He walked about Louvain for several hours, to tire himself. Then he went to Brussels and dined, and again walked about the lamp‐lit streets and up and down the station, and finally went back to Malines by a late train – very nervous – expecting that the retina of his right eye would suddenly go pop – yet hugging himself all the while in his renewed old comfortable feeling of companionship with the north pole, that made him feel like a boy again; that inexplicable sensation so intimately associated with all the best reminiscences of his innocent and happy childhood.
He had been talking to himself like a father all day, though not in the same strain as M. Noiret; and had almost arrived at framing the programme of a possible existence – singing at cafés with his guitar – singing anywhere: he felt sure of a living for himself, and for the little boy who would have to lead him about – if the worst came to the worst.
If but the feeling of self‐orientation which was so necessary to him could only be depended upon, he felt that in time he would have pluck enough to bear anything. Indeed, total eclipse was less appalling, in its finality, than that miserable sword of Damocles which had been hanging over him for months – robbing him of his manhood – poisoning all the springs of life.
Why not make life‐long endurance of evil a study, a hobby, and a pride; and be patient as bronze or marble, and ever wear an invincible smile at grief, even when in darkness and alone? Why not, indeed!
And he set himself then and there to smile invincibly, meaning to keep on smiling for fifty years at least – the blind live long.
So he chatted to himself, saying Sursum cor! sursum corda! all the way home; and walking down the Grand Brul, he had a little adventure which absolutely gave him a hearty guffaw and sent him almost laughing to bed.
There was a noisy squabble between some soldiers and civilians on the opposite side of the way, and a group of men in blouses were looking on. Barty stood leaning against a lamp‐post, and looked on too.
Suddenly a small soldier rushed at the blouses, brandishing his short straight sword (or coupe‐choux, as it is called in civilian slang), and saying:
"Ça ne vous regarde pas, savez‐vous! allez‐vous en bien vite, ou je vous…"
The blouses fled like sheep.
Then as he caught sight of Barty he reached at him.
"Ça ne vous regarde pas, savez‐vous!.."
(It doesn't concern you.)
"Non – c'est moi qui regarde, savez‐vous!" said Barty.
"Qu'est‐ce que vous regardez?"
"Je regarde la lune et les étoiles. Je regarde la comète!"
"Voulez‐vous bien vous en aller bien vite?"
"Une autre fois!" says Barty.
"Allez‐vous en, je vous dis!"
"Après‐demain!"
"Vous … ne … voulez … pas … vous … en … aller?" says the soldier, on tiptoe, his chest against Barty's stomach, his nose almost up to Barty's chin, glaring up like a fiend and poising his coupe‐choux for a death‐stroke.
"Non, sacré petit pousse‐cailloux du diable!" roars Barty.
"Eh bien, restez où vous êtes!" and the little man plunged back into the fray on the opposite side – and no blood was shed after all.
Barty dreamt of this adventure, and woke up laughing at it in the small hours of that night. Then, suddenly, in the dark, he remembered the horror of what had happened. It overwhelmed him. He realized, as in a sudden illuminating flash, what life meant for him hence‐forward – life that might last for so many years.
Vitality is at its lowest ebb at that time of night; though the brain is quick to perceive, and so clear that its logic seems inexorable.
It was hell. It was not to be borne a moment longer. It must be put an end to at once. He tried to feel the north, but could not. He would kill himself then and there, while his aunt was away; so that the horror of the sight of him, after, should at least be spared her.
He jumped out of bed and struck a light. Thank Heaven, he wasn't blind yet, though he saw all the bogies, as he called them, that had made his life a burden to him for the last two years – the retina floating loose about his left eye, tumbling and deforming every lighted thing it reflected – and also the new dark spot in his right.
He partially dressed, and stole up‐stairs to old Torfs's photographic studio. He knew where he could find a bottle full of cyanide of potassium, used for removing finger‐stains left by silver nitrate; there was enough of it to poison a whole regiment. That was better than taking a header off the roof. He seized a handful of the stuff, and came down and put it into a tumbler by his bedside and poured some water over it.
Then he got his writing‐case and a pen and ink, and jumped into bed; and there he wrote four letters: one to Lady Caroline, one to Father Louis, one to Lord Archibald, and one to me in Blaze.
