Part 16

And he quite lost his old liability to sudden freaks and fits of noisy fractiousness about trifles--when he would stamp and rave and curse and swear, and be quite pacified in a moment: "_Soupe-au-lait_," as he was nicknamed in Troplong's studio!

* * * * *

Besides his seton and his cuppings, dry and wet, and his blisters on his arms and back, and his mustard poultices on his feet and legs, and his doses of mercury and alteratives, he had also to deplete himself of blood three times a week by a dozen or twenty leeches behind his left ear and on his temple. All this softens and relaxes the heart towards others, as a good tonic will harden it.

So that he looked a mere shadow of his former self when I went over to spend my Christmas with him.

And his eye was getting worse instead of better; at night he couldn't sleep for the fireworks it let off in the dark. By day the trouble was even worse, as it so interfered with the sight of the other eye--even if he wore a patch, which he hated. He never knew peace but when his aunt was reading to him in the dimly lighted room, and he forgot himself in listening.

Yet he was as lively and droll as ever, with a wan face as eloquent of grief as any face I ever saw; he had it in his head that the right eye would go the same way as the left. He could no longer see the satellites of Jupiter with it: hardly Jupiter itself, except as a luminous blur; indeed, it was getting quite near-sighted, and full of spots and specks and little movable clouds--_muscæ volitantes_, as I believe they are called by the faculty. He was always on the lookout for new symptoms, and never in vain; and his burden was as much as he could bear.

He would half sincerely long for death, of which he yet had such a horror that he was often tempted to kill himself to get the bother of it well over at once. The idea of death _in the dark_, however remote--an idea that constantly haunted him as his own most probable end--so appalled him that it would stir the roots of his hair!

Lady Caroline confided to me her terrible anxiety, which she managed to hide from him. She herself had been to see M. Noiret, who was no longer so confident and cocksure about recovery.

I went to see him too, without letting Barty know. I did not like the man--he was stealthy in look and manner, and priestly and feline and sleek: but he seemed very intelligent, and managed to persuade me that no other treatment was even to be thought of.

I inquired about him in Brussels, and found his reputation was of the highest. What could I do? I knew nothing of such things! And what a responsibility for me to volunteer advice!

I could see that my deep affection for Barty was a source of immense comfort to Lady Caroline, for whom I conceived a great and warm regard, besides being very much charmed with her.

She was one of those gentle, genial, kindly, intelligent women of the world, absolutely natural and sincere, in whom it is impossible not to confide and trust.

When I left off talking about Barty, because there was really nothing more to say, I fell into talking about myself: it was irresistible--she _made_ one! I even showed her Leah's last photograph, and told her of my secret aspirations; and she was so warmly sympathetic and said such beautiful things to me about Leah's face and aspect and all they promised of good that I have never forgotten them, and never shall--they showed such a prophetic insight! they fanned a flame that needed no fanning, good heavens! and rang in my ears and my heart all the way to Barge Yard, Bucklersbury--while my eyes were full of Barty's figure as he again watched me depart by the _Baron Osy_ from the Quai de la Place Verte in Antwerp; a sight that wrung me, when I remembered what a magnificent figure of a youth he looked as he left the wharf at London Bridge on the Boulogne steamer, hardly more than two short years ago.

When I got back to London, after spending my Christmas holiday with Barty, I found the beginning of a little trouble of my own.

My father was abroad; my mother and sister were staying with some friends in Chiselhurst, and after having settled all business matters in Barge Yard I called at the Gibsons', in Tavistock Square, just after dusk. Mrs. Gibson and Leah were at home, and three or four young men were there, also calling. There had been a party on Christmas-eve.

I'm afraid I did not think much, as a rule, of the young men I met at the Gibsons'. They were mostly in business, like myself; and why I should have felt at all supercilious I can't quite see! But I did. Was it because I was very tall, and dressed by Barty's tailor, in Jermyn Street? Was it because I knew French? Was it because I was a friend of Barty the Guardsman, who had never been supercilious towards anybody in his life? Or was it those maternally ancestral Irish Blakes of Derrydown stirring within me?

The simplest excuse I can make for myself is that I was a young snob, and couldn't help it. Many fellows are at that age. Some grow out of it, and some don't. And the Gibsons were by way of spoiling me, because I was Leah's bosom friend's brother, and I gave myself airs in consequence.

As I sat perfectly content, telling Leah all about poor Barty, another visitor was announced--a Mr. Scatcherd, whom I didn't know; but I saw at a glance that it would not do to be supercilious with Mr. Scatcherd. He was quite as tall as I, for one thing, if not taller. His tailor might have been Poole himself; and he was extremely good-looking, and had all the appearance and manners of a man of the world. He might have been a Guardsman. He was not that, it seemed--only a barrister.

