barty went in and selected his menu; and waiting for his hors-d'oeuvre, he just peeped out of the door and looked up and down the arcade, which was always festive and lively at that hour.

To his great surprise he saw Bonzig leisurely flaning about with his cigarette in his mouth, his hands in his pockets, his long spectacled nose in the air--gazing at the shop windows. Suddenly the good man dived into a baker's shop, and came out again in half a minute with a large brown roll, and began to munch it--still gazing at the shop windows, and apparently quite content.

Barty rushed after and caught hold of him, and breathlessly heaped bitter reproaches on him for his base and unfriendly want of confidence--snatched his roll and threw it away, dragged him by main force into Carmagnol's, and made him order the dinner he preferred and sit opposite.

"Ma foi, mon cher!" said Bonzig--"I own to you that I am almost at the end of my resources for the moment--and also that the prospect of a good dinner in your amiable company is the reverse of disagreeable to me. I thank you in advance, with all my heart!"

"My dear M'sieur Bonzig," says Barty, "you will wound me deeply if you don't look on me like a brother, as I do you; I can't tell you how deeply you _have_ wounded me already! Give me your word of honor that you will share ma mangeaille with me till I haven't a sou left!"

And so they made it up, and had a capital dinner and a capital evening, and Barty insisted that in future they should always mess together at his expense till better days--and they did.

But Barty found that his own money was just giving out, and wrote to his bankers in London for more. Somehow it didn't arrive for nearly a week; and they knew at last what it was to dine for five sous each (2-1/2_d._)--with loss of appetite just before the meal instead of after.

Of course Barty might very well have pawned his watch or his scarf-pin; but whatever trinkets he possessed had been given him by his beloved Lady Archibald--everything pawnable he had in the world, even his guitar! And he could not bear the idea of taking them to the "Mont de Piete."

So he was well pleased one Sunday morning when his remittance arrived, and he went in search of his friend, that they might compensate themselves for a week's abstinence by a famous dejeuner. But Bonzig was not to be found; and Barty spent that day alone, and Gorged in solitude and guzzled in silence--moult tristement, a l'anglaise.

He was aroused from his first sleep that night by the irruption of Bonzig in a tremendous state of excitement. It seems that a certain Baron (whose name I've forgotten), and whose little son the ex-usher had once coached in early Latin and Greek, had written, begging him to call and see him at his chateau near Melun; that Bonzig had walked there that very day--thirty miles; and found the Baron was leaving next morning for a villa he possessed near Etretat, and wished him to join him there the day after, and stay with him for a couple of months--to coach his son in more classics for a couple of hours in the forenoon.

Bonzig was to dispose of the rest of his time as he liked, except that he was commissioned to paint six "marines" for the baronial dining-room; and the Baron had most considerately given him four hundred francs in advance!

"So, then, to-morrow afternoon at six, my dear Josselin, you dine with _me_, for once--not in the Passage Choiseul this time, good as it is there! But at Babet's, en plein Palais Royal! un jour de separation, vous comprenez! the dinner will be good, I promise you: a calf's head a la vinaigrette--they are famous for that, at Babet's--and for their Pauillac and their St.-Estephe; at least, I'm told so! nous en ferons l'experience.... And now I bid you good-night, as I have to be up before the day--so many things to buy and settle and arrange--first of all to procure myself a 'maillot' and a 'peignoir,' and shoes for the beach! I know where to get these things much cheaper than at the seaside. Oh! la mer, la mer! Enfin je vais piquer ma tete [take my header] la dedans--_et pas plus tard qu'apres-demain soir_.... A demain, tres-cher camarade--six heures--chez Babet!"

And, delirious with joyful anticipations, the good Bonzig ran away--all but "piquant sa tete" down the narrow staircase, and whistling "Mon Aldegonde" at the very top of his whistle; and even outside he shouted:

"Ouile--me--sekile ro,
sekile ro,
sekile ro ...
Ouile--me--sekile ro
Tat brinn my ladde ome!"

He had to be silenced by a sergent de ville.

And next day they dined at Babet's, and Bonzig was so happy he had to beg pardon for his want of feeling at seeming so exuberant "un jour de separation! mais venez aussi, Josselin--nous piquerons nos tetes ensemble, et nagerons de conserve...."