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 premières 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
Coûte 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 Düsseldorf, 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 ça! – 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, naïvely 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 qualités de ses défauts, le beau Josselin," said M. Taine one day.
"Mon cher," said M. Renan, "ses défauts sont ses meilleures qualités."
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 Düsseldorf 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 Düsseldorf 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 Düsseldorf. 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 Düsseldorf, 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 liberté."
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 Düsseldorf.
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 Düsseldorf 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 König'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 "Soirées 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 à 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!