The Martian: A Novel

Barty drank it, and felt fond of Julia, and bade them all good‐bye, and went and waited in the hall of the König's Hotel for his friends, and took them back to Düsseldorf.

Next day the Gibsons started for their little trip up the Rhine, and Barty was left to his own reflections, and he reflected a great deal; not about what he meant to do himself, but about how he should tell Martia what he meant to do.

As for himself, his mind was thoroughly made up: he would break at once and forever with a world he did not properly belong to, and fight his own little battle unaided, and be a painter – a good one, if he could. If not, so much the worse for him. Life is short.

When he would have settled his affairs and paid his small debts in Düsseldorf, he would have some ten or fifteen pounds to the good. He would go back to London with the Gibsons and Ida Maurice. There were no friends for him in the world like the Maurices. There was no woman for him in the world like Leah, whether she would ever care for him or not.

Rich or poor, he didn't mind! she was Leah; she had the hands, the feet, the lips, the hair, the eyes! That was enough for him! He was absolutely sure of his own feelings; absolutely certain that this path was not only the pleasant path he liked, but the right one for a man in his position to follow: a thorny path indeed, but the thorns were thorns of roses!

All this time he was busily rehearsing his part in the chorus of Iphigenia; he had applied for the post of second tenor chorister; the conditions were that he should be able to read music at sight. This he could not do, and his utter incapacity was tested at the Mahlcasten, before a crowd of artists, by the conductor. Barty failed signally, amid much laughter; and he impudently sang quite a little tune of his own, an improvisation.

The conductor laughed too; but Barty was admitted all the same; his voice was good, and he must learn his part by heart – that was all; anybody could teach him.

The Gibsons came back to Düsseldorf in time for the performance, which was admirable, in spite of Barty. From his coign of vantage, amongst the second tenors, he could see Julia's head with its golden fleece; Julia, that rose without a thorn —

"Het Roosje uit de dorne!"

She was sitting between Lady Jane and the Captain.

He looked in vain for the Gibsons, as he sang his loudest, yet couldn't hear himself sing (he was one of a chorus of avenging furies, I believe).

But there were three vacant seats in the same row as the Royces'. Presently three ladies, silken hooded and cloaked – one in yellow, one in pink, and one in blue – made their way to the empty places, just as the chorus ceased, and sat down. Just then Orestes (Stockhausen) stood up and lifted his noble barytone.

"Die Ruhe kehret mir zurück" —

And the yellow‐hooded lady unhooded a shapely little black head, and it was Leah's.

"Prosit omen!" thought Barty – and it seemed as if his whole heart melted within him.

He could see that Leah and Julia often looked at each other; he could also see, during the intervals, how many double‐barrelled opera‐glasses were levelled at both; it was impossible to say which of these two lovely women was the loveliest; probably most votes would have been for Julia, the fair‐haired one, the prima donna assoluta, the soprano, the Rowena, who always gets the biggest salary and most of the applause.

The brunette, the contralto, the Rebecca, dazzles less, but touches the heart all the more deeply, perhaps; anyhow, Barty had no doubt as to which of the two voices was the voice for him. His passion was as that of Brian de Bois‐Guilbert for mere strength, except that he was bound by no vows of celibacy. There were no moonlit platonics about Barty's robust love, but all the chivalry and tenderness and romance of a knight‐errant underlay its vigorous complexity. He was a good knight, though not Sir Galahad!

Also he felt very patriotic, as a good knight should ever feel, and proud of a country which could grow such a rose as Julia, and such a lily as Leah Gibson.

Next to Julia sat Captain Reece, romantic and handsome as ever, with manly love and devotion expressed in every line of his face, every movement of his body; and the heaviest mustache and the most beautiful brown whiskers in the world. He was either a hussar or a lancer; I forget which.

"By my halidom," mentally ejaculated Barty, "I sincerely wish thee joy and life‐long happiness, good Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe. Thou art a right fit mate for her, peerless as she may be among women! A benison on you both from your poor Wamba, the son of Witless."

As he went home that night, after the concert, to his tryst with Martia, the north came back to him – through the open window as it were, with the fire‐flies and fragrances, and the song of fifty nightingales. It was for him a moment of deep and harassing emotion and keen anxiety. He leaned over the window‐sill and looked out on the starlit heavens, and whispered aloud the little speech he had prepared:

"Martia, I have done my best. I would make any sacrifice to obey you, but I cannot give up my freedom to love the woman that attracts me as I have never been attracted before. I would sooner live a poor and unsuccessful straggler in the art I have chosen, with her to help me live, than be the mightiest man in England without her – even with Julia, whom I admire as much, and even more!

