Chapter IX: Part 9

But Barty always dined with his aunt and cousin on Thursdays and Sundays, after listening to the music in Geissler's Garden, opposite, and drinking coffee with them there, and also with Prince Fritz and Prince Hans, who always joined the party and smoked their cheap cigars; and sometimes the divine Julia would make one of the party too, with her mother and uncle and Captain Reece; and the good painter fellows would envy from afar their beloved but too fortunate comrade; and the hussars and Uhlans, von this and von that, would find seats and tables as near the princely company as possible.

And every time a general officer entered the garden, up stood every officer of inferior rank till the great man had comfortably seated himself somewhere in the azure sunshine of Julia's forget-me-not warm glance.

And before the summer had fulfilled itself, and the roses at Geissler's were overblown, it became evident to Lady Caroline, if to none other, that Julia had eyes for no one else in the world but Barty Josselin. I had it from Lady Caroline herself.

But Barty Josselin had eyes only (such eyes as they were) for his work at Herr Duffenthaler's, and lived laborious days, except on Thursday and Sunday afternoons, and shunned delights, except to dine at the Runsberg Speiserei with his two fellow-pupils, and Henley and Armstrong and Bancroft and du Maurier and others, all painters, mostly British and Yankee; and an uncommonly lively and agreeable repast that was! And afterwards, long walks by moon or star light, or music at each other's rooms, and that engrossing technical shop talk that never palls on those who talk it. No Guardsman's talk of turf or sport or the ballet had ever been so good as this, in Barty's estimation; no agreeable society gossip at Mr. Beresford Duff's Riffrath tea-parties!

Once in every fortnight or so Barty would report himself to Dr. Hasenclever, and spend the day in Riffrath and lunch with the good old Beresford Duff, who was very fond of him, and who lamented over his loss of caste in devoting himself professionally to art.

"God bless me--my dear Barty, you don't mean to say you're going to paint for _hire_!"

"Indeed I am, if any one will hire me. How else am I to live?"

"Well, _you_ know best, my dear boy; but I should have thought the Rohans might have got you something better than _that_. It's true, Buckner does it, and Swinton, and Francis Grant! But _still_, you know ... there _are_ other ways of getting on for a fellow like you. Look at Prince Gelbioso, who ran away with the Duchess of Flitwick! He didn't sing a bit better than you do, and as for looks, you beat him hollow, my dear boy; yet all London went mad about Prince Gelbioso, and so did she; and off she bolted with him, bag and baggage, leaving husband and children and friends and all! and she'd got ten thousand a year of her own; and when the Duke divorced her they were married, and lived happily ever after--in Italy; and some of the best people called upon 'em, by George!... just to spite the Duke!"

Barty felt it would seem priggish or even insincere if he were to disclaim any wish to emulate Prince Gelbioso; so he merely said he thought painting easier on the whole, and not so risky; and the good Beresford Duff talked of other things--of the divine Julia, and what a good thing it would be if she and Graham-Reece could make a match of it.

"Two of the finest fortunes in England, by George! they _ought_ to come together, if only just for the fun of the thing! Not that she is a bit in love with him--I'll eat my hat if she is! What a pity _you_ ain't goin' to be Lord Ironsides, Barty!"

Barty frankly confessed _he_ shouldn't much object, for one.

"But, 'ni l'or ni la grandeur ne nous rendent heureux,' as we used to be taught at school."

"Ah, that's all gammon; wait till you're _my_ age, my young friend, and as poor as _I_ am," said Beresford Duff. And so the two friends talked on, Mentor and Telemachus--and we needn't listen any further.

Part Seventh

"Old winter was gone
In his weakness back to the mountains hoar,
And the spring came down
From the planet that hovers upon the shore
Where the sea of sunlight encroaches
On the limits of wintry night;
If the land, and the air, and the sea
Rejoice not when spring approaches,
We did not rejoice in thee,
Ginevra!"
--Shelley.

Riffrath, besides its natives and its regular English colony of residents, had a floating population that constantly changed. And every day new faces were to be found drinking tea with Mr. Beresford Duff--and all these faces were well known in society at home, you may be sure; and Barty made capital caricatures of them all, which were treasured up and carried back to England; one or two of them turn up now and then at a sale at Christie's and fetch a great price. I got a little pen-and-ink outline of Captain Reece there, drawn before he came into the title. I had to give forty-seven pounds ten for it, not only because it was a speaking likeness of the late Lord Ironsides as a young man, but on account of the little "B. J." in the corner.

And only the other evening I sat at dinner next to the Dowager Countess. Heavens! what a beautiful creature she still is, with her prematurely white hair and her long thick neck!

And after dinner we talked of Barty--she with that delightful frankness that always characterized her through life, I am told:

"Dear Barty Josselin! how desperately in love I was with that man, to be sure! Everybody was--he might have thrown the handkerchief as he pleased in Riffrath, I can tell you, Sir Robert! He was the handsomest man I ever saw, and wore a black pork-pie hat and a little yellow Vandyck beard and mustache; just the color of Turkish tobacco, like his hair! All that sounds odd now, doesn't it? Fashions have changed--but not for the better! And what a figure! and such fun he was! and always in such good spirits, poor boy! and now he's dead, and it's one of the greatest names in all the world! Well, if he'd thrown that handkerchief at me just about then, I should have picked it up--and you're welcome to tell all the world so, Sir Robert!"

