Part 86

"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.

But this impending calamity did not frighten him as in the old days. His wife was with him now, and as long as she was by his side he could have borne anything--blindness, poverty, dishonor--anything in the world. If he lost her, he would survive her loss just long enough to put his affairs in order, and no more.

But most distressfully he missed the physical feeling of the north--even in his sleep. This strange bereavement drew him and Leah even more closely together, if that were possible; and she was well content to reign alone in the heart of her fractious, unreasonable but most affectionate, humorous, and irresistible great man. Although her rival had been but a name and an idea, a mere abstraction in which she had never really believed, she did not find it altogether displeasing to herself that the lively Martia was no more; she has almost told me as much.

And thus began for them both the happiest and most beautiful period of their joint lives, in spite of sorrows yet to come. She took such care of him that he might have been as blind as Belisarius himself, and he seemed almost to depend upon her as much--so wrapt up was he in the work of his life, so indifferent to all mundane and practical affairs. What eyesight was not wanted for his pen and pencil he reserved to look at her with--at his beloved children, and the things of beauty in and outside Marsfield: pictures, old china, skies, hills, trees, and river; and what wits remained he kept to amuse his family and his friends--there was enough and to spare.

The older he grew the more he teemed and seethed and bubbled and shone--and set others shining round him--even myself. It is no wonder Marsfield became such a singularly agreeable abode for all who dwelt there, even for the men-servants and the maid-servants, and the birds and the beasts, and the stranger within its gates--and for me a kind of earthly paradise.

* * * * *

And now, gentle reader, I want very badly to talk about myself a little, if you don't mind--just for half a dozen pages or so, which you can skip if you like. Whether you do so or not, it will not hurt you--and it will do me a great deal of good.

I feel uncommonly sad, and very lonely indeed, now that Barty is gone; and with him my beloved comrade Leah.

The only people left to me that I'm really fond of--except my dear widowed sister, Ida Scatcherd--are all so young. They're Josselins, of course--one and all--and they're all that's kind and droll and charming, and I adore them. But they can't quite realize what this sort of bereavement means to a man of just my age, who has still got some years of life before him, probably--and is yet an old man.

The Right Honorable Sir Robert Maurice, Bart., M. P., etc., etc., etc. That's me. I take up a whole line of manuscript. I might be a noble lord if I chose, and take up two!