The cyanide was slow in melting. He crushed it angrily in the glass with his penholder – and the scent of bitter‐almonds filled the room. Just then the sense of the north came back to him in full; but it only strengthened his resolve and made him all the calmer.
He lay staring at the tumbler, watching little bubbles, revelling in what remained of his exquisite faculty of minute sight – with a feeling of great peace; and thought prayerfully; lost himself in a kind of formless prayer without words – lost himself completely. It was as if the wished‐for dissolution were coming of its own accord; Nirvana – an ecstasy of conscious annihilation – the blessed end, the end of all! as though he were passing
"… du sommeil au songe —
Du songe à la mort."
It was not so…
He was aroused by a knock at the door, which was locked. It was broad daylight.
"Il est dix heures, savez‐vous?" said little Frau outside – "voulez‐vous votre café dans votre chambre?"
"O Christ!" said Barty – and jumped out of bed. "It's all got to be done now!"
But something very strange had happened.
The tumbler was still there, but the cyanide had disappeared; so had the four letters he had written. His pen and ink were on the table, and on his open writing‐case lay a letter in Blaze – in his own handwriting. The north was strong in him. He called out to Finche Torfs to leave his coffee in the drawing‐room, and read his blaze letter – and this is what he read:
"My dear Barty, – Don't be in the least alarmed on reading this hasty scrawl, after waking from the sleep you meant to sleep forever. There is no sleep without a live body to sleep in – no such thing as everlasting sleep. Self‐destruction seems a very simple thing – more often a duty than not; but it's not to be done! It is quite impossible not to be, when once you have been.
"If I were to let you destroy your body, as you were so bent on doing, the strongest interest I have on earth would cease to exist.
"I love you, Barty, with a love passing the love of woman; and have done so from the day you were born. I loved your father and mother before you – and theirs; ça date de loin, mon pauvre ami! and especially I love your splendid body and all that belongs to it – brain, stomach, heart, and the rest; even your poor remaining eye, which is worth all the eyes of Argus!
"So I have used your own pen and ink and paper, your own right hand and brain, your own cipher, and the words that are yours, to write you this – in English. I like English better than French.
"Listen. Monsieur Noiret is a fool; and you are a poor self‐deluded hypochondriac.
"I am convinced your right eye is safe for many years to come – probably for the rest of your life.
"You have quite deceived yourself in fancying that the symptom you perceived in your right eye threatens the disease which has destroyed your left – for the sight of that, alas! is irretrievably gone; so don't trouble about it any more. It will always be charming to look at, but it will never see again. Some day I will tell you how you came to lose the use of it. I think I know.
"M. Noiret is new to the ophthalmoscope. The old humbug never saw your right retina at all – nor your left one either, for that matter. He only pretended, and judged entirely by what you told him; and you didn't tell him very clearly. He's a Belgian, you know, and a priest, and doesn't think very quick.
"I saw your retina, although but with his eye. There is no sign of congestion or coming detachment whatever. That blind portion you discovered is in every eye. It is called the 'punctum cœcum'. It is where the optic nerve enters the retina and spreads out. It is only with one eye shut that an ordinary person can find it, for each eye supplements this defect of the other. To‐morrow morning try the experiment on little Finche Torfs; on any one you meet. You will find it in everybody.
"So don't trouble about either eye any more. I'm not infallible, of course; it's only your brain I'm using now. But your brain is infinitely better than that of poor M. Noiret, who doesn't know what his eye really perceives, and takes it for something else! Your brain is the best brain I know, although you are not aware of this, and have never even used it, except for trash and nonsense. But you shall– some day. I'll take care of that, and the world shall wonder.
"Trust me. Live on, and I will never desert you again, unless you again force me to by your conduct. I have come back to you in the hour of your need.
"I have managed to make you, in your sleep, throw away your poison where it will injure nobody but the rats, and no one will be a bit the wiser. I have made you burn your touching letters of farewell; you will find the ashes inside the stove. Yours is a good heart!
"Now take a cold bath and have a good breakfast, and go to Antwerp or Brussels and see people and amuse yourself.