* * * * *

And next day I got a kind and pretty little letter:

"Dear Sir Robert,--I was quite serious last night. Barty Josselin
was _mes premieres amours_! Whether he ever guessed it or not, I
can't say. If not, he was very obtuse! Perhaps he feared to fall,
and didn't feel fain to climb in consequence. I all but proposed to
him, in fact! Anyhow, I am proud my girlish fancy should have fallen
on such a man!

"I told him so myself only last year, and we had a good laugh over
old times; and then I told his wife, and she seemed much pleased. I
can understand his preference, and am old enough to forgive it and
laugh--although there is even now a tear in the laughter. You know
his daughter, Julia Mainwaring, is my godchild; sometimes she sings
her father's old songs to me:

"'Petit chagrin de notre enfance
Coute un soupir!'

"Do you remember?

"Poor Ironsides knew all about it when he married me, and often
declared I had amply made up to him for that and many other
things--over and over again. Il avait bien raison; and made of me a
very happy wife and a most unhappy widow.

"Put this in your book, if you like.

"Sincerely yours,

"Julia Ironsides."

Thus time flowed smoothly and pleasantly for Barty all through the summer. In August the Royces left, and also Captain Reece--they for Scotland, he for Algiers--and appointed to meet again in Riffrath next spring.

In October Lady Caroline took her niece to Rome, and Barty was left behind to his work, very much to her grief and Daphne's.

He wrote to them every Monday, and always got a letter back on the Saturday following.

Barty spent the winter hard at work, but with lots of play between, and was happy among his painter fellows--and sketching and caricaturing, and skating and sleighing with the English who remained in Duesseldorf, and young von this and young von that. I have many of his letters describing this genial, easy life--letters full of droll and charming sketches.

He does not mention the fair Julia much, but there is no doubt that the remembrance of her much preoccupied him, and kept him from losing his heart to any of the fair damsels, English and German, whom he skated and danced with, and sketched and sang to.

As a matter of fact, he had never yet lost his heart in his life--not even to Julia. He never said much about his love-making with Julia to me. But his aunt did--and I listened between the words, as I always do. His four or five years' career in London as a thoroughgoing young rake had given him a very deep insight into woman's nature--an insight rare at his age, for all his perceptions were astonishingly acute, and his unconscious faculty of sympathetic observation and induction and deduction immense.

And, strange to say, if that heart had never been touched, it had never been corrupted either, and probably for that very reason--that he had never been in love with these sirens. It is only when true love fades away at last in the arms of lust that the youthful, manly heart is wrecked and ruined and befouled.

He made up his mind that art should be his sole mistress henceforward, and that the devotion of a lifetime would not be price enough to pay for her favors, if but she would one day be kind. He had to make up for so much lost time, and had begun his wooing so late! Then he was so happy with his male friends! Whatever void remained in him when his work was done for the day could be so thoroughly filled up by Henley and Bancroft and Armstrong and du Maurier and the rest that there was no room for any other and warmer passion. Work was a joy by itself; the rest from it as great a joy; and these alternations were enough to fill a life. To how many great artists had they sufficed! and what happy lives had been led, with no other distraction, and how glorious and successful! Only the divine Julia, in all the universe, was worthy to be weighed in the scales with these, and she was not for the likes of Mr. Nobody of Nowhere.

Besides, there was the faithful Martia. Punctually every evening the ever-comforting sense of the north filled him as he jumped into bed; and he whispered his prayers audibly to this helpful spirit, or whatever it might be, that had given him a sign and saved him from a cowardly death, and filled his life and thoughts as even no Julia could.

And yet, although he loved best to forgather with those of his own sex, woman meant much for him! There _must_ be a woman somewhere in the world--a needle in a bottle of hay--a nature that could dovetail and fit in with his own; but what a life-long quest to find her! She must be young and beautiful, like Julia--rien que ca!--and as kind and clever and simple and well-bred and easy to live with as Aunt Caroline, and, heavens! how many things besides, before poor Mr. Nobody of Nowhere could make her happy, and be made happy by her!

So Mr. Nobody of Nowhere gave it up, and stuck to his work, and made much progress, and was well content with things as they were.

He had begun late, and found many difficulties in spite of his great natural facility. His principal stock in trade was his keen perception of human beauty, of shape and feature and expression, male or female--of face or figure or movement; and a great love and appreciation of human limbs, especially hands and feet.

With a very few little pen-strokes he could give the most marvellously subtle likenesses of people he knew--beautiful or ordinary or plain or hideous; and the beauty of the beautiful people, just hinted in mere outline, was so keen and true and fascinating that this extraordinary power of expressing it amounted to real genius.

It is a difficult thing, even for a master, to fully render with an ordinary steel pen and a drop of common ink (and of a size no bigger than your little finger nail) the full face of a beautiful woman, let us say; or a child, in sadness or merriment or thoughtful contemplation; and make it as easily and unmistakably recognizable as a good photograph, but with all the subtle human charm and individuality of expression delicately emphasized in a way that no photograph has ever achieved yet.

