Part 52

"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!

"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.

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.