Part 14

Barty told Madame de Clèves the story of his eye--he was always very communicative about his eye; and she suddenly buried her face in her hands and wept; and mademoiselle told him in a whisper that her eldest brother had gone blind and died three or four years ago, and that he was extraordinarily like Barty both in face and figure.

Presently another son of Madame de Clèves came in--an officer of dragoons in undress uniform, a splendid youth. He was the missing tenor, and made his excuses for being late, and sang very well indeed.

And Barty became the intimate friend of these good people, who made Blankenberghe a different place to him--and conceived for him a violent liking, and introduced him to all their smart Belgian friends; they were quite a set--bathing together, making music and dancing, taking excursions, and so forth. And before a fortnight was over Barty had become the most popular young man in the town, the gayest of the gay, the young guardsman once more, throwing dull care to the winds; and in spite of his impecuniosity (of which he made no secret whatever) the _boute-en-train_ of the company. And this led to many droll adventures--of which I will tell one as a sample.

A certain Belgian viscount, who had a very pretty French wife, took a dislike to Barty. He had the reputation of being a tremendous fire-eater. His wife, a light-hearted little flirt (but with not much harm in her), took a great fancy to him, on the contrary.

One day she asked him for a wax impression of the seal-ring he wore on his finger, and the following morning he sealed an empty envelope and stamped it with his ring, and handed it to her on the Plage. She snatched it with a quick gesture and slipped it into her pocket with quite a guilty little coquettish look of mutual understanding.

Monsieur Jean (as the viscount was called) noticed this, and jostled rudely against Josselin, who jostled back again and laughed.

Then the whole party walked off to the "tir," or shooting-gallery on the Plage; some wager was on, I believe, and when they got there they all began to shoot--at different distances, ladies and gentlemen; all but Barty; it was a kind of handicap.

Monsieur Jean, after a fierce and significant look at Barty, slowly raised his pistol, took a deliberate aim at the small target, and fired--hitting it just half an inch over the bull's-eye; a capital shot. Barty couldn't have done better himself. Then taking another loaded pistol, he presented it to my friend by the butt and said, with a solemn bow:

"À vous, monsieur de la garde."

"Messieurs de la garde doivent toujours tirer les premiers!" said Barty, laughing; and carelessly let off his pistol in the direction of the target without even taking aim. A little bell rang, and there was a shout of applause; and Barty was conscious that by an extraordinary fluke he had hit the bull's-eye in the middle, and saw the situation at once.

Suddenly looking very grave and very sad, he threw the pistol away, and said:

"Je ne tire plus--j'ai trop peur d'avoir la main malheureuse un jour!" and smiled benignly at M. Jean.

A moment's silence fell on the party and M. Jean turned very pale.

Barty went up to Madame Jean:

"Will you forgive me for giving you with my seal an empty envelope? I couldn't think of anything pretty enough to write you--so I gave it up. Tear it and forgive me. I'll do better next time!"

The lady blushed and pulled the letter out of her pocket and held it up to the light, and it was, as Barty said, merely an empty envelope and a red seal. She then held it out to her husband and exclaimed:

"Le cachet de Monsieur Josselin, que je lui avais demandé...!"

So bloodshed was perhaps avoided, and Monsieur Jean took care not to jostle Josselin any more. Indeed, they became great friends.

For next day Barty strolled into the Salle d'Armes, Rue des Dunes--and there he found Monsieur Jean fencing with young de Clèves, the dragoon. Both were good fencers, but Barty was the finest fencer I ever met in my life, and always kept it up; and remembering his adventure of the previous day, it amused him to affect a careless nonchalance about such trivial things--"des enfantillages!"

"_You_ take a turn with Jean, Josselin!" said the dragoon.

"Oh! I'm out of practice--and I've only got one eye...."

"Je vous en prie, monsieur de la garde!" said the viscount.

"Cette fois, alors, nous allons tirer _ensemble_!" says Barty, and languidly dons the mask with an affected air, and makes a fuss about the glove not suiting him; and then, in spite of his defective sight, which seems to make no difference, he lightly and gracefully gives M. Jean such a dressing as that gentleman had never got in his life--not even from his maître d'armes: and afterwards to young de Clèves the same. Well I knew his way of doing this kind of thing!

So Barty and M. and Madame Jean became quite intimate--and with his usual indiscretion Barty told them how he fluked that bull's-eye, and they were charmed!

"Vous êtes impayable, savez-vous, mon cher!" says M. Jean--"vous avez tous les talents, et un million dans le gosier par-dessus le marché! Si jamais je puis vous être de service, savez-vous, comptez sur moi pour la vie ..." said the impulsive viscount when they bade each other good-bye at the end.

[Illustration: "'À VOUS, MONSIEUR DE LA GARDE!'"]