"Never see M. Noiret again. But when your aunt comes back you must both clear out of this depressing priestly hole; it doesn't suit either of you, body or mind. Go to Düsseldorf, in Prussia. Close by, at a village called Riffrath, lives an old doctor, Dr. Hasenclever, who understands a deal about the human heart and something about the human body; and even a little about the human eye, for he is a famous oculist. He can't cure, but he'll give you things that at least will do you no harm. He won't rid you of the eye that remains! You will meet some pleasant English people, whom I particularly wish you to meet, and make friends, and have a holiday from trouble, and begin the world anew.
"As to who I am, you shall know in time. My power to help you is very limited, but my devotion to you (for very good reasons) has no limits at all.
"Take it that my name is Martia. When you have finished reading this letter look at yourself in your looking‐glass and say (loud enough for your own ears to hear you):
"'I trust you, Martia!'
"Then I will leave you for a while, and come back at night, as in the old days. Whenever the north is in you, there am I; seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling with your five splendid wits by day – sleeping your lovely sleep at night; but only able to think with your brain, it seems, and then only when you are fast asleep. I only found it out just now, and saved your earthly life, mon beau somnambule! It was a great surprise to me!
"Don't mention this to any living soul till I give you leave. You will only hear from me on great occasions.
"Martia."
"P. S. – Always leave something to write with by your bedside at night, in case the great occasion should arise. On ne sait pas ce qui peut arriver!"
Bewildered, beside himself, Barty ran to his looking‐glass, and stared himself out of countenance, and almost shouted:
"I trust you, Martia!"
And ceased suddenly to feel the north.
Then he dressed and went to breakfast. Little Frau thought he had gone mad, for he put a five‐franc piece upon the carpet, and made her stand a few feet off from it and cover her left eye with her hand.
"Now follow the point of my stick with your right eye," says he, "and tell me if the five‐franc piece disappears."
And he slowly drew with the point of his stick an imaginary line from the five‐franc piece to the left of her, at right angles to where she stood. When the point of the stick was about two feet from the coin, she said:
"Tiens, tiens, I no longer see the piece!"
When the point of the stick had got a foot farther on, she said, "Now I can see the piece again quite plain."
Then he tried the same experiment on her left eye, rightwards, with the same result. Then he experimented with equal success on her father and mother, and found that every eye at No. 36 Rue des Ursulines Blanches had exactly the same blind spot as his own.
Then off he went to Antwerp to see his friends with a light heart – the first light heart he had known for many months; but when he got there he was so preoccupied with what had happened that he did not care to see anybody.
He walked about the ramparts and along the Scheldt, and read and re‐read that extraordinary letter.
Who and what could Martia be?
The reminiscence of some antenatal incarnation of his own soul? the soul of some ancestor or ancestress – of his mother, perhaps? or, perhaps, some occult portion of himself – of his own brain in unconscious cerebration during sleep?
As a child and a small boy, and even as a very young man, he had often dreamt at night of a strange, dim land by the sea, a land unlike any land he had ever beheld with the waking eye, where beautiful aquatic people, mermen and mermaids and charming little mer‐children (of which he was one) lived an amphibious life by day, diving and sporting in the waves.
Splendid caverns, decorated with precious stones, and hung with soft moss, and shining with a strange light; heavenly music, sweet, affectionate caresses – and then total darkness; and yet one knew who and what and where everything and everybody was by some keener sense than that of sight.
It all seemed strange and delightful, but so vague and shadowy it was impossible to remember anything clearly; but ever pervading all things was that feeling of the north which had always been such a comfort to him.
Was this extraordinary letter the result of some such forgotten dream he may have had during the previous night, and which may have prompted him to write it in his sleep? some internal knowledge of the anatomy of his own eye which was denied to him when awake?
Anyhow, it was evidently true about that blind spot in the retina (the punctum cœcum), and that he had been frightening himself out of his wits for nothing, and that his right eye was really sound; and, all through this wondrous yet simple revelation, it was time this old hysterical mock‐disease should die.
Once more life was full of hopes and possibilities, and with such inarticulate and mysterious promptings as he often felt within his soul, and such a hidden gift to guide them, what might he not one day develop into?
