Part 61

"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.