"Et plus jamais d'enveloppes vides, quand vous m'écrirez!" says madame.

* * * * *

So frivolous time wore on, and Barty found it pleasant to frivol in such pleasant company--very pleasant indeed! But when alone in his garret, with his seton-dressing and dry-cuppings, it was not so gay. He had to confess to himself that his eye was getting slowly worse instead of better; darkening day by day; and a little more retina had been taken in by the strange disease--"la peau de chagrin," as he nicknamed this wretched retina of his, after Balzac's famous story. He could still see with the left of it and at the bottom, but a veil had come over the middle and all the rest; by daylight he could see through this veil, but every object he saw was discolored and distorted and deformed--it was worse than darkness itself; and this was so distressing, and so interfered with the sight of the other eye, that when the sun went down, the total darkness in the ruined portion of his left retina came as a positive relief. He took all this very desperately to heart and had very terrible forebodings. For he had never known an ache or a pain, and had innocently gloried all his life in the singular perfection of his five wits.

Then his money was coming to an end; he would soon have to sing in the streets, like Veronese, with Lady Archibald's guitar.

Dear Lady Archibald! When things went wrong with her she would always laugh, and say:

"Les misères du jour font le bonheur du lendemain!"

This he would say or sing to himself over and over again, and go to bed at night quite hopeful and sanguine after a merry day spent among his many friends; and soon sink into sleep, persuaded that his trouble was a bad dream which next morning would scatter and dispel. But when he woke, it was to find the grim reality sitting by his pillow, and he couldn't dry-cup it away. The very sunshine was an ache as he went out and got his breakfast with his blue spectacles on; and black care would link its bony arm in his as he listlessly strolled by the much-sounding sea--and cling to him close as he swam or dived; and he would wonder what he had ever done that so serious and tragic a calamity should have befallen so light a person as himself; who could only dance and sing and play the fool to make people laugh--Rigoletto--Triboulet--a mere grasshopper, no ant or bee or spider, not even a third-class beetle--surely this was not according to the eternal fitness of things!

And thus in the unutterable utterness of his dejection he would make himself such evil cheer that he sickened with envy at the mere sight of any living thing that could see out of two eyes--a homeless irresponsible dog, a hunchback beggar, a crippled organ-grinder and his monkey--till he met some acquaintance; even but a rolling fisherman with a brown face and honest blue eyes--a pair of them--and then he would forget his sorrow and his envy in chat and jokes and laughter with him over each a centime cigar; and was set up in good spirits for the day! Such was Barty Josselin, the most ready lover of his kind that ever existed, the slave of his last impression.

And thus he lived under the shadow of the sword of Damocles for many months; on and off, for years--indeed, as long as he lived at all. It is good discipline. It rids one of much superfluous self-complacency and puts a wholesome check on our keeping too good a conceit of ourselves; it prevents us from caring too meanly about mean things--too keenly about our own infinitesimal personalities; it makes us feel quick sympathy for those who live under a like condition: there are many such weapons dangling over the heads of us poor mortals by just a hair--a panoply, an armory, a very arsenal! And we grow to learn in time that when the hair gives way and the big thing falls, the blow is not half so bad as the fright had been, even if it kills us; and more often than not it is but the shadow of a sword, after all; a bogie that has kept us off many an evil track--perhaps even a blessing in disguise! And in the end, down comes some other sword from somewhere else and cuts for us the Gordian knot of our brief tangled existence, and solves the riddle and sets us free.

This is a world of surprises, where little ever happens but the unforeseen, which is seldom worth meeting halfway! And these moral reflections of mine are quite unnecessary and somewhat obvious, but they harm nobody, and are very soothing to make and utter at my time of life. Pity the sorrows of a poor old man and forgive him his maudlin garrulity....

* * * * *

One afternoon, lolling in deep dejection on the top of a little sandy hillock, a "dune," and plucking the long coarse grass, he saw a very tall elderly lady, accompanied by her maid, coming his way along the asphalt path that overlooked the sea--or rather, that prevented the sea from overlooking the land and overflowing it!

She was in deep black and wore a thick veil.

With a little jump of surprise he recognized his aunt Caroline--Lady Caroline Grey--of all his aunts the aunt who had loved him the best as a boy--whom he had loved the best.

She was a Roman Catholic, and very devout indeed--a widow, and childless now. And between her and Barty a coolness had fallen during the last few years--a heavy raw thick mist of cold estrangement; and all on account of his London life and the notoriety he had achieved there; things of which she disapproved entirely, and thought "unworthy of a gentleman": and who can blame her for thinking so?

She had at first written to him long letters of remonstrance and good advice; which he gave up answering, after a while. And when they met in society, her manner had grown chill and distant and severe.