He had been at Eton, had taken his degree at Cambridge, and ignored me just as frankly as I ignored Tom, Dick, and Harry--whoever they were; and I didn't like it at all. He ignored everybody but Leah and her mamma: her papa was not there. It turned out that he was the only son of the great wholesale furrier in Ludgate Hill, the largest house of the kind in the world, with a branch in New York and another in Quebec or Montreal. He had been called to the bar to please a whim of his father's.

He had been at the Gibson party on Christmas-eve, and had paid Leah much attention there; and came to tell them that his mother hoped to call on Mrs. Gibson on the following day. I was savagely glad that he did not succeed in monopolizing Leah; not even I could do that. She was kind to us all round, and never made any differences in her own house.

Mr. Scatcherd soon took his departure, and it was then that I heard all about him.

[Illustration: ENTER MR. SCATCHERD]

There was no doubt that Mr. and Mrs. Gibson were immensely flattered by the civilities of this very important and somewhat consequential young man, and those of his mother, which were to follow; for within a week the Gibsons and Leah dined with Mr. and Mrs. Scatcherd in Portland Place.

On this occasion Mr. Gibson was, as usual, very funny, it seems. Whether his fun was appreciated I doubt, for he confided to me that Mr. Scatcherd, senior, was a pompous and stuck-up old ass. People have such different notions of what is funny. Nobody roared at Mr. Gibson's funniments more than I did; but he was Leah's papa.

"Let him joke his bellyful; I'll bear it all for Sally!"

Young Scatcherd was fond of his joke too--a kind of supersubtly satirical Cambridgy banter that was not to my taste at all; for I am no Cantab, and the wit of the London Stock Exchange is subtle enough for me. His father did not joke. Indeed he was full of useful information, and only too fond of imparting it, and he always made use of the choicest language in doing so; and Mrs. Scatcherd was immensely genteel.

Young Scatcherd became the plague of my life. The worst of it is that he grew quite civil--seemed to take a liking. His hobby was to become a good French scholar, and he practised his French--which was uncommonly good of its English kind--on me. And I am bound to say that his manners were so agreeable (when he wasn't joking), and he was such a thoroughly good fellow, that it was impossible to snub him; besides, he wouldn't have cared if I had.

Once or twice he actually asked me to dine with him at his club, and I actually did; and actually he with me, at mine! And we spoke French all through dinner, and I taught him a lot of French school-boy slang, with which he was delighted. Then he came to see me in Barge Yard, and I even introduced him to my mother and sister, who couldn't help being charmed with him. He was fond of the best music only (he had no ear whatever, and didn't know a note), and only cared for old pictures--the National Gallery, and all that; and read no novels but French--Balzac and George Sand--and that only for practice for he was a singularly pure young man, the purest in all Cambridge, and in those days I thought him a quite unforgivable prig.

So Scatcherd was in my thoughts all day and in my dreams all night--a kind of incubus; and my mother made herself very unhappy about him, on Leah's account and mine; except that now and then she would fancy it was Ida he was thinking of. And that would have pleased my mother very much; and me too!

His mother called on mine, who returned the call--but there was no invitation for us to dine in Portland Place.

Nothing of all this interrupted for a moment the bosom-friendship between my sister and Leah; nothing ever altered the genial sweetness of Leah's manners to me, nor indeed the cordiality of her parents: Mr. Gibson could not get on without that big guffaw of mine, at Whatever he looked or said or did; no Scatcherd could laugh as loudly and as readily as I! But I was very wretched indeed, and poured out my woes to Barty in long letters of poetical Blaze, and he would bid me hope and be of good cheer in his droll way; and a Blaze letter from him would hearten me up wonderfully--till I was told of Leah's going to the theatre with Mrs. Scatcherd and her son, or saw his horses and groom parading up and down Tavistock Square while he was at the Gibsons', or heard of his dining there without Ida or me!

Then one fine day in April (the first, I verily believe) young Scatcherd proposed to Leah--and was refused--unconditionally refused--to the deep distress and dismay of her father and mother, who had thoroughly set their hearts on this match; and no wonder!

But Leah was an obstinate young woman, it seems, and thoroughly knew her own mind, though she was so young--not seventeen.

Was I a happy man? Ah, wasn't I! I was sent to Bordeaux by my father that very week on business--and promised myself I would soon be quite as good a catch or match as Scatcherd himself. I found Bordeaux the sunniest, sweetest town I had ever been in--and the Bordelais the jolliest men on earth; and as for the beautiful Bordelaises--ma foi! they might have been monkeys, for me! There was but one woman among women--one lily among flowers--everything else was a weed!