Then he went and found Tescheles, and they dined together with a famous pianist, Louis Brassin, and afterwards there was music, and Barty felt the north, and his bliss was transcendent as he went back to Malines by the last train – talking to Martia (as he expressed it to himself) in a confidential whisper which he made audible to his own ear (that she, if it was a she, might hear too); almost praying, in a fervor of hope and gratitude; and begging for further guidance; and he went warmly to sleep, hugging close within himself, somewhere about the region of the diaphragm, an ineffable imaginary something which he felt to be more precious than any possession that had ever yet been his – more precious even than the apple of his remaining eye; and when he awoke next morning he felt he had been most blissfully dreaming all night long, but could not remember anything of his dreams, and on a piece of paper he had left by his bedside was written in pencil, in his own blaze:
"You must depend upon yourself, Barty, not on me. Follow your own instincts when you feel you can do so without self‐reproach, and all will be well with you. – M."
His instincts led him to spend the day in Brussels, and he followed them; he still wanted to walk about and muse and ponder, and Brussels is a very nice, gay, and civilized city for such a purpose – a little Paris, with charming streets and shops and a charming arcade, and very good places to eat and drink in, and hear pretty music.
He did all this, and spent a happy day.
Ho came to the conclusion that the only way to keenly appreciate and thoroughly enjoy the priceless gift of sight in one eye was to lose that of the other; in the kingdom of the blind the one‐eyed is king, and he fully revelled in the royalty that was now his, he hoped, for evermore; but wished for himself as limited a kingdom and as few subjects as possible.
Then back to Malines by the last train – and the sensation of the north, and a good‐night; but no message in the morning – no message from Martia for many mornings to come.
He received, however, a long letter from Lady Caroline.
The old Marquis had died without pain, and with nearly all his family round him; but perfectly childish, as he had been for two or three years. He was to be buried on the following Monday.
Barty wrote a long letter in reply, telling his aunt how much better he had suddenly become in health and spirits; how he had thought of things, and quite reconciled himself at last to the loss of his left eye, and meant to keep the other and make the best of it he could; how he had heard of a certain Doctor Hasenclever, a famous oculist near Düsseldorf, and would like to consult him; how Düsseldorf was such a healthy town, charming and gay, full of painters and soldiers, the best and nicest people in the world – and also very cheap. Mightn't they try it?
He was very anxious indeed to go back to his painting, and Düsseldorf was as good a school as any, etc., etc., etc. He wrote pages – of the kind he knew she would like, for it was of the kind he liked writing to her; they understood each other thoroughly, he and Lady Caroline, and well he knew that she could only be quite happy in doing whatever he had most at heart.
How he longed to tell her everything! but that must not be. I can imagine all the deep discomfort to poor Barty of having to be discreet for the first time in his life, of having to keep a secret – and from his beloved Aunt Caroline of all people in the world!
That was a happy week he spent – mostly in Antwerp among the painters. He got no more letters from Martia, not for many days to come; but he felt the north every night as he sank into healthy sleep, and woke in the morning full of hope and confidence in himself – at last sans peur et sans reproche.
One day in Brussels he met M. Noiret, who naturally put on a very grave face; they shook hands, and Barty inquired affectionately after the little Italian greyhound, and asked what was the French for "punctum cœcum."
Said Noiret: "Ça s'appelle le point caché– c'est une portion de la rétine avec laquelle on ne peut pas voir…"
Barty laughed and shook hands again, and left the Professor staring.
Then he was a great deal with Father Louis. They went to Ghent together, and other places of interest; and to concerts in Brussels.
The good Dominican was very sorrowful at the prospect of soon losing his friend. Poor Barty! The trial it was to him not to reveal his secret to this singularly kind and sympathetic comrade; not even under the seal of confession! So he did not confess at all; although he would have confessed anything to Father Louis, even if Father Louis had not been a priest. There are the high Catholics, who understand the souls of others, and all the difficulties of the conscience, and do not proselytize in a hurry; and the low Catholics, the converts of the day before yesterday, who will not let a body be!
Father Louis was a very high Catholic indeed.
The Lady Caroline Grey, 12A Scamore Place, London, to M. Josselin, 36 Rue des Ursulines Blanches, Malines:
"My dear little Barty, – Your nice long letter made me very happy – happy beyond description; it makes me almost jealous to think that you should have suddenly got so much better in your health and spirits while I was away: you won't want me any more! That doesn't prevent my longing to get back to you. You must put up with your poor old aunty for a little while yet.