He hadn't seen or heard of his aunt Caroline for three or four years; but at the sudden sight of her a wave of tender childish remembrance swept over him, and his heart beat quite warmly to her: affliction is a solvent of many things, and first-cousin to forgiveness.

She passed without looking his way, and he jumped up and followed her, and said:

"Oh, Aunt Caroline! won't you even speak to me?"

She started violently, and turned round, and cried: "Oh, Barty, Barty, where have you been all these years?" and seized both his hands, and shook all over.

"Oh, Barty--my beloved little Barty--take me somewhere where we can sit down and talk. I've been thinking of you very much, Barty--I've lost my poor son--he died last Christmas! I was afraid you had forgotten my existence! I was thinking of you the very moment you spoke!"

The maid left them, and she took his arm and they found a seat.

She put up her veil and looked at him: there was a great likeness between them in spite of the difference of age. She had been his father's favorite sister (some ten years younger than Lord Runswick); and she was very handsome still, though about fifty-five.

"Oh, Barty, my darling--how things have gone wrong between us! Is it _all_ my doing? Oh, I hope not!..." And she kissed him.

"How like, how like! And you're getting a little black and bulgy under the eyes--especially the left one--and so did _he_, at just about your age! And how thin you are!"

"I don't think anything need ever go wrong between us again, Aunt Caroline! I am a very altered person, and a very unlucky one!"

"Tell me, dear!"

And he told her all his story, from the fatal quarrel with her brother Lord Archibald--and the true history of that quarrel; and all that had happened since: he had nothing to keep back.

She frequently wept a little, for truth was in every tone of his voice; and when it came to the story of his lost eye, she wept very much indeed. And his need of affection, of female affection especially, and of kinship, was so immense that he clung to this most kind and loving woman as if she'd been his mother come back from the grave, or his dear Lady Archibald.

[Illustration: "'I AM A VERY ALTERED PERSON!'"]

This meeting made a great difference to Barty in many ways--made amends! Lady Caroline meant to pass the winter at Malines, of all places in the world. The Archbishop was her friend, and she was friends also with one or two priests at the seminary there. She was by no means rich, having but an annuity of not quite three hundred a year; and it soon became the dearest wish of her heart that Barty should live with her for a while, and be nursed by her if he wanted nursing; and she thought he did. Besides, it would be convenient on account of his doctor, M. Noiret, of the University of Louvain, which was near Malines--half an hour by train.

And Barty was only too glad; this warm old love and devotion had suddenly dropped on to him by some happy enchantment out of the skies at a moment of sore need. And it was with a passion of gratitude that he accepted his aunt's proposals.

He well knew, also, how it was in him to brighten her lonely life, almost every hour of it--and promised himself that she should not be a loser by her kindness to Mr. Nobody of Nowhere. He remembered her love of fun, and pretty poetry, and little French songs, and droll chat--and nice cheerful meals tête-à-tête--and he was good at all these things. And how fond she was of reading out loud to him! The time might soon arrive when that would be a blessing indeed.

Indeed, a new interest had come into his life--not altogether a selfish interest either--but one well worth living for, though it was so unlike any interest that had ever filled his life before. He had been essentially a man's man hitherto, in spite of his gay light love for lovely woman; a good comrade par excellence, a frolicsome chum, a rollicking boon-companion, a jolly pal! He wanted quite desperately to love something staid and feminine and gainly and well bred, whatever its age! some kind soft warm thing in petticoats and thin shoes, with no hair on its face, and a voice that wasn't male!

Nor did her piety frighten him very much. He soon found that she was no longer the over-zealous proselytizing busybody of the Cross--but immensely a woman of the world, making immense allowances. All roads lead to Rome (dit-on!), except a few which converge in the opposite direction; but even Roman roads lead to this wide tolerance in the end--for those of a rich warm nature who have been well battered by life; and Lady Caroline had been very thoroughly battered indeed: a bad husband--a bad son, her only child! both dead, but deeply loved and lamented; and in her heart of hearts there lurked a sad suspicion that her piety (so deep and earnest and sincere) had not bettered their badness--on the contrary, perhaps! and had driven her Barty from her when he needed her most.

Now that his need of her was so great, greater than it had ever been before, she would take good care that no piety of hers should ever drive him away from her again; she felt almost penitent and apologetic for having done what she had known to be right--the woman in her had at last outgrown the nun.

She almost began to doubt whether she had not been led to selfishly overrate the paramount importance of the exclusive salvation of her own particular soul!

And then his frank, fresh look and manner, and honest boyish voice, so unmistakably sincere, and that mild and magnificent eye, so bright and humorous still, "so like--so like!" which couldn't even see her loving, anxious face.... Thank Heaven, there was still one eye left that she could appeal to with both her own!