And this he could always do in a minute from sheer memory and unconscious observation; and in another few minutes he would add on the body, in movement or repose, and of a resemblance so wonderful and a grace so enchanting, or a humor so happily, naively droll, that one forgot to criticise the technique, which was quite that of an amateur; indeed, with all the success he achieved as an artist, he remained an amateur all his life. Yet his greatest admirers were among the most consummate and finished artists of their day, both here and abroad.

It was with his art as with his singing: both were all wrong, yet both gave extraordinary pleasure; one almost feared that regular training would mar the gift of God, so much of the charm we all so keenly felt lay in the very imperfections themselves--just as one loved him personally as much for his faults as for his virtues.

"Il a les qualites de ses defauts, le beau Josselin," said M. Taine one day.

"Mon cher," said M. Renan, "ses defauts sont ses meilleures qualites."

So he spent a tranquil happy winter, and wrote of his happiness and his tranquillity to Lady Caroline and Daphne and Ida and me; and before he knew where he was, or we, the almond-trees blossomed again, and then the lilacs and limes and horse-chestnuts and syringas; and the fireflies flew in and out of his bedroom at night, and the many nightingales made such music in the Hof gardens that he could scarcely sleep for them; and other nightingales came to make music for him too--most memorable music! Stockhausen, Jenny Ney, Joachim, Madame Schumann; for the triennial Musik festival was held in Duesseldorf that year (a month later than usual); and musical festivals are things they manage uncommonly well in Germany. Barty, unseen and unheard, as becomes a chorus-singer, sang in the choruses of Gluck's _Iphigenia_, and heard and saw everything for nothing.

But, before this, Captain Reece came back to Riffrath, and, according to appointment, Admiral Royce and Lady Jane, and Julia, lovelier than ever; and all the sweetness she was so full of rose in her heart and gathered in her eyes as they once more looked on Barty Josselin.

He steeled and stiffened himself like a man who knew that the divine Julias of this world were for his betters--not for him! Nevertheless, as he went to bed, and thought of the melting gaze that had met his, he was deeply stirred; and actually, though the north was in him, he forgot, for the first time in all that twelvemonth, for the first time since that terrible night in Malines, to say his prayers to Martia--and next morning he found a letter by his bedside in pencil-written blaze of his own handwriting:

"Barty my Beloved,--A crisis has come in your affairs, which are
mine; and, great as the cost is to me, I must write again, at the
risk of betraying what amounts to a sacred trust; a secret that I
have innocently surprised, the secret of a noble woman's heart.

"One of the richest girls in England, one of the healthiest and most
beautiful women in the whole world, a bride fit for an emperor, is
yours for the asking. It is my passionate wish, and a matter of life
and death to me, that you and Julia Royce should become man and
wife; when you are, you shall both know why.

"Mr. Nobody of Nowhere--as you are so fond of calling yourself--you
shall be such, some day, that the best and highest in the land will
be only too proud to be your humble friends and followers; no woman
is too good for you--only one good enough! and she loves you: of
that I feel sure--and it is impossible you should not love her back
again.

"I have known her from a baby, and her father and mother also; I
have inhabited her, as I have inhabited you, although I have never
been able to give her the slightest intimation of the fact. You are
both, physically, the most perfect human beings I was ever in; and
in heart and mind the most simply made, the most richly gifted, and
the most admirably balanced; and I have inhabited many thousands,
and in all parts of the globe.

"You, Barty, are the only one I have ever been able to hold
communication with, or make to feel my presence; it was a strange
chance, that--a happy accident; it saved your life. I am the only
one, among many thousands of homeless spirits, who has ever been
able to influence an earthly human being, or even make him feel the
magnetic current that flows through us all, and by which we are able
to exist; all the rappings and table-turnings are mere hysterical
imaginations, or worse--the cheapest form of either trickery or
self-deception that can be. Barty, your unborn children are of a
moment to me beyond anything you can realize or imagine, and Julia
must be their mother; Julia Royce, and no other woman in the world.

"It is in you to become so great when you are ripe that she will
worship the ground you walk upon; but you can only become as great
as that through her and through me, who have a message to deliver
to mankind here on earth, and none but you to give it a voice--not
one. But I must have my reward, and that can only come through your
marriage with Julia.

"When you have read this, Barty, go straight to Riffrath, and see
Julia if you can, and be to her as you have so often been to any
women you wished to please, and who were not worth pleasing. Her
heart is her own to give, like her fortune; she can do what she
likes with them both, and will--her mother notwithstanding, and in
the teeth of the whole world.

"Poor as you are, maimed as you are, irregularly born as you are, it
is better for her that she should be your wife than the wife of any
man living, whoever he be.

"Look at yourself in the glass, and say at once,

"'Martia, I'm off to Riffrath as soon as I've swallowed my
breakfast!'

"And then I'll go about my business with a light heart and an easy
mind.

"Martia."

Much moved and excited, Barty looked in the glass and did as he was bid, and the north left him; and Johanna brought him his breakfast, and he started for Riffrath.

* * * * *

All through this winter that was so happily spent by Barty in Duesseldorf things did not go very happily in London for the Gibsons. Mr. Gibson was not meant for business; nature intended him as a rival to Keeley or Buckstone.