"And now for my news – I couldn't write before. Poor papa was buried on Monday, and we all came back here next day. He has left you £200: c'est toujours ça! Everything seems in a great mess. Your Uncle Runswick2 is going to be very poor indeed; he is going to let Castle Rohan, and live here all the year round. Poor fellow, he looks as old as his father did ten years ago, and he's only sixty‐three! If Algy could only make a good marriage! At forty that's easier said than done.
"Archibald and his wife are at a place called Monte Carlo, where there are gaming‐tables: she gambles fearfully, it seems; and they lead a cat‐and‐dog life. She is plus que coquette, and extravagant to a degree; and he is quite shrunk and prematurely old, and almost shabby, and drinks more brandy than he ought.
"Daphne is charming, and is to come out next spring; she will have £3000 a year, lucky child; all out of chocolate. What nonsense we've all talked about trade! we shall all have to take to it in time. The Lonlay‐Savignac people were wise in their generation.
"And what do you think? Young Digby‐Dobbs wants to marry her, out of the school‐room! He'll be Lord Frognal, you know; and very soon, for his father is drinking himself to death.
"He's in your old regiment, and a great favorite; not yet twenty – he only left Eton last Christmas twelvemonth. She says she won't have him at any price, because he stammers.
"She declares you haven't written to her for three months, and that you owe her an illustrated letter in French, with priests and nuns, and dogs harnessed to a cart.
"And now for news that will delight you: She is to come abroad with me for a twelvemonth, and wishes to go with you and me to Düsseldorf first! Isn't that a happy coincidence? We would all spend the summer there, and then Italy for the winter; you too, if you can (so you must be economical with that £200).
"I have already heard wonders about Dr. Hasenclever, even before your letter came; he cured General Baines, who was given up by everybody here, Lady Palmerston told me; she was here yesterday, by‐the‐bye, and the Duchess of Bermondsey, and both inquired most kindly after you.
"The Duchess looked as handsome as ever, and as proud as a peacock; for last year she presented her niece, Julia Royce, 'the divine Julia,' the greatest beauty ever seen, I am told – with many thousands a year, if you please – Lady Jane Royce's daughter, an only child, and her father's dead. She's six feet high, so you would go mad about her. She's already refused sixty offers, good ones; among them little Lord Orrisroot, the hunchback, who'll have £1000 a day (including Sundays) when he comes into the title – and that can't be very far off, for the wicked old Duke of Deptford has got creeping paralysis, like his father and grandfather before him, and is now quite mad, and thinks himself a postman, and rat‐tats all day long on the furniture. Lady Jane is furious with her for not accepting; and when Julia told her, she slapped her face before the maid!
"There's another gigantic beauty that people have gone mad about – a Polish pianist, who's just married young Harcourt, who's a grandson of that old scamp the Duke of Towers.
"Talking of beauties, whom do you think I met yesterday in the Park? Whom but your stalwart friend Mr. Maurice (he wasn't the beauty), with his sister, your old Paris playfellow, and the lovely Miss Gibson. He introduced them both, and I was delighted with them, and we walked together by the Serpentine; and after five minutes I came to the conclusion that Miss Gibson is as beautiful as it is possible for a dark beauty to be, and as nice as she looks. She isn't dark really, only her eyes and hair; her complexion is like cream: she's a freak of nature. Lucky young Maurice if she is to be his fate – and both well off, I suppose.
"Upon my word, if you were King Cophetua and she the beggar‐maid, I would give you both my blessing. But how is it you never fell in love with the fair Ida? You never told me how handsome she is. She too complained of you as a correspondent, and declares that she gets one letter in return for three she writes you.
"I have bought you some pretty new songs, among others one by Charles Kingsley, which is lovely; about three fishermen and their wives: it reminds one of our dear Whitby! I can play the accompaniment in perfection, and all by heart!
"Give my kindest remembrances to Father Louis and the dear Abbé Lefebvre, and say kind things from me to the Torfses. Martha sends her love to little Frau, and so do I.
"We hope to be in Antwerp in a fortnight, and shall put up at the Grand Laboureur. I shall go to Malines, of course, to say good‐bye to people.
"Tell the Torfses to get my things ready for moving. There will be five of us: I and Martha, and Daphne and two servants of her own; for Daphne's got to take old Mrs. Richards, who won't be parted from her.