And what a child he had been, poor dear--the very pearl of the Rohans! What Rohan of them all was ever a patch on this poor bastard of Antoinette Josselin's, either for beauty, pluck, or mother-wit--or even for honor, if it came to that? Why, a quixotic scruple of honor had ruined him, and she was Rohan enough to understand what the temptation had been the other way: she had seen the beautiful bad lady!

And, pure as her own life had been, she was no puritan, but of a church well versed in the deepest knowledge of our poor weak frail humanity; she has told me all about it, and I listened between the words.

So during the remainder of her stay at Blankenberghe he was very much with Lady Caroline, and rediscovered what a pleasant and lively companion she could be--especially at meals (she was fond of good food of a plain and wholesome kind, and took good care to get it).

She had her little narrownesses, to be sure, and was not hail-fellow-well-met with everybody, like him; and did not think very much of giddy little viscountesses with straddling loud-voiced Flemish husbands, nor of familiar facetious commercial millionaires, of whom Barty numbered two or three among his adorers; nor even of the "highly born" Irish wives of Belgian generals and all that. Madame de Clèves was an O'Brien.

These were old ingrained Rohan prejudices, and she was too old herself to alter.

But she loved the good fishermen whose picturesque boats made such a charming group on the sands at sunset, and also their wives and children; and here she and her nephew were "bien d'accord."

I fear her ladyship would not have appreciated very keenly the rising splendor of a certain not altogether unimportant modern house in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury--and here she would have been wrong. The Time has come when we throw the handkerchief at female Rohans, we Maurices and our like. I have not done so myself, it is true; but not from any rooted antipathy to any daughter of a hundred earls--nor yet from any particular diffidence on my own part.

Anyhow, Lady Caroline loved to hear all Barty had to say of his gay life among the beauty, rank, and fashion of Blankenberghe. She was very civil to the handsome Irish Madame de Clèves, _née_ O'Brien, and listened politely to the family history of the O'Briens and that of the de Clèveses too: and learnt, without indecent surprise, or any emotion of any kind whatever, what she had never heard before--namely, that in the early part of the twelfth century a Rohan de Whitby had married an O'Brien of Ballywrotte; and other prehistoric facts of equal probability and importance.

She didn't believe much in people's twelfth--century reminiscences; she didn't even believe in those of her own family, who didn't believe in them either, or trouble about them in the least; and I dare say they were quite right.

Anyhow, when people solemnly talked about such things it made her rather sorry. But she bore up for Barty's sake, and the resigned, half-humorous courtesy with which she assented to these fables was really more humiliating to a sensitive, haughty soul than any mere supercilious disdain; not that she ever wished to humiliate, but she was easily bored, and thought that kind of conversation vulgar, futile, and rather grotesque.

Indeed, she grew quite fond of Madame de Clèves and the splendid young dragoon, and the sweet little black-haired daughter with lovely blue eyes, who sang so charmingly. For they were singularly charming people in every way, the de Clèveses; and that's a way Irish people often have--as well as of being proud of their ancient blood. There is no more innocent weakness. I have it very strongly--moi qui vous parle--on the maternal side. My mother was a Blake of Derrydown, a fact that nobody would have known unless she now and then accidentally happened to mention it herself, or else my father did. And so I take the opportunity of slipping it in here--just out of filial piety!

So the late autumn of that year found Barty and his aunt at Malines, or Mechelen, as it calls itself in its native tongue.

They had comfortable lodgings of extraordinary cheapness in one of the dullest streets of that most picturesque but dead-alive little town, where the grass grew so thick between the paving-stones here and there that the brewers' dray-horses might have browsed in the "Grand Brul"--a magnificent but generally deserted thoroughfare leading from the railway station to the Place d'Armes, where rose still unfinished the colossal tower of one of the oldest and finest cathedrals in the world, whose chimes wafted themselves every half-quarter of an hour across the dreamy flats for miles and miles, according to the wind, that one might realize how slow was the flight of time in that particular part of King Leopold's dominions.

"'And from a tall tower in the town Death looks gigantically down!'"

said Barty to his aunt--quoting (or misquoting) a bard they were very fond of just then, as they slowly walked down the "Grand Brul" in solitude together, from the nineteenth century to the fourteenth in less than twenty minutes--or three chimes from St. Rombault, or fifty skrieks from the railway station.

But for these a spirit of stillness and mediæval melancholy brooded over the quaint old city and great archiepiscopal see and most important railway station in all Belgium. Magnificent old houses in carved stone with wrought-iron balconies were to be had for rents that were almost nominal. From the tall windows of some of these a frugal, sleepy, priest-ridden old nobility looked down on broad and splendid streets hardly ever trodden by any feet but their own, or those of some stealthy Jesuit priest, or Sister of Mercy.