He was extravagant, and so was his wife; they were both given to frequent and most expensive hospitalities; and he to cards, and she to dressing herself and her daughter more beautifully than quite became their position in life. The handsome and prosperous shop in Cheapside--the "emporium," as he loved to call it--was not enough to provide for all these luxuries; so he took another in Conduit Street, and decorated it and stocked it at immense expense, and called it the "Universal Fur Company," and himself the "Head of a West End firm."

Then he speculated, and was not successful, and his affairs got into tangle.

And a day came when he found he could not keep up these two shops and his private house in Tavistock Square as well; the carriage was put down first--a great distress to Mrs. Gibson; and finally, to her intense grief, it became necessary to give up the pretty house itself.

It was decided that their home in future most be over the new emporium in Conduit Street; Mrs. Gibson had a properly constituted English shopkeeper's wife's horror of living over her husband's shop--the idea almost broke her heart; and as a little consolation, while the necessary changes were being wrought for their altered mode of life, Mr. Gibson treated her and Leah and my sister to a trip up the Rhine--and Mrs. Bletchley, the splendid old Jewess (Leah's grandmother), who suffered, or fancied she suffered, in her eyesight, took it into her head that she would like to see the famous Dr. Hasenclever in Riffrath, and elected to journey with them--at all events as far as Duesseldorf. I would have escorted them, but that my father was ill, and I had to replace him in Barge Yard; besides, I was not yet quite cured of my unhappy passion, though in an advanced stage of convalescence; and I did not wish to put myself under conditions that might retard my complete recovery, or even bring on a relapse. I wished to love Leah as a sister; in time I succeeded in doing so; she has been fortunate in her brother, though I say it who shouldn't--and, O heavens! haven't I been fortunate in my sister Leah?

My own sister Ida wrote to Barty to find rooms and meet them at the station, and fixed the day and hour of their arrival; and commissioned him to take seats for Gluck's _Iphigenia_.

She thought more of _Iphigenia_ than of the Drachenfels or Ehrenbreitstein; and was overjoyed at the prospect of once more being with Barty, whom she loved as well as she loved me, if not even better. He was fortunate in his sister, too!

And the Rhine in May did very well as a background to all these delights.

So Mr. Babbage (the friend of the family) and I saw them safely on board the _Baron Osy_ ("the Ank-works package," as Mrs. Gamp called it), which landed them safely in the Place Verte at Antwerp; and then they took train for Duesseldorf, changing at Malines and Verviers; and looked forward eagerly, especially Ida, to the meeting with Barty at the little station by the Rhine.

* * * * *

Barty, as we know, started for Riffrath at Martia's written command, his head full of perplexing thoughts.

Who was Martia? What was she? "A disembodied conscience?" Whose? Not his own, which counselled the opposite course.

He had once seen a man at a show with a third rudimentary leg sticking out behind, and was told this extra limb belonged to a twin, the remaining portions of whom had not succeeded in getting themselves begotten and born. Could Martia be a frustrated and undeveloped twin sister of his own, that interested herself in his affairs, and could see with his eyes and hear with his ears, and had found the way of communicating with him during his sleep--and was yet apart from him, as phenomenal twins are apart from each other, however closely linked--and had, moreover, not managed to have any part of her body born into this world at all?

She wrote like him; her epistolary style was his very own, every turn of phrase, every little mannerism. The mystery of it overwhelmed him again, though he had grown somewhat accustomed to the idea during the last twelvemonth. _Why_ was she so anxious he should marry Julia? Had he, situated as he was, the right to win the love of this splendid creature, in the face of the world's opposition and her family's--he, a beggar and a bastard? Would it be right and honest and fair to her?

And then, again, was he so desperately in love with her, after all, that he should give up the life of art and toil he had planned for himself and go through existence as the husband of a rich and beautiful woman belonging, first of all, to the world and society, of which she was so brilliant an ornament that her husband must needs remain in the background forever, even if he were a gartered duke or a belted earl?

What success of his own would he ever hope to achieve, handicapped as he would be by all the ease and luxury she would bring him? He had grown to love the poverty which ever lends such strenuousness to endeavor. He thought of an engraving he had once taken a fancy to in Brussels, and purchased and hung up in his bedroom. _I_ have it now! It is after Gallait, and represents a picturesquely poor violinist and his violin in a garret, and underneath is written "Art et liberte."

Then he thought of Julia's lovely face and magnificent body--and all his manhood thrilled as he recalled the look in her eyes when they met his the day before.

This was the strongest kind of temptation by which his nature could ever be assailed--he knew himself to be weak as water when that came his way, the ten-thousandth face (and the figure to match)! He had often prayed to Martia to deliver him from such a lure. But here was Martia on the side of the too sweet enemy!

The train stopped for a few minutes at Neanderthal, and he thought he could think better if he got out and walked in that beautiful valley an hour or two--there was no hurry; he would take another train later, in time to meet Julia at Beresford Duff's, where she was sure to be. So he walked among the rocks, the lonely rocks, and sat and pondered in the famous cave where the skull was found--that simple prehistoric cranium which could never have been so pathetically nonplussed by such a dilemma as this when it was a human head!

And the more he pondered the less he came to a conclusion. It seemed as though there were the "tug of war" between Martia and all that he felt to be best in himself--his own conscience, his independence as a man, his sense of honor. He took her letter out of his pocket to re-read, and with it came another letter; it was from my sister, Ida Maurice. It told him when they would arrive in Duesseldorf.

