Part 27

It is to be feared that women who lacked the heavenly gift of good looks did not interest him quite so much, whatever other gifts they might possess, unless it were the gift of making lovely music. The little brown nightingale outshone the brilliant bird of paradise if she were a true nightingale; if she were very brown indeed, he would shut his eyes and listen with all his ears, rapt, as in a heavenly dream. And the closed lids would moisten, especially the lid that hid the eye that couldn't see--the emotional one!--although he was the least lachrymose of men, since it was with such a dry eye he wrote what I could scarcely read for my tears.

But his natural kindliness and geniality made him always try and please those who tried to please him, beautiful or the reverse, whether they succeeded or not; and he was just as popular with the ducks and geese as with the swans and peacocks and nightingales and birds of paradise. The dull, commonplace dames who prosed and buzzed and bored, the elderly intellectual virgins who knew nothing of life but what they had read--or written--in "Tendenz" novels, yet sadly rebuked him, more in sorrow than in anger, for this passage or that in his books, about things out of their ken altogether, etc.

His playful amenity disarmed the most aggressive bluestocking, orthodox or Unitarian, Catholic or Hebrew--radicals, agnostics, vegetarians, teetotalers, anti-vaccinationists, anti-vivisectionists--even anti-things that don't concern decent women at all, whether married or single.

It was only when his privacy was invaded by some patronizing, loud-voiced nouvelle-riche with a low-bred physiognomy that no millions on earth could gild or refine, and manners to match; some foolish, fashionable, would-be worldling, who combined the arch little coquetries and impertinent affectations of a spoilt beauty with the ugliness of an Aztec or an Esquimau; some silly, titled old frump who frankly ignored his tea-making wife and daughters and talked to _him_ only--and only about her grotesque and ugly self--and told him of all the famous painters who had wanted to paint her for the last hundred years--it was only then he grew glum and reserved and depressed and made an unfavorable impression on the other sex.

What it must have cost him not to express his disgust more frankly! for reticence on any matter was almost a torture to him.

Most of us have a mental sanctum to which we retire at times, locking the door behind us; and there we think of high and beautiful things, and hold commune with our Maker; or count our money, or improvise that repartee the gods withheld last night, and shake hands with ourselves for our wit; or caress the thought of some darling, secret wickedness or vice; or revel in dreams of some hidden hate, or some love we mustn't own; and curse those we have to be civil to whether we like them or not, and nurse our little envies till we almost get to like them.

There we remember all the stupid and unkind things we've ever said or thought or done, and all the slights that have ever been put on us, and secretly plan the revenge that never comes off--because time has softened our hearts, let us hope, when opportunity serves at last!

That Barty had no such holy of holies to creep into I feel pretty sure--unless it was the wifely heart of Leah; whatever came into his head came straight out of his mouth; he had nothing to conceal, and thought aloud, for all the world to hear; and it does credit, I think, to the singular goodness and guilelessness of his nature that he could afford to be so outspoken through life and yet give so little offence to others as he did. His indiscretion did very little harm, and his naïve self-revelation only made him the more lovable to those who knew him well.

They were poor creatures, the daws who pecked at that manly heart, so stanch and warm and constant.

As for Leah, it was easy to see that she looked upon her husband as a fixed star, and was well pleased to tend and minister and revolve, and shine with no other light than his; it was in reality an absolute adoration on her part. But she very cleverly managed to hide it from him; she was not the kind of woman that makes a doormat of herself for the man she loves. She kept him in very good order indeed.

It was her theory that female adoration is not good for masculine vanity, and that he got quite enough of it outside his own home; and she would make such fun of him and his female adorers all over the world that he grew to laugh at them himself, and to value a pat on the back and a hearty "Well done, Barty!" from his wife more than

"The blandishments of all the womankind In Europe and America combined."

Gentle and kind and polite as she was, however, she could do battle in defence of her great man, who was so backward at defending himself; and very effective battle too.

As an instance among many, illustrating her method of warfare: Once at an important house a very immense personage (who had an eye for a pretty woman) had asked to be introduced to her and had taken her down to supper; a very immense personage indeed, whose fame had penetrated to the uttermost ends of the earth and deservedly made his name a beloved household word wherever our tongue is spoken, so that it was in every Englishman's mouth all over the world--as Barty's is now.