"Good‐bye for the present. My dear boy, I thank God on my knees, night and morning for having given you back to me in my old age.
"Your ever affectionate aunt,"Caroline.
"P. S. – You remember pretty little Kitty Hardwicke you used to flirt with, who married young St. Clair, who's now Lord Kidderminster? She's just had three at a birth; she had twins only last year; the Queen's delighted. Pray be careful about never getting wet feet – "
One stormy evening in May, Mrs. Gibson drove Ida and Leah and me and Mr. Babbage, a middle‐aged but very dapper War Office clerk (who was a friend of the Gibson family), to Chelsea, that we might explore Cheyne Walk and its classic neighborhood. I rode on the box by the coachman.
We alighted by the steamboat pier and explored, I walking with Leah.
We came to a very narrow street, quite straight, the narrowest street that could call itself a street at all, and rather long; we were the only people in it. It has since disappeared, with all that particular part of Chelsea.
Suddenly we saw a runaway horse without a rider coming along it at full gallop, straight at us, with a most demoralizing sharp clatter of its iron hoofs on the stone pavement.
"Your backs to the wall!" cried Mr. Babbage, and we flattened ourselves to let the maddened brute go by, bridle and stirrups flying – poor Mrs. Gibson almost faint with terror.
Leah, instead of flattening herself against the wall, put her arms round her mother, making of her own body a shield for her, and looked round at the horse as it came tearing up the street, striking sparks from the flag‐stones.
Nobody was hurt, for a wonder; but Mrs. Gibson was quite overcome. Mr. Babbage was very angry with Leah, whose back the horse actually grazed, as he all but caught his hoofs in her crinoline and hit her with a stirrup on the shoulder.
I could only think of Leah's face as she looked round at the approaching horse, with her protecting arms round her mother. It was such a sudden revelation to me of what she really was, and its expression was so hauntingly impressive that I could think of nothing else. Its mild, calm courage, its utter carelessness of self, its immense tenderness – all blazed out in such beautiful lines, in such beautiful white and black, that I lost all self‐control; and when we walked back to the pier, following the rest of the party, I asked her to be my wife.
She turned very pale again, and the flesh of her chin quivered as she told me that was quite impossible – and could never be.
I asked her if there was anybody else, and she said there was nobody, but that she did not wish ever to marry; that, beyond her parents and Ida, she loved and respected me more than anybody else in the whole world, but that she could never marry me. She was much agitated, and said the sweetest, kindest things, but put all hope out of the question at once.
It was the greatest blow I have ever had in my life.
Three days after, I went to America; and before I came back I had started in New York the American branch of the house of Vougeot‐Conti, and laid the real foundation of the largest fortune that has ever yet been made by selling wine, and of the long political career about which I will say nothing in these pages. On my voyage out I wrote a long blaze letter to Barty, and poured out all my grief, and my resignation to the decree which I felt to be irrevocable. I reminded him of that playful toss‐up in Southampton Row, and told him that, having surrendered all claims myself, the best thing that could happen to me was that she should some day marry him (which I certainly did not think at all likely).
So henceforward, reader, you will not be troubled by your obedient servant with the loves of a prosperous merchant of wines. Had those loves been more successful, and the wines less so, you would never have heard of either.
Whether or not I should have been a happier man in the long‐run I really can't say – mine has been, on the whole, a very happy life, as men's lives go; but I am bound to admit, in all due modesty, that the universe would probably have been the poorer by some very splendid people, and perhaps by some very splendid things it could ill have spared; and one great and beautifully borne sorrow the less would have been ushered into this world of many sorrows.
It was a bright May morning (a year after this) when Barty and his aunt Caroline and his cousin Daphne and their servants left Antwerp for Düsseldorf on the Rhine.
At Malines they had to change trains, and spent half an hour at the station waiting for the express from Brussels and bidding farewell to their Mechlin friends, who had come there to wish them God‐speed: the Abbé Lefebvre, Father Louis, and others; and the Torfses, père et mère; and little Frau, who wept freely as Lady Caroline kissed her and gave her a pretty little diamond brooch. Barty gave her a gold cross and a hearty shake of the hand, and she seemed quite heart‐broken.