The Martian: A Novel

In the fulness of their hearts Daphne and Barty squeezed each other's hand to express the joy and elation they felt at the pleasantness of everything. She was his little sister once more, from whom he had so long been parted, and they loved each other very dearly.

"Que me voilà donc bien contente, mon petit Barty – et toi? la jolie ville, hein?"

"C'est le ciel, tout bonnement – et tu vas m'apprendre l'allemand, n'est‐ce‐pas, m'amour?"

"Oui, et nous lirons Heine ensemble; tiens, à propos! regarde le nom de la rue qui fait le coin! Bolker Strasse! c'est là qu'il est né, le pauvre Heine! Ôte ton chapeau!"

(Barty nearly always spoke French with Daphne, as he did with my sister and me, and said "thee and thou.")

They found a furnished house that suited them in the Schadow Strasse, opposite Geissler's, where for two hours every Thursday and Sunday afternoon you might sit for sixpence in a pretty garden and drink coffee, beer, or Maitrank, and listen to lovely music, and dance in the evening under cover to strains of Strauss, Lanner, and Gungl, and other heavenly waltz‐makers! With all their faults, they know how to make the best of their lives, these good Vaterlanders, and how to dance, and especially how to make music – and also how to fight! So we won't quarrel with them, after all!

Barty found for himself a cheap bedroom, high up in an immense house tenanted by many painters – some of them English and some American. He never forgot the delight with which he awoke next morning and opened his window and saw the silver Rhine among the trees, and the fir‐clad hills of Grafenberg, and heard the gay painter fellows singing as they dressed; and he called out to the good‐humored slavy in the garden below:

"Johanna, mein Frühstück, bitte!"

A phrase he had carefully rehearsed with Daphne the evening before.

And, to his delight and surprise, Johanna understood the mysterious jargon quite easily, and brought him what he wanted with the most good‐humored grin he had ever seen on a female face.

Coffee and a roll and a pat of butter.

First of all, he went to see Dr. Hasenclever at Riffrath, which was about half an hour by train, and then half an hour's walk – an immensely prosperous village, which owed its prosperity to the famous doctor, who attracted patients from all parts of the globe, even from America. The train that took Barty thither was full of them; for some chose to live in Düsseldorf.

The great man saw his patients on the ground‐floor of the König's Hotel, the principal hotel in Riffrath, the hall of which was always crowded with these afflicted ones – patiently waiting each his turn, or hers; and there Barty took his place at four in the afternoon; he had sent in his name at 10 A.M., and been told that he would be seen after four o'clock. Then he walked about the village, which was charming, with its gabled white houses, ornamented like the cottages in the Richter albums by black beams – and full of English, many of them with green shades or blue spectacles or a black patch over one eye; some of them being led, or picking their way by means of a stick, alas!

Barty met the three Royces, walking with an old gentleman of aristocratic appearance, and a very nice‐looking young one (who was Captain Graham‐Reece). The Admiral gave him a friendly nod – Lady Jane a nod that almost amounted to a cut direct. But the divine Julia gave him a look and a smile that were warm enough to make up for much maternal frigidity.

Later on, in a tobacconist's shop, he again met the Admiral, who introduced him to the aristocratic old gentleman, Mr. Beresford Duff, secretary to the Admiralty – who evidently knew all about him, and inquired quite affectionately after Lady Caroline, and invited him to come and drink tea at five o'clock: a new form of hospitality of his own invention – it has caught on!

Barty lunched at the König's Hotel table d'hôte, which was crowded, principally with English people, none of whom he had ever met or heard of. But from these he heard a good deal of the Royces and Captain Graham‐Reece and Mr. Beresford Duff, and other smart people who lived in furnished houses or expensive apartments away from the rest of the world, and were objects of general interest and curiosity among the smaller British fry.

Riffrath was a microcosm of English society, from the lower middle class upwards, with all its respectabilities and incompatibilities and disabilities – its narrownesses and meannesses and snobbishnesses, its gossipings and backbitings and toadyings and snubbings – delicate little social things of England that foreigners don't understand!