Leah was immensely impressed, and treated his elderly Immensity to a very full measure of the deference that was his due; and such open homage is not always good for even the Immensest Immensities--it sometimes makes them give themselves immense airs. So that this

## particular Immensity began mildly but firmly to patronize Leah. This

she didn't mind on her own account, but when he said, quite casually:

"By-the-way, I forget if I _know_ your good husband; _do_ I?"

--she was not pleased, and immediately answered:

"I really can't say; I don't think I ever heard him mention your name!"

This was not absolutely veracious on Leah's part; for to Barty in those days this particular great man was a god, and he was always full of him. But it brought the immense one back to his bearings at once, and he left off patronizing and was almost humble.

Anyhow, it was a lie so white that the recording angel will probably delete what there is of it with a genial smile, and leave a little blank in its place.

* * * * *

In an old diary of Leah's I find the following entry:

"March 6th, 1874.--Mamma and Ida Scatcherd came to stay. In the evening our sixth daughter and eighth child was born."

Julia (Mrs. Mainwaring) was this favored person--and is still. Julia and her predecessors have all lived and flourished up to now.

The Josselins had been exceptionally fortunate in their children; each new specimen seemed an even finer specimen than the last. The health of this remarkable family had been exemplary--measles, and mumps, and whooping-cough their only ailments.

During the month of Leah's confinement Barty's nocturnal literary

## activity was unusually great. Night after night he wrote in his

sleep, and accumulated enough raw material to last him a lifetime; for the older he grew and the more practised his hand the longer it took him to give his work the shape he wished; he became more fastidious year by year as he became less of an amateur.

One morning, a day or two before his wife's complete recovery, he found a long personal letter from Martia by his bedside--a letter that moved him very deeply, and gave him food for thought during many weeks and months and years:

* * * * *

"My Beloved Barty,--The time has come at last when I must bid you farewell.

"I have outstayed my proper welcome on earth as a disembodied conscience by just a hundred years, and my desire for reincarnation has become an imperious passion not to be resisted.

"It is more than a desire--it is a duty as well, a duty far too long deferred.

"Barty, I am going to be your next child. I can conceive no greater earthly felicity than to be a child of yours and Leah's. I should have been one long before, but that you and I have had so much to do together for this beautiful earth--a great debt to pay: you, for being as you are; I, for having known you.

"Barty, you have no conception what you are to me and always have been.

[Illustration: "'I DON'T THINK I EVER HEARD HIM MENTION YOUR NAME'"]

"I am to you but a name, a vague idea, a mysterious inspiration; sometimes a questionable guide, I fear. You don't even believe all I have told you about myself--you think it all a somnambulistic invention of your own; and so does your wife, and so does your friend.

"O that I could connect myself in your mind with the shape I wore when I was last a living thing! No shape on earth, not either yours or Leah's or that of any child yet born to you both, is more beautiful to the eye that has learned how to see than the fashion of that lost face and body of mine.

"_You_ wore the shape once, and so did your father and mother, for you were Martians. Leah was a Martian, and wore it too; there are many of them here--they are the best on earth, the very salt thereof. I mean to be the best of them all, and one of the happiest. Oh, help me to that!

"Barty, when I am a splendid son of yours or a sweet and lovely daughter, all remembrance of what I was before will have been wiped out of me until I die. But _you_ will remember, and so will Leah, and both will love me with such a love as no earthly parents have ever felt for any child of theirs yet.

"Think of the poor loving soul, lone, wandering, but not lost, that will so trustfully look up at you out of those gleeful innocent eyes!

"How that soul has suffered both here and elsewhere you don't know, and never will, till the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed; and I am going to forget it myself for a few decades--sixty, seventy, eighty years perhaps; such happy years, I hope--with you for my father and Leah for my mother during some of them at least--and sweet grandchildren of yours, I hope, for my sons and daughters! Why, life to me now will be almost a holiday.

"Oh, train me up the way I should go! Bring me up to be healthy and chaste and strong and brave--never to know a mean ambition or think an ungenerous thought--never to yield to a base or unworthy temptation.

"If I'm a boy--and I want to be a boy very much (although, perhaps, a girl would be dearer to your heart)--don't let me be either a soldier or a sailor, however much I may wish it as a Josselin or a Rohan; don't bring me up to buy or sell like a Gibson, or deal in law like a Bletchley.

"Bring me up to invent, or make something useful, if it's only pickles or soap, but not to buy and sell them; bring me up to build or heal or paint or write or make music--to help or teach or please.