"One can't help these things. They may be fancies, and one may live to repent them; but while they last they are imperious, not to be resisted. It's an instinct, I suppose; perhaps even a form of insanity! But I love Leah's little‐finger nail better than Julia's lovely face and splendid body and all her thousands.

"Besides, I will not drag Julia down from her high position in the world's eye, even for a day, nor owe anything to either man or woman except love and fidelity! It grieves me deeply to disappoint you, though I cannot understand your motives. If you love me as you say you do, you ought to think of my happiness and honor before my worldly success and prosperity, about which I don't care a button, except for Leah's sake.

"Besides, I know myself better than you know me. I'm not one of those hard, strong, stern, purposeful, Napoleonic men, with wills of iron, that clever, ambitious women conceive great passions for!

"I'm only a 'funny man' – a gringalet‐jocrisse! And now that I'm quite grown up, and all my little funniments are over, I'm only fit to sit and paint, with my one eye, in my little corner, with a contented little wife, who won't want me to do great things and astonish the world. There's no place like home; faire la popotte ensemble au coin du feu – c'est le ciel!

"And if I'm half as clever as you say, it'll all come out in my painting, and I shall be rich and famous, and all off my own bat. I'd sooner be Sir Edwin Landseer than Sir Robert Peel, or Pam, or Dizzy!

"Even to retain your love and protection and interest in me, which I value almost as much as I value life itself, I can't do as you wish. Don't desert me, Martia. I may be able to make it all up to you some day; after all, you can't foresee and command the future, nor can I. It wouldn't be worth living for if we could! It would all be discounted in advance!

"I may yet succeed in leading a useful, happy life; and that should be enough for you if it's enough for me, since I am your beloved, and as you love me as your son… Anyhow, my mind is made up for good and all, and…"

Here the sensation of the north suddenly left him, and he went to his bed with the sense of bereavement that had punished him all the preceding week: desperately sad, all but heart‐broken, and feeling almost like a culprit, although his conscience, whatever that was worth, was thoroughly at ease, and his intent inflexible.

A day or two after this he must have received a note from Julia, making an appointment to meet him at the Ausstellung, in the Allee Strasse, a pretty little picture‐gallery, since he was seen there sitting in deep conversation with Miss Royce in a corner, and both seeming much moved; neither the Admiral nor Lady Jane was with them, and there was some gossip about it in the British colony both in Düsseldorf and Riffrath.

Barty, who of late years has talked to me so much, and with such affectionate admiration, of "Julia Countess," as he called her, never happened to have mentioned this interview; he was very reticent about his love‐makings, especially about any love that was made to him.

I made so bold as to write to Julia, Lady Ironsides, and ask her if it were true they had met like this, and if I might print her answer, and received almost by return of post the following kind and characteristic letter:

"96 Grosvenor Square.

"Dear Sir Robert, – You're quite right; I did meet him, and I've no objection whatever to telling you how it all happened – and you may do as you like.

"It happened just like this (you must remember that I was only just out, and had always had my own way in everything).

"Mamma and I and Uncle James (the Admiral) and Freddy Reece (Ironsides, you know) went to the Musikfest in Düsseldorf. Barty was singing in the chorus. I saw him opening and shutting his mouth and could almost fancy I heard him, poor dear boy.

"Leah Gibson, as she was then, sat near to me, with her mother and your sister. Leah Gibson looked like – well, you know what she looked like in those days. By‐the‐way, I can't make out how it is you weren't over head and ears in love with her yourself! I thought her the loveliest girl I had ever seen, and felt very unhappy.

"We slept at the hotel that night, and on the way back to Riffrath next morning Freddy Reece proposed to me.

"I told him I couldn't marry him – but that I loved him as a sister, and all that; I really was very fond of him indeed, but I didn't want to marry him; I wanted to marry Barty, in fact; and make him rich and famous, as I felt sure he would be some day, whether I married him or not.

"But there was that lovely Leah Gibson, the furrier's daughter!

"When we got home to Riffrath mamma found she'd got a cold, and had a fancy for a French thing called a 'loch'; I think her cold was suddenly brought on by my refusing poor Freddy's offer!

