Part 92

"Here lies Kitty, full of grace; Died of an abbess in her face!"

This was her first attempt at verse-making, and here's her last, from the French of Sully-Prudhomme:

"If you but knew what tears, alas! One weeps for kinship unbestowed, In pity you would sometimes pass My poor abode!

"If you but knew what balm, for all Despond, lies in an angel's glance, Your looks would on my window fall As though by chance!

"If you but knew the heart's delight To feel its fellow-heart is by, You'd linger, as a sister might, These gates anigh!

"If you but knew how oft I yearn For one sweet voice, one presence dear, Perhaps you'd even simply turn And enter here!"

She was only just seventeen when she wrote them, and, upon my word, I think they're almost as good as the original!

Her intimate friendship with Chucker-out, the huge St. Bernard, lasted for nearly both their lives, alas! It began when they both weighed exactly the same, and I could carry both in one arm. When he died he turned the scale at sixteen stone, like me.

It has lately become the fashion to paint big dogs and little girls, and engravings of these pictures are to be seen in all the print-sellers' shops. It always touches me very much to look at these works of art, although--and I hope it is not libellous to say so--the big dog is always hopelessly inferior in beauty and dignity and charm to Chucker-out, who was champion of his day. And as for the little girls--Ah, mon Dieu!

Such pictures are not high art of course, and that is why I don't possess one, as I've got an æsthetic character to keep up; but why they shouldn't be I can't guess. Is it because no high artist--except Briton Riviere--will stoop to so easily understood a subject?

A great master would not be above painting a small child or a big dog separately--why should he be above putting them both in the same picture? It would be too obvious, I suppose--like a melody by Mozart, or Handel's "Harmonious Blacksmith," or Schubert's Serenade, and other catchpenny tunes of the same description.

I was also very intimate with Chucker-out, who made more of me than he even did of his master.

One night I got very late to Marsfield by the last train, and, letting myself in with my key, I found Chucker-out waiting for me in the hall, and apparently in a very anxious frame of mind, and extremely demonstrative, wanting to say something more than usual--to confide a trouble, to confess!

We went up into the big music-room, which was still lighted, and lay on a couch together; he, with his head on my knees, whimpering softly as I smoked and read a paper.

Presently Leah came in and said:

"Such an unfortunate thing happened; Marty and Chucker-out were playing on the slope, and he knocked her down and sprained her knee."

As soon as Chucker-out heard Marty's name he sat up and whined piteously, and pawed me down with great violence; pawed three buttons off my waistcoat and broke my watch-chain--couldn't be comforted; the misadventure had been preying on his mind for hours.

I give this subject to Mr. Briton Riviere, who can paint both dogs and children, and everything else he likes. I will sit for him myself, if he wishes, and as a Catholic priest! He might call it a confession--and an absolution! or, "The Secrets of the Confessional."

The good dog became more careful in future, and restrained his exuberance even going down-stairs with Marty on the way to a ramble in the woods, which excited him more than anything; if he came down-stairs with anybody else, the violence of his joy was such that one had to hold on by the banisters. He was a dear, good beast, and a splendid body-guard for Marty in her solitary woodland rambles--never left her side for a second. I have often watched him from a distance, unbeknown to both; he was proud of his responsibility--almost fussy about it.

I have been fond of many dogs, but never yet loved a dog as I loved big Chucker-out--or Choucroûte, as Coralie, the French maid, called him, to Fräulein Werner's annoyance (Choucroûte is French for sauerkraut); and I like to remember him in his splendid prime, guarding his sweet little mistress, whom I loved better than anything else on earth. She was to me a kind of pet Marjorie, and said such droll and touching things that I could almost fill a book with them. I kept a diary on purpose, and called it Martiana.

She was tall, but lamentably thin and slight, poor dear, with her mother's piercing black eyes and the very fair curly locks of her papa--a curious and most effective contrast--and features and a complexion of such extraordinary delicacy and loveliness that it almost gave one pain in the midst of the keen pleasure one had in the mere looking at her.

Heavens! how that face would light up suddenly at catching the unexpected sight of some one she was fond of! How often it has lighted up at the unexpected sight of "Uncle Bob"! The mere remembrance of that sweet illumination brightens my old age for me now; and I could almost wish her back again, in my senile selfishness and inconsistency. Pazienza!

Sometimes she was quite embarrassing in her simplicity, and reminded me of her father.

Once in Dieppe--when she was about eight--she and I had gone through the Établissement to bathe, and people had stared at her even more than usual and whispered to each other.

"I bet you don't know why they all stare so, Uncle Bob?"

"I give it up," said I.

"It's because I'm so handsome--we're all handsome, you know, and I'm the handsomest of the lot, it seems! You're not handsome, Uncle Bob. But oh! aren't you strong! Why, you could tuck a piou-piou under one arm and a postman under the other and walk up to the castle with them and pitch them into the sea, couldn't you? And that's better than being handsome, isn't it? I wish I was like that."

And here she cuddled and kissed my hand.