He jumped up in alarm--it was that very day. He had quite forgotten!

He ran off to the station, and missed a train, and had to wait an hour for another; but he got himself to the Rhine station in Duesseldorf a few minutes before the train from Belgium arrived.

Everything was ready for the Gibson party--lodgings and tea and supper to follow--he had seen to all that before; so there he walked up and down, waiting, and still revolving over and over again in his mind the troublous question that so bewildered and oppressed him. Who was Martia? what was she--that he should take her for a guide in the most momentous business of his life; and what were her credentials?

And what was love? Was it love he felt for this young goddess with yellow hair and light-blue eyes so like his own, who towered in her full-blown frolicsome splendor among the sons and daughters of men, with her moist, ripe lips so richly framed for happy love and laughter--that royal milk-white fawn that had only lain in the roses and fed on the lilies of life?

"Oh, Mr. Nobody of Nowhere! be at least a man; let no one ever call you the basest thing an able-bodied man can become, a fortune-hunting adventurer!"

Then a bell rang, and the smoke of the coming train was visible--ten minutes late. The tickets were taken, and it slowed into the station and stopped. Ida's head and face were seen peering through one of the second-class windows, on the lookout, and Barty opened the door and there was a warm and affectionate greeting between them; the meeting was joy to both.

Then he was warmly greeted by Mrs. Gibson, who introduced him to her mother; then he was conscious of somebody he had not seen yet because she stood at his blind side (indeed, he had all but forgotten her existence); namely, the presence of a very tall and most beautiful dark-haired young lady, holding out her slender gloved hand and gazing up into his face with the most piercing and strangest and blackest eyes that ever were; yet so soft and quick and calm and large and kind and wise and gentle that their piercingness was but an added seduction; one felt they could never pierce too deep for the happiness of the heart they pronged and riddled and perforated through and through!

Involuntarily came into Barty's mind, as he shook the slender hand, a little song of Schubert's he had just learnt:

"Du dist die Ruh', der Friede mild!"

And wasn't it odd?--all his doubts and perplexities resolved themselves at once, as by some enchantment, into a lovely, unexpected chord of extreme simplicity; and Martia was gently but firmly put aside, and the divine Julia quietly relegated to the gilded throne which was her fit and proper apanage.

Barty saw to the luggage, and sent it on, and they all went on foot behind it.

The bridge of boats across the Rhine was open in the middle to let a wood-raft go by down stream. This raft from some distant forest was so long they had to wait nearly twenty minutes; and the prow of it had all but lost itself in the western purple and gold and dun of sky and river while it was still passing the bridge.

All this was new and delightful to the Londoners, who were also delighted with the rooms Barty had taken for them in the Koenig's Allee and the tea that awaited them there. Leah made tea, and gave a cup to Barty. That was a good cup of tea, better even than the tea Julia was making (that very moment, no doubt) at Beresford Duff's.

Then the elder ladies rested, and Barty took Leah and Ida for a walk in the Hof gardens. They were charmed with everything--especially the fire-flies at dusk. Leah said little; she was not a very talkative person outside her immediate family circle. But Ida and Barty had much to say.

Then home to supper at the Gibsons' lodgings, and Barty sat opposite Leah, and drank in the beauty of her face, which had so wonderfully ripened and accentuated and individualized itself since he had seen her last, three years before.

As he discreetly gazed, whenever she was not looking his way, saying to himself, like Geraint: "'Here by God's rood is the one maid for me,'" he suddenly felt the north, and started with a kind of terror as he remembered Martia. He bade the company a hasty good-night, and went for a long walk by the Rhine, and had a long talk with his Egeria.

"Martia," said he, in a low but audible voice, "it's no good, I _can't_; c'est plus fort que moi. I can't sell myself to a woman for gold; besides, I can't fall in love with Julia; I don't know why, but I _can't_; I will never marry her. I don't deserve that she should care for me; perhaps she doesn't, perhaps you're quite mistaken, and if she does, it's only a young girl's fancy. What does a girl of that age really know about her own heart? and how base I should be to take advantage of her innocence and inexperience!"

And then he went on in a passionate and eager voice to explain all he had thought of during the day and still further defend his recalcitrancy.

"Give me at least your reasons, Martia; tell me, for God's sake, who you are and what! Are you _me_? are you the spirit of my mother? Why do you love me, as you say you do, with a love passing the love of woman? What am I to you? Why are you so bent on worldly things?"

This monologue lasted more than an hour, and he threw himself on to his bed quite worn out, and slept at once, in spite of the nightingales, who filled the starlit, breezy, balmy night with their shrill, sweet clamor.

Next morning, as he expected, he found a letter:

"Barty, you are ruining me and breaking my life, and wrecking the
plans of many years--plans made before you were, born or thought of.

"Who am I, indeed? Who is this demure young black-eyed witch that
has come between us, this friend of Ida Maurice's?

"She's the cause of all my misery, I feel sure; with Ida's eyes I
saw you look at her; you never yet looked at Julia like that!--never
at any woman before!

"Who is she? No mate for a man like you, I feel sure. In the first
place, she is not rich; I could tell that by the querulous
complaints of her middle-class mother. She's just fit to be some
pious Quaker's wife, or a Sister of Charity, or a governess, or a
hospital nurse, or a nun--no companion for a man destined to move
the world!