"If I'm a girl, bring me up to be as much like Leah as you can, and marry me to just such another as yourself, if you can find him. Whether I'm a girl or a boy, call me Marty, that my name may rhyme with yours.

"When my conscience re-embodies itself, I want it never to know another pang of self-reproach. And when I'm grown up, if you think it right to do so, tell me who and what I once was, that I may love you both the more; tell me how fondly I loved you when I was a bland and fleeting little animalcule, without a body, but making my home in yours--so that when you die I may know how irrevocably bound up together we must forever be, we three; and rejoice the more in your death and Leah's and my own. Teach me over again all I've ever taught you, Barty--over and over again!

"Alas! perhaps you don't believe all this! How can I give you a sign.

"There are many ways; but a law, of necessity inexorable, forbids it. Such little entity as I possess would cease to be; it was all but lost when I saved your life--and again when I told you that you were the beloved of Julia Royce. It would not do for us Martians to meddle with earthly things; the fat would soon be in the fire, I can tell you!

"Try and trust me, Barty, and give me the benefit of any doubt.

"You have work planned out for many years to come, and are now yourself so trained that you can do without me. You know what you have still to say to mankind; never write a line about which you are not sure.

"For another night or two you will be my host, and this splendid frame of yours my hostelry; on y est très bien. Be hospitable still for a little while--make the most of me; hug me tight, squeeze me warm!

"As soon as Leah is up and about and herself again you will know me no more, and no more feel the north.

"Ah! you will never realize what it is for me to bid you good-bye, my Barty, my Barty! All that is in your big heart and powerful brain to feel of grief belongs to me, now that you are fast asleep. And your genius for sorrow, which you have never really tested yet, is as great as any gift you possess.

"Happy Barty, who have got to forty years without sounding the great depths, and all through me! what will you do without your poor devoted unknown Martia to keep watch over you and ward--to fight for you like a wild-cat, if necessary?

"Leah must be your wild-cat now. She has it in her to be a tigress when you are concerned, or any of her children! Next to you, Leah is the darling of my heart; for it's your heart I make use of to love her with.

"I want you to tell the world all about your Martia some day. They may disbelieve, as you do; but good fruit will come of it in the future. Martians will have a freer hand with you all, and that will be a good thing for the earth; they were trained in a good hard school--they are the Spartans of our universe.

"Such things will come to pass, before many years are over, as are little dreamt of now, and all through your wanting to swallow that dose of cyanide at No. 36 Rue des Ursulines Blanches, and my having the gumption to prevent you!

"It's a good seed that we have sown, you and I. It was not right that this beautiful planet should go much longer drifting through space without a single hope that is not an illusion, without a single hint of what life should really be, without a goal.

"Why such darkness under so bright a sun! such blindness to what is so patent! such a deaf ear to the roaring of that thunderous harmony which you call the eternal silence!--you of the earth, earthy, who can hear the little trumpet of the mosquito so well that it makes you fidget and fret and fume all night, and robs you of your rest. Then the sun rises and frightens the mosquitoes away, and you think that's what the sun is for and are thankful; but why the deuce a mosquito should sting you, you can't make out!--mystery of mysteries!

"At the back of your brain is a little speck of perishable matter, Barty; it is no bigger than a needle's point, but it is bigger in you than in anybody else I know, except in Leah; and in your children it is bigger still--almost as big as the point of a pin!

"If they pair well, and it is in them to do so if they follow their inherited instinct, their children and their children's children will have that speck still bigger. When that speck becomes as big as a millet-seed in your remote posterity, then it will be as big as in a Martian, and the earth will be a very different place, and man of earth greater and even better than the Martian by all the greatness of his ampler, subtler, and more complex brain; his sense of the Deity will be as an eagle's sense of the sun at noon in a cloudless tropical sky; and he will know how to bear that effulgence without a blink, as he stands on his lonely summit, ringed by the azure world.

"Indeed, there will be no more Martians in Mars by that time; they are near the end of their lease; all good Martians will have gone to Venus, let us hope; if not, to the Sun itself!

"Man has many thousands of years before him yet ere his little ball of earth gets too cold for him; the little speck in his brain may grow to the size of a pea, a cherry, a walnut, an egg, an orange! He will have in him the magnetic consciousness of the entire solar system, and hold the keys of time and space as long and as far as the sun shines for us all--and then there will be the beginning of everything. And all through that little episode in the street of those White Ursulines! And the seed of Barty and Leah will overflow to the uttermost ends of the earth, and finally blossom and bear fruit for ever and ever beyond the stars.