Poor Scatcherd! when I met him, a few days later, he must have been struck by the sudden warmth of my friendship--the quick idiomatic cordiality of my French to him. This mutual friendship of ours lasted till his death in '88. And so did our mutual French!

Except Barty, I never loved a man better; two years after his refusal by Leah he married my sister--a happy marriage, though a childless one; and except myself, Barty never had a more devoted friend. And now to Barty I will return.

Part Sixth

"From the east to western Ind, No jewel is like Rosalind. Her worth, being mounted on the wind, Through all the world bears Rosalind. All the pictures, fairest lin'd, Are but black to Rosalind. Let no fair be kept in mind, But the fair of Rosalind.

* * * * *

"Thus Rosalind of many parts By heavenly synod was devis'd, Of many faces, eyes, and hearts, To have the touches dearest priz'd."

--_As You Like It._

For many months Barty and his aunt lived their usual life in the Rue des Ursulines Blanches.

He always looked back on those dreary months as on a long nightmare. Spring, summer, autumn, and another Christmas!

His eye got worse and worse, and so interfered with the sight of the other that he had no peace till it was darkened wholly. He tried another doctor--Monsieur Goyers, professor at the liberal university of Ghent--who consulted with Dr. Noiret about him one day in Brussels, and afterwards told him that Noiret of Louvain, whom he described as a miserable Jesuit, was blinding him, and that he, this Goyers of Ghent, would cure him in six weeks.

"Mettez-vous au régime des viandes saignantes!" had said Noiret; and Barty had put himself on a diet of underdone beef and mutton.

"Mettez-vous au lait!" said Goyers--so he metted himself at the milk, as he called it--and put himself in Goyers's hands; and in six weeks got so much worse that he went back to Noiret and the regimen of the bleeding meats, which he loathed.

Then, in his long and wretched _désoeuvrement_, his melancholia, he drifted into an indiscreet flirtation with a beautiful lady--he (as had happened before) being more the pursued than the pursuer. And so ardent was the pursuit that one fine morning the beautiful lady found herself gravely compromised--and there was a bother and a row.

"Amour, amour, quand tu nous tiens, On peut bien dire 'Adieu Prudence!'"

All this gave Lady Caroline great distress, and ended most unhappily--in a duel with the lady's husband, who was a Colonel of Artillery, and meant business!

They fought with swords in a little wood near Laeken. Barty, who could have run his fat antagonist through a dozen times during the five minutes they fought, allowed himself to be badly wounded in the side, just above the hip, and spent a month in bed. He had hoped to manage for himself a slighter wound, and catch his adversary's point on his elbow.

Afterwards, Lady Caroline, who had so disapproved of the flirtation, did not, strange to say, so disapprove of this bloody encounter, and thoroughly approved of the way Barty had let himself be pinked! And nursed him devotedly; no mother could have nursed him better--no sister--no wife! not even the wife of that Belgian Colonel of Artillery!

[Illustration: BARTY GIVES HIMSELF AWAY]

"Il s'est conduit en homme de coeur!" said the good Abbé.

"Il s'est conduit en bon gentilhomme!" said the aristocratic Father Louis, of the princely house of Aremberg.

On the other hand, young de Clèves the dragoon, and Monsieur Jean the Viscount, who had served as Barty's seconds (I was in America), were very angry with him for giving himself away in this "idiotically quixotic manner."

Besides which, Colonel Lecornu was a notorious bully, it seems; and a fool into the bargain; and belonged to a branch of the service they detested.

The only other thing worth mentioning is that Barty and Father Louis became great friends--almost inseparable during such hours as the Dominican could spare from the duties of his professorate.

It speaks volumes for all that was good in each of them that this should have been so, since they were wide apart as the poles in questions of immense moment: questions on which I will not enlarge, strongly as I feel about them myself--for this is not a novel, but a biography, and therefore no fit place for the airing of one's own opinion on matters so grave and important.

When they parted they constantly wrote to each other--an intimate correspondence that was only ended by the Father's death.

Barty also made one or two other friends in Malines, and was often in Antwerp and Brussels, but seldom, for more than a few hours, as he did not like to leave his aunt alone.

One day came, in April, on which she had to leave him.

[Illustration: SO NEAR AND YET SO FAR]

A message arrived that her father, the old Marquis (Barty's grandfather), was at the point of death. He was ninety-six. He had expressed a wish to see her once more, although he had long been childish.

So Barty saw her off, with her maid, by the _Baron Osy_. She promised to be back as soon as all was over. Even this short parting was a pain--they had grown so indispensable to each other.