"Barty, you don't _know_ what you are; you have never _thought_; you
have never yet looked _within_!

"Barty, with Julia by your side and me at your back, you will be a
leader of men, and sway the destinies of your country, and raise it
above all other nations, and make it the arbiter of Europe--of the
whole world--and your seed will ever be first among the foremost of
the earth.

"Will you give up all this for a pair of bright black eyes and a
pretty white skin? Isn't Julia white enough for you?

"A painter? What a trade for a man built like you! Take the greatest
of them; what have they ever really mattered? What do they matter
now, except to those who want to imitate them and can't, or to those
who live by buying cheap the fruits of their long labors, and
selling them dear as so much wall furniture for the vulgar rich?
Besides, you will never be a great painter; you've begun too late!

"Think of yourself ten years hence--a king among men, with the world
at your feet, and at those of the glorious woman who will have
smoothed your path to greatness and fame and power! Mistress and
wife--goddess and queen in one!

"Think of the poor struggling painter, painting his poor little
pictures in his obscure corner to feed half a dozen hungry children
and the anxious, careworn wife, whose beauty has long faded away in
the petty, sordid, hopeless domestic struggle, just as her husband's
little talent has long been wasted and used up in wretched
pot-boilers for mere bread; think of poverty, debt, and degradation,
and all the miserable ugliness of life--the truest, tritest, and
oldest story in the world! Love soon flies out of the window when
these wolves snarl at the door.

"Think of all this, Barty, and think of the despair you are bringing
on one lost lonely soul who loves you as a mother loves her
first-born, and has founded such hopes on you; dismiss this pretty
little middle-class puritan from your thoughts and go back to Julia.

"I will not hurry your decision; I will come back in exactly a week
from to-night. I am at your mercy.

"Martia."

This letter made Barty very unhappy. It was a strange dilemma.

What is it that now and again makes a woman in a single moment take such a powerful grip of a man's fancy that he can never shake himself free again, and never wants to?

Tunes can be like that, sometimes. Not the pretty little tinkling tunes that please everybody at once; the pleasure of them can fade in a year, a month--even a week, a day! But those from a great mint, and whose charm will last a man his lifetime!

Many years ago a great pianist, to amuse some friends (of whom I was one), played a series of waltzes by Schubert which I had never heard before--the "Soirees de Vienne," I think they were called. They were lovely from beginning to end; but one short measure in particular was full of such extraordinary enchantment for me that it has really haunted me through life. It is as if it were made on purpose for me alone, a little intimate aside a mon intention--the gainliest, happiest thought I had ever heard expressed in music. For nobody else seemed to think those particular bars were more beautiful than all the rest; but, oh! the difference to me!

And said I to myself: "That's Leah; and all the rest is some heavenly garden of roses she's walking in!"

Tempo di valsa:

_Rum_--tiddle-iddle _um_ tum tum,
_Tid_dle-tiddle-iddle-iddle _um_ tum, tum
_Tum_ tiddle iddle-iddle _um_ tum, tum
_Tid_dle-iddle, iddle-_hay!_ ... etc., etc.

That's how the little measure begins, and it goes on just for a couple of pages. I can't write music, unfortunately, and I've nobody by me at just this moment who can; but if the reader is musical and knows the "Soirees de Vienne," he will guess the particular waltz I mean.

Well, the Duesseldorf railway station is not a garden of roses; but when Leah stepped out of that second-class carriage and looked straight at Barty, _dans le blanc des yeux_, he fitted her to the tune _he_ loved best just then (not knowing the "Soirees de Vienne"), and it's one of the tunes that last forever:

"Du bist die Ruh', der Friede mild!"

Barty's senses were not as other men's senses. With his one eye he saw much that most of _us_ can't see with two; I feel sure of this. And he suddenly saw in Leah's face, now she was quite grown up, that which bound him to her for life--some veiled promise, I suppose; we can't explain these things.

* * * * *

Barty escorted the Gibson party to Riffrath, and put down Mrs. Bletchley's name for Dr. Hasenclever, and then took them to the woods of Hammerfest, close by, with which they were charmed. On the way back to the hotel they met Lady Jane and Miss Royce and the good Beresford Duff, who all bowed to Barty, and Julia's blue glance crossed Leah's black one.

"Oh, what a lovely girl!" said Leah to Barty. "What a pity she's so tall; why, I'm sure she's half a head taller than even I, and they make _my_ life a burden to me at home because I'm such a giantess! Who is she? You know her well, I suppose?"

"She's a Miss Julia Royce, a great heiress. Her father's dead; he was a wealthy Norfolk Squire, and she was his only child."

"Then I suppose she's a very aristocratic person; she looks so, I'm sure!"

"Very much so indeed," said Barty.

"Dear me! it seems unfair, doesn't it, having everything like that; no wonder she looks so happy!"

Then they went back to the hotel to lunch; and in the afternoon Mrs. Bletchley saw the doctor, who gave her a prescription for spectacles, and said she had nothing to fear; and was charming to Leah and to Ida, who spoke French so well, and to the pretty and lively Mrs. Gibson, who lost her heart to him and spoke the most preposterous French he had ever heard.

He was fond of pretty English women, the good German doctor, whatever French they spoke.