"What a beginning for a new order of things! what a getting up-stairs! what an awakening! what an annunciation!

"Do you remember that knock at the door?

"'Il est dix heures, savez-vous? Voulez-vous votre café dans votre chambre?'

"She little knew, poor little Frau! humble little Finche Torfs, lowly Flemish virgin, who loved you as the moth loves the star; vilain mangeur de coeurs que vous êtes!

"Barty, I wish your wife to hear nothing of this till the child who once was your Martia shall have seen the light of day with eyes of its own; tell her that I have left you at last, but don't tell her why or how; tell her some day, years hence, if you think she will love me the better for it; not otherwise.

"When you wake, Barty, I shall still be inside you; say to me in your mezza voce all the kind things you can think of--such things as you would have said to your mother had she lived till now, and you were speeding her on a long and uncertain journey.

"How you would have loved your mother! She was most beautiful, and of the type so dear to you. Her skin was almost as white as Leah's, her eyes almost as black, her hair even blacker; like Leah, she was tall and slim and lithe and graceful. She might have been Leah's mother, too, for the likeness between them. How often you remind me of her when you laugh or sing, and when you're funny in French; those droll, quick gestures and quaint intonations, that ease and freedom and deftness as you move! And then you become English in a moment, and your big, burly, fair-haired father has come back with his high voice, and his high spirits, and his frank blue eyes, like yours, so kind and brave and genial.

"And _you_, dear, what a baby you were--a very prince among babies; ah! if I can only be like that when I begin again!

"The people in the Tuileries garden used to turn round and stare and smile at you when Rosalie with the long blue streamers bore you along as proudly as if Louis Philippe were your grandfather and she the royal wet-nurse; and later, after that hideous quarrel about nothing, and the fatal fight by the 'mare aux biches,' how the good fisher people of Le Pollet adored you! 'Un vrai petit St. Jean! il nous portera bonheur, bien sûr!'

"You have been thoroughly well loved all your life, my Barty, but most of all by me--never forget that!

"I have been your father and your mother when they sat and watched your baby-sleep; I have been Rosalie when she gave you the breast; I have been your French grandfather and grandmother quarrelling as to which of the two should nurse you as they sat and sunned themselves on their humble doorstep in the Rue des Guignes!

"I have been your doting wife when you sang to her, your children when you made them laugh till they cried. I've been Lady Archibald when you danced the Dieppoise after tea, in Dover, with your little bare legs; and Aunt Caroline, too, as she nursed you in Malines after that silly duel where you behaved so well; and I've been by turns Mérovée Brossard, Bonzig, old Laferté, Mlle. Marceline, Finche Torfs, poor little Marianina, Julia Royce, Father Louis, the old Abbé, Bob Maurice--all the people you've ever charmed, or amused, or been kind to--a legion; good heavens! I have been them all! What a snowball made up of all these loves I've been rolling after you all these years! and now it has all got to melt away in a single night, and with it the remembrance of all I've ever been during ages untold.

"And I've no voice to bid you good-bye, my beloved; no arms to hug you with, no eyes to weep--I, a daughter of the most affectionate, and clinging, and caressing race of little people in existence! Such eyes as I once had, too; such warm, soft, furry arms, and such a voice--it would have wanted no words to express all that I feel now; that voice--nous savons notre orthographie en musique là bas!

"How it will please, perhaps, to remember even this farewell some day, when we're all together again, with nothing to come between!

"And now, my beloved, there is no such thing as good-bye; it is a word that has no real meaning; but it is so English and pretty and sweet and child-like and nonsensical that I could write it over and over again--just for fun!

"So good-bye! good-bye! good-bye! till I wake up once more after a long living sleep of many years, I hope; a sleep filled with happy dreams of you, dear, delightful people, whom I've got to live with and love, and learn to lose once more; and then--no more good-byes!

"Martia."

* * * * *

So much for Martia--whoever or whatever it was that went by that name in Barty's consciousness.

After such close companionship for so many years, the loss of her--or it--was like the loss of a sixth and most valuable sense, worse almost than the loss of his sight would have been; and with this he was constantly threatened, for he most unmercifully taxed his remaining eye, and the field of his vision had narrowed year by year.