Tescheles was away from Antwerp, and the disconsolate Barty went back to Malines and dined by himself; and little Frau waited on him with extra care.

It turned out that her mother had cooked for him a special dish of consolation--sausage-meat stewed inside a red cabbage, with apples and cloves, till it all gets mixed up. It is a dish not to be beaten when you are young and Flemish and hungry and happy and well (even then you mustn't take more than one helping). When you are not all this it is good to wash it down with half a bottle of the best Burgundy--and this Barty did (from Vougeot-Conti and Co.).

Then he went out and wandered about in the dark and lost himself in a dreamy dædalus of little streets and bridges and canals and ditches. A huge comet (Encke's, I believe) was flaring all over the sky.

He suddenly came across the lighted window of a small estaminet, and went in.

It was a little beer-shop of the humblest kind--and just started. At a little deal table, brand-new, a middle-aged burgher of prosperous appearance was sitting next to the barmaid, who had deserted her post at the bar--and to whom he seemed somewhat attentive; for their chairs were close together, and their arms round each other's waists, and they drank out of the same glass.

There was no one else in the room, and Barty was about to make himself scarce, but they pressed him to come in; so he sat at another little new deal table on a little new straw-bottomed chair, and she brought him a glass of beer. She was a very handsome girl, with a tall, graceful figure and Spanish eyes. He lit a cigar, and she went back to her beau quite simply--and they all three fell into conversation about an operetta by Victor Massé, which had been performed in Malines the previous night, called _Les Noces de Jeannette_.

The barmaid and her monsieur were trying to remember the beautiful air Jeannette sings as she mends her angry husband's breeches:

"Cours, mon aiguille, dans la laine! Ne te casse pas dans ma main; Avec de bons baisers demain Jean nous paîra de notre peine!"

So Barty sang it to them; and so beautifully that they were all but melted to tears--especially the monsieur, who was evidently very sentimental and very much in love. Besides, there was that ineffable charm of the pure French intonation, so caressing to the Belgian ear, so dear to the Belgian soul, so unattainable by Flemish lips. It was one of Barty's most successful ditties--and if I were a middle-aged burgher of Mechelen, I shouldn't much like to have a young French Barty singing "Cours, mon aiguille" to the girl of my heart.

Then, at their desire, he went on singing things till it was time to leave, and he found he had spent quite a happy evening; nothing gave him greater pleasure than singing to people who liked it--and he went singing on his way home, dreamily staring at the rare gas-lamps and the huge comet, and thinking of his old grandfather who lay dying or dead: "Cours, mon aiguille, it is good to live--it is good to die!"

Suddenly he discovered that when he looked at one lamp, another lamp close to it on the right was completely eclipsed--and he soon found that a portion of his right eye, not far from the centre, was totally sightless.

The shock was so great that he had to lean against a buttress of St. Rombault for support.

When he got home he tested the sight of his eye with a two-franc piece on the green table-cloth, and found there was no mistake--a portion of his remaining eye was stone-blind.

He spent a miserable night, and went next day to Louvain, to see the oculist.

M. Noiret heard his story, arranged the dark room and the lamp, dilated the right pupil with atropine, and made a minute examination with the ophthalmoscope.

Then he became very thoughtful, and led the way to his library and begged Barty to sit down; and began to talk to him very seriously indeed, like a father--patting the while a small Italian greyhound that lay and shivered and whined in a little round cot by the fire.

M. Noiret began by inquiring into his circumstances, which were not nourishing, as we know--and Barty made no secret of them; then he asked him if he were fond of music, and was pleased to hear that he was, since it is such an immense resource; then he asked him if he belonged to the Roman Catholic faith, and again was pleased.

"For"--said he--"you will need all your courage and all your religion to hear and bear what it is my misfortune to have to tell you. I hope you will have more fortitude than another young patient of mine (also an artist) to whom I was obliged to make a similar communication. He blew out his brains on my door-step!"

"I promise you I will not do that. I suppose I am going blind?"

"Hélas! mon jeune ami! I grieve to say that the fatal disease, congestion and detachment of the retina, which has so obstinately and irrevocably destroyed your left eye, has begun its terrible work on the right. We will fight for every inch of the way. But I fear I must not give you any hope, after the careful examination I have just made. It is my duty to be frank with you."

Then he said much about the will of God, and where true comfort was to be found, at the foot of the Cross; in fact, he said all he ought to have said according to his lights, as he fondled his little greyhound--and finally took Barty to the door, which he opened for him, most politely bowing with his black velvet skull-cap; and pocketed his full fee (ten francs) with his usual grace of careless indifference, and gently shut the door on him. There was nothing else to do.