"I went with Grissel, the maid (who knew about lochs), to the Riffrath chemist's, but he didn't even know what we meant – so I told mamma I would go and get a loch in Düsseldorf next day if she liked, with Uncle James. Mamma was only too delighted, for next day was Mr. Josselin's day for coming to Riffrath; but he didn't, for I wrote to him to meet me at twelve at a little picture‐gallery I knew of in the Allee Strasse – as I wanted to have a talk with him.

"Uncle James had caught a cold too, so I went with Grissel; and found a chemist who'd been in France, and knew what a loch was and made one for me; and then I went to the gallery, and there was poor Barty sitting on a crimson velvet couch, under a picture of Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters (I bought it afterwards, and I've got it now).

"We said how d'ye do, and sat on the couch together, and I felt dreadfully nervous and ashamed.

"Then I said:

"'You must think me very odd, Mr. Josselin, to ask you to meet me like this!'

"'I think it's a very great honor!' he said; 'I only wish I deserved it.'

"And then he said nothing for quite five minutes, and I think he felt as uncomfortable as I did.

"'Captain Graham‐Reece has asked me to be his wife, and I refused,' I said.

"'Why did you refuse? He's one of the best fellows I've ever met,' said Barty.

"'He's to be so rich, and so am I,' I said.

"No answer.

"'It would be right for me to marry a poor man – man with brains and no money, you know, and help him to make his way.'

"'Reece has plenty of brains too,' said Barty.

"'Oh, Mr. Josselin – don't misunderstand me' – and then I began to stammer and look foolish.

"'Miss Royce – I've only got £15 in the world, and with that I mean to go to London and be an artist; and comfort myself during the struggle by the delightful remembrance of Riffrath and Reece and yourself – and the happy hope of meeting you both again some day, when I shall no longer be the poor devil I am now, and am quite content to be! And when you and he are among the great of the earth, if you will give me each a commission to paint your portraits I will do my very best!' (and he smiled his irresistible smile). 'You will be kind, I am sure, to Mr. Nobody of Nowhere, the famous portrait‐painter – who doesn't even bear his father's name – as he has no right to it.'

"I could have flung my arms round his neck and kissed him! What did I care about his father's name?

"'Will you think me dreadfully bold and indiscreet, Mr. Josselin, if I – if I – ' (I stammered fearfully.)

"'If you what, Miss Royce?'

"'If I – if I ask you if you – if you – think Miss Gibson the most beautiful girl you ever saw?'

"'Honestly, I think you the most beautiful girl I ever saw!'

"'Oh, that's nonsense, Mr. Josselin, although I ought to have known you would say that! I'm not fit to tie her shoes. What I mean is – a – a – oh! forgive me – are you very fond of her, as I'm sure she deserves, you know?'

"'Oh yes, Miss Royce, very fond of her indeed; she's poor, she's of no family, she's Miss Nobody of Nowhere, you know; she's all that I am, except that she has a right to her honest father's name – '

"'Does she know you're very fond of her?'

"'No; but I hope to tell her so some day.'

"Then we were silent, and I felt very red, and very much inclined to cry, but I managed to keep in my tears.

"Then I got up, and so did he – and he made some joke about Grissel and the loch‐bottle; and we both laughed quite naturally and looked at the pictures, and he told me he was going back to London with the Gibsons that very week, and thanked me warmly for my kind interest in him, and assured me he thoroughly deserved it – and talked so funnily and so nicely that I quite forgave myself. I really don't think he guessed for one moment what I had been driving at all the while; I got back all my self‐respect; I felt so grateful to him that I was fonder of him than ever, though no longer so idiotically in love. He was not for me. He had somehow laughed me into love with him, and laughed me out of it.

"Then I bade him good‐bye, and squeezed his hand with all my heart, and told him how much I should like some day to meet Miss Gibson and be her friend if she would let me.

"Then I went back to Riffrath and took mamma her loch; but she no longer wanted it, for I told her I had changed my mind about Freddy, and that cured her like magic; and she kissed me on both cheeks and called me her dear, darling, divine Julia. Poor, sweet mamma!

"I had given her many a bad quarter of an hour, but this good moment made up for them all.

"She was eighty‐two last birthday, and can still read Josselin's works in the cheap edition without spectacles – thanks, no doubt, to the famous Doctor Hasenclever! She reads nothing else!

"Et voilà comment ça s'est passé.

"It's I that'll be the proud woman when I read this letter, printed, in your life of Josselin.

"Yours sincerely,"Julia Ironsides.

"P. S. – I've actually just told mamma – and I'm still her dear, darling, divine Julia!"