The sensation of the hour was the advent of Julia, the divine Julia! Gossip was already rife about her and Captain Reece. They had taken a long walk in the woods together the day before – with Lady Jane and the Admiral far behind, out of ear‐shot, almost out of sight!

In the afternoon, between four and five, Barty had his interview with the doctor – a splendid, white‐haired old man, of benign and intelligent aspect, almost mesmeric, with his assistant sitting by him.

He used no new‐fangled ophthalmoscope, but asked many questions in fairly good French, and felt with his fingers, and had many German asides with the assistant. He told Barty that he had lost the sight of his left eye forever; but that with care he would keep that of the right one for the rest of his life – barring accidents, of course. That he must never eat cheese nor drink beer. That he (the doctor) would like to see him once a week or fortnight or so for a few months yet – and gave him a prescription for an eye‐lotion and dismissed him happy.

Half a loaf is so much better than no bread, if you can only count upon it!

Barty went straight to Mr. Beresford Duff's, and there found a very agreeable party, including the divine Julia, who was singing little songs very prettily and accompanying herself on a guitar.

"'You ask me why I look so pale?'" sang Julia, just Barty entered: and red as a rose was she.

Lady Jane didn't seem at all overjoyed to see Barty, but Julia did, and did not disguise the seeming.

There were eight or ten people there, and they all appeared to know about him, and all that concerned or belonged to him. It was the old London world over again, in little! the same tittle‐tattle about well‐known people, and nothing else – as if nothing else existed; a genial, easy‐going, good‐natured world, that he had so often found charming for a time, but in which he was never quite happy and had no proper place of his own, all through that fatal bar‐sinister – la barre de bâtardise; a world that was his and yet not his, and in whose midst his position was a false one, but where every one took him for granted at once as one of them, so long as he never trespassed beyond that sufferance; that there must be no love‐making to lovely young heiresses by the bastard of Antoinette Josselin was taken for granted also!

Before Barty had been there half an hour two or three people had evidently lost their hearts to him in friendship; among them, to Lady Jane's great discomfiture, the handsome and amiable Graham‐Reece, the cynosure of all female eyes in Riffrath; and when Barty (after very little pressing by Miss Royce) twanged her guitar and sang little songs – French and English, funny and sentimental – he became, as he had so often become in other scenes, the Rigoletto of the company; and Riffrath was a kingdom in which he might be court jester in ordinary if he chose, whenever he elected to honor it with his gracious and facetious musical presence.

So much for his début in that strange little overgrown busy village! What must it be like now?

Dr. Hasenclever has been gathered to his fathers long ago, and nobody that I know of has taken his place. All those new hotels and lodging‐houses and smart shops – what can they have been turned into? Barracks? prisons? military hospitals and sanatoriums? How dull!

Lady Caroline and Daphne and Barty between them added considerably to the gayety of Düsseldorf that summer – especially when Royces and Reeces and Duffs and such like people came there from Riffrath to lunch, or tea, or dinner, or for walks or drives or rides to Grafenberg or Neanderthal, or steamboatings to Neuss.

There were one or two other English families in Düsseldorf, living there for economy's sake, but yet of the world – of the kind that got to be friends with the Rohans; half‐pay old soldiers and sailors and their families, who introduced agreeable and handsome Uhlans and hussars – from their Serene Highnesses the Princes Fritz and Hans von Eselbraten – Himmelsblutwürst – Silberschinken, each passing rich on £200 a year, down to poor Lieutenants von this or von that, with nothing but their pay and their thirty‐two quarterings.

Also a few counts and barons, and princes not serene, but with fine German fortunes looming for them in the future, though none amounting to £1000 a day, like little Lord Orrisroot's!

Soon there was hardly a military heart left whole in the town; Julia had eaten them all up, except one or two that had been unconsciously nibbled by little Daphne.

Barty did not join in these aristocratic revels; he had become a pupil of Herr Duffenthaler, and worked hard in his master's studio with two brothers of the brush – one English, the other American; delightful men who remained his friends for life.

Indeed, he lived among the painters, who all got to love "der schöne Barty Josselin" like a brother.