They were quite an hour there. Meanwhile Barty went to Beresford Duff's, and found Julia and Lady Jane drinking tea, as usual at that hour.

"Who are your uncommonly well-dressed friends, Barty?" said Mr. Duff. "I never met any of them that _I_ can remember."

"Well--they're just from London--the elder lady is a Mrs. Bletchley."

"Not one of the Berkshire Bletchleys, eh?"

"Oh no--she's the widow of a London solicitor."

"Dear me! And the lovely, tall, black-eyed _damigella_--who's she?"

"She's a Miss Gibson, and her father's a furrier in Cheapside."

"And the pretty girl in blue with the fair hair?"

"She's the sister of a very old friend of mine, Robert Maurice--he's a wine merchant."

"You don't say so! Why, I took them for people of condition!" said Mr. Beresford Duff, who was a trifle old-fashioned in his ways of speech. "Anyhow, they're uncommonly nice to look at."

"Oh yes," said the not too priggishly grammatical Lady Jane; "nowadays those sort of people dress like duchesses, and think themselves as good as any one."

"They're good enough for _me_, at all events," said Barty, who was not pleased.

"I'm sure Miss Gibson's good enough for _anybody in the world_!" said Julia. "She's the most beautiful girl I ever saw!" and she gave Barty a cup of tea.

Barty drank it, and felt fond of Julia, and bade them all good-bye, and went and waited in the hall of the Koenig's Hotel for his friends, and took them back to Duesseldorf.

Next day the Gibsons started for their little trip up the Rhine, and Barty was left to his own reflections, and he reflected a great deal; not about what he meant to do himself, but about how he should tell Martia what he meant to do.

As for himself, his mind was thoroughly made up: he would break at once and forever with a world he did not properly belong to, and fight his own little battle unaided, and be a painter--a good one, if he could. If not, so much the worse for him. Life is short.

When he would have settled his affairs and paid his small debts in Duesseldorf, he would have some ten or fifteen pounds to the good. He would go back to London with the Gibsons and Ida Maurice. There were no friends for him in the world like the Maurices. There was no woman for him in the world like Leah, whether she would ever care for him or not.

Rich or poor, he didn't mind! she was Leah; she had the hands, the feet, the lips, the hair, the eyes! That was enough for him! He was absolutely sure of his own feelings; absolutely certain that this path was not only the pleasant path he liked, but the right one for a man in his position to follow: a thorny path indeed, but the thorns were thorns of roses!

All this time he was busily rehearsing his part in the chorus of _Iphigenia_; he had applied for the post of second tenor chorister; the conditions were that he should be able to read music at sight. This he could not do, and his utter incapacity was tested at the Mahlcasten, before a crowd of artists, by the conductor. Barty failed signally, amid much laughter; and he impudently sang quite a little tune of his own, an improvisation.

The conductor laughed too; but Barty was admitted all the same; his voice was good, and he must learn his part by heart--that was all; anybody could teach him.

The Gibsons came back to Duesseldorf in time for the performance, which was admirable, in spite of Barty. From his coign of vantage, amongst the second tenors, he could see Julia's head with its golden fleece; Julia, that rose without a thorn--

"Het Roosje uit de dorne!"

She was sitting between Lady Jane and the Captain.

He looked in vain for the Gibsons, as he sang his loudest, yet couldn't hear himself sing (he was one of a chorus of avenging furies, I believe).

But there were three vacant seats in the same row as the Royces'. Presently three ladies, silken hooded and cloaked--one in yellow, one in pink, and one in blue--made their way to the empty places, just as the chorus ceased, and sat down. Just then Orestes (Stockhausen) stood up and lifted his noble barytone.

"Die Ruhe kehret mir zurueck"--

And the yellow-hooded lady unhooded a shapely little black head, and it was Leah's.

"_Prosit omen!_" thought Barty--and it seemed as if his whole heart melted within him.

He could see that Leah and Julia often looked at each other; he could also see, during the intervals, how many double-barrelled opera-glasses were levelled at both; it was impossible to say which of these two lovely women was the loveliest; probably most votes would have been for Julia, the fair-haired one, the prima donna assoluta, the soprano, the Rowena, who always gets the biggest salary and most of the applause.

The brunette, the contralto, the Rebecca, dazzles less, but touches the heart all the more deeply, perhaps; anyhow, Barty had no doubt as to which of the two voices was the voice for him. His passion was as that of Brian de Bois-Guilbert for mere strength, except that he was bound by no vows of celibacy. There were no moonlit platonics about Barty's robust love, but all the chivalry and tenderness and romance of a knight-errant underlay its vigorous complexity. He was a good knight, though not Sir Galahad!

Also he felt very patriotic, as a good knight should ever feel, and proud of a country which could grow such a rose as Julia, and such a lily as Leah Gibson.

Next to Julia sat Captain Reece, romantic and handsome as ever, with manly love and devotion expressed in every line of his face, every movement of his body; and the heaviest mustache and the most beautiful brown whiskers in the world. He was either a hussar or a lancer; I forget which.

"By my halidom," mentally ejaculated Barty, "I sincerely wish thee joy and life-long happiness, good Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe. Thou art a right fit mate for her, peerless as she may be among women! A benison on you both from your poor Wamba, the son of Witless."