Charming as were Barty's remembrances of Düsseldorf, the most charming of all was his remembrance of going aboard the little steamboat bound for Rotterdam, one night at the end of May, with old Mrs. Bletchley, Mrs. Gibson and her daughter, and my sister Ida.

The little boat was crowded; the ladies found what accommodation they could in what served for a ladies' cabin, and expostulated and bribed their best; fortunately for them, no doubt, there were no English on board to bribe against them.

Barty spent the night on deck, supine, with a carpet‐bag for a pillow; we will take the full moon for granted. From Düsseldorf to Rotterdam there is little to see on either side of a Rhine steamboat, except the Rhine – especially at night.

Next day, after breakfast, he made the ladies as comfortable as he could on the after‐deck, and read to them from Maud, from the Idylls of the King, from the Mill on the Floss. Then windmills came into sight – Dutch windmills; then Rotterdam, almost too soon. They went to the big hotel on the Boompjes and fed, and then explored Rotterdam, and found it a most delightful city.

Next day they got on board the steamboat bound for St. Katharine's wharf; the wind had freshened and they soon separated, and met at breakfast next morning in the Thames.

Barty declared he smelt Great Britain as distinctly as one can smell a Scotch haggis, or a Welsh rabbit, or an Irish stew, and the old familiar smell made him glad. However little you may be English, if you are English at all you are more English than anything else, et plus royaliste que le Roi!

According to Heine, an Englishman loves liberty as a good husband loves his wife; that is also how he loves the land of his birth; at all events, England has a kind of wifely embrace for the home‐coming Briton, especially if he comes home by the Thames.

It is not unexpected, nor madly exciting, perhaps; but it is singularly warm and sweet if the conjugal relations have not been strained in the meanwhile. And as the Thames narrows itself, the closer, the more genial, the more grateful and comforting this long‐anticipated and tenderly intimate uxorious dalliance seems to grow.

Barty felt very happy as he stood leaning over the bulwarks in the sunshine, between Ida and Leah, and looked at Rotherhithe, and promised himself he would paint it some day, and even sell the picture!

Then he made himself so pleasant to the custom‐house officers that they all but forgot to examine the Gibson luggage.

Was I delighted to grasp his hand at St. Katharine's wharf, after so many months? Ah!..

Mr. Gibson was there, funny as ever, and the Gibsons went home with him to Conduit Street in a hired fly. Alas! poor Mrs. Gibson's home‐coming was the saddest part for her of the delightful little journey.

And Barty and Ida and I went our own way in a four‐wheeler to eat the fatted calf in Brunswick Square, washed down with I will not say what vintage. There were so many available from all the wine‐growing lands of Europe that I've forgotten which was chosen to celebrate the wanderers' return!

Let us say Romané‐Conti, which is the "cru" that Barty loved best.

Next morning Barty left us early, with a portfolio of sketches under his arm, and his heart full of sanguine expectation, and spent the day in Fleet Street, or there‐abouts, calling on publishers of illustrated books and periodicals, and came back to us at dinner‐time very fagged, and with a long and piteous but very droll story of his ignominious non‐success: his weary waitings in dull, dingy, little business back rooms, the patronizing and snubbing he and his works had met with, the sense that he had everything to learn – he, who thought he was going to take the publishing world by storm.

Next day it was just the same, and the day after, and the day after that – every day of the week he spent under our roof.

Then he insisted on leaving us, and took for himself a room in Newman Street – a studio by day, a bedroom by night, a pleasant smoking‐room at all hours, and very soon a place of rendezvous for all sorts and conditions of jolly fellows, old friends and new, from Guardsmen to young stars of the art world, mostly idle apprentices.

Gradually boxing‐gloves crept in, and foils and masks, and the faithful Snowdrop (whose condition three or four attacks of delirium tremens during Barty's exile had not improved).

And fellows who sang, and told good stories, and imitated popular actors – all as it used to be in the good old days of St. James's Street.

But Barty was changed all the same. These amusements were no longer the serious business of life for him. In the midst of all the racket he would sit at his small easel and work. He declared he couldn't find inspiration in silence and solitude, and, bereft of Martia, he could not bear to be alone.

Then he looked up other old friends, and left cards and got invitations to dinners and drums. One of his first visits was to his old tailor in Jermyn Street, to whom he still owed money, and who welcomed him with open arms – almost hugged him – and made him two or three beautiful suits; I believe he would have dressed Barty for nothing, as a mere advertisement