Now and then, of an evening, being much pressed by his aunt, he would show himself at a small party in Schadow Strasse, and sing and be funny, and attentive to the ladies, and render himself discreetly useful and agreeable all round – and make that party go off. Lady Caroline would have been far happier had he lived with them altogether. But she felt herself responsible for her innocent and wealthy little niece.

It was an article of faith with Lady Caroline that no normal and properly constituted young woman could see much of Barty without falling over head and ears in love with him – and this would never do for Daphne. Besides, they were first‐cousins. So she acquiesced in the independence of his life apart from them. She was not responsible for the divine Julia, who might fall in love with him just as she pleased, and welcome! That was Lady Jane's lookout, and Captain Graham‐Reece's.

But Barty always dined with his aunt and cousin on Thursdays and Sundays, after listening to the music in Geissler's Garden, opposite, and drinking coffee with them there, and also with Prince Fritz and Prince Hans, who always joined the party and smoked their cheap cigars; and sometimes the divine Julia would make one of the party too, with her mother and uncle and Captain Reece; and the good painter fellows would envy from afar their beloved but too fortunate comrade; and the hussars and Uhlans, von this and von that, would find seats and tables as near the princely company as possible.

And every time a general officer entered the garden, up stood every officer of inferior rank till the great man had comfortably seated himself somewhere in the azure sunshine of Julia's forget‐me‐not warm glance.

And before the summer had fulfilled itself, and the roses at Geissler's were overblown, it became evident to Lady Caroline, if to none other, that Julia had eyes for no one else in the world but Barty Josselin. I had it from Lady Caroline herself.

But Barty Josselin had eyes only (such eyes as they were) for his work at Herr Duffenthaler's, and lived laborious days, except on Thursday and Sunday afternoons, and shunned delights, except to dine at the Runsberg Speiserei with his two fellow‐pupils, and Henley and Armstrong and Bancroft and du Maurier and others, all painters, mostly British and Yankee; and an uncommonly lively and agreeable repast that was! And afterwards, long walks by moon or star light, or music at each other's rooms, and that engrossing technical shop talk that never palls on those who talk it. No Guardsman's talk of turf or sport or the ballet had ever been so good as this, in Barty's estimation; no agreeable society gossip at Mr. Beresford Duff's Riffrath tea‐parties!

Once in every fortnight or so Barty would report him‐self to Dr. Hasenclever, and spend the day in Riffrath and lunch with the good old Beresford Duff, who was very fond of him, and who lamented over his loss of caste in devoting himself professionally to art.

"God bless me – my dear Barty, you don't mean to say you're going to paint for hire!"

"Indeed I am, if any one will hire me. How else am I to live?"

"Well, you know best, my dear boy; but I should have thought the Rohans might have got you something better than that. It's true, Buckner does it, and Swinton, and Francis Grant! But still, you know … there are other ways of getting on for a fellow like you. Look at Prince Gelbioso, who ran away with the Duchess of Flitwick! He didn't sing a bit better than you do, and as for looks, you beat him hollow, my dear boy; yet all London went mad about Prince Gelbioso, and so did she; and off she bolted with him, bag and baggage, leaving husband and children and friends and all! and she'd got ten thousand a year of her own; and when the Duke divorced her they were married, and lived happily ever after – in Italy; and some of the best people called upon 'em, by George!.. just to spite the Duke!"

Barty felt it would seem priggish or even insincere if he were to disclaim any wish to emulate Prince Gelbioso; so he merely said he thought painting easier on the whole, and not so risky; and the good Beresford Duff talked of other things – of the divine Julia, and what a good thing it would be if she and Graham‐Reece could make a match of it.

"Two of the finest fortunes in England, by George! they ought to come together, if only just for the fun of the thing! Not that she is a bit in love with him – I'll eat my hat if she is! What a pity you ain't goin' to be Lord Ironsides, Barty!"

Barty frankly confessed he shouldn't much object, for one.

"But, 'ni l'or ni la grandeur ne nous rendent heureux,' as we used to be taught at school."

"Ah, that's all gammon; wait till you're my age, my young friend, and as poor as I am," said Beresford Duff. And so the two friends talked on, Mentor and Telemachus – and we needn't listen any further.