As he went home that night, after the concert, to his tryst with Martia, the north came back to him--through the open window as it were, with the fire-flies and fragrances, and the song of fifty nightingales. It was for him a moment of deep and harassing emotion and keen anxiety. He leaned over the window-sill and looked out on the starlit heavens, and whispered aloud the little speech he had prepared:

"Martia, I have done my best. I would make any sacrifice to obey you, but I cannot give up my freedom to love the woman that attracts me as I have never been attracted before. I would sooner live a poor and unsuccessful straggler in the art I have chosen, with her to help me live, than be the mightiest man in England without her--even with Julia, whom I admire as much, and even more!

"One can't help these things. They may be fancies, and one may live to repent them; but while they last they are imperious, not to be resisted. It's an instinct, I suppose; perhaps even a form of insanity! But I love Leah's little-finger nail better than Julia's lovely face and splendid body and all her thousands.

"Besides, I will not drag Julia down from her high position in the world's eye, even for a day, nor owe anything to either man or woman except love and fidelity! It grieves me deeply to disappoint you, though I cannot understand your motives. If you love me as you say you do, you ought to think of my happiness and honor before my worldly success and prosperity, about which I don't care a button, except for Leah's sake.

"Besides, I know myself better than you know me. I'm not one of those hard, strong, stern, purposeful, Napoleonic men, with wills of iron, that clever, ambitious women conceive great passions for!

"I'm only a 'funny man'--a _gringalet-jocrisse!_ And now that I'm quite grown up, and all my little funniments are over, I'm only fit to sit and paint, with my one eye, in my little corner, with a contented little wife, who won't want me to do great things and astonish the world. There's no place like home; faire la popotte ensemble au coin du feu--c'est le ciel!

"And if I'm half as clever as you say, it'll all come out in my painting, and I shall be rich and famous, and all off my own bat. I'd sooner be Sir Edwin Landseer than Sir Robert Peel, or Pam, or Dizzy!

"Even to retain your love and protection and interest in me, which I value almost as much as I value life itself, I can't do as you wish. Don't desert me, Martia. I may be able to make it all up to you some day; after all, you can't foresee and command the future, nor can I. It wouldn't be worth living for if we could! It would all be discounted in advance!

"I may yet succeed in leading a useful, happy life; and that should be enough for you if it's enough for me, since I am your beloved, and as you love me as your son.... Anyhow, my mind is made up for good and all, and...."

Here the sensation of the north suddenly left him, and he went to his bed with the sense of bereavement that had punished him all the preceding week: desperately sad, all but heart-broken, and feeling almost like a culprit, although his conscience, whatever that was worth, was thoroughly at ease, and his intent inflexible.

A day or two after this he must have received a note from Julia, making an appointment to meet him at the Ausstellung, in the Allee Strasse, a pretty little picture-gallery, since he was seen there sitting in deep conversation with Miss Royce in a corner, and both seeming much moved; neither the Admiral nor Lady Jane was with them, and there was some gossip about it in the British colony both in Duesseldorf and Riffrath.

Barty, who of late years has talked to me so much, and with such affectionate admiration, of "Julia Countess," as he called her, never happened to have mentioned this interview; he was very reticent about his love-makings, especially about any love that was made to him.

I made so bold as to write to Julia, Lady Ironsides, and ask her if it were true they had met like this, and if I might print her answer, and received almost by return of post the following kind and characteristic letter:

"96 Grosvenor Square.

"Dear Sir Robert,--You're quite right; I did meet him, and I've no
objection whatever to telling you how it all happened--and you may
do as you like.

"It happened just like this (you must remember that I was only just
out, and had always had my own way in everything).

"Mamma and I and Uncle James (the Admiral) and Freddy Reece
(Ironsides, you know) went to the Musikfest in Duesseldorf. Barty was
singing in the chorus. I saw him opening and shutting his mouth and
could almost fancy I heard him, poor dear boy.

"Leah Gibson, as she was then, sat near to me, with her mother and
your sister. Leah Gibson looked like--well, _you_ know what she
looked like in those days. By-the-way, I can't make out how it is
you weren't over head and ears in love with her yourself! I thought
her the loveliest girl I had ever seen, and felt very unhappy.

"We slept at the hotel that night, and on the way back to Riffrath
next morning Freddy Reece proposed to me.

"I told him I couldn't marry him--but that I loved him as a sister,
and all that; I really was very fond of him indeed, but I didn't
want to marry him; I wanted to marry Barty, in fact; and make him
rich and famous, as I felt sure he would be some day, whether I
married him or not.

"But there was that lovely Leah Gibson, the furrier's daughter!

"When we got home to Riffrath mamma found she'd got a cold, and had
a fancy for a French thing called a 'loch'; I think her cold was
suddenly brought on by my refusing poor Freddy's offer!

"I went with Grissel, the maid (who knew about _lochs_), to the
Riffrath chemist's, but he didn't even know what we meant--so I told
mamma I would go and get a _loch_ in Duesseldorf next day if she
liked, with Uncle James. Mamma was only too delighted, for next day
was Mr. Josselin's day for coming to Riffrath; but he didn't, for I
wrote to him to meet me at twelve at a little picture-gallery I knew
of in the Allee Strasse--as I wanted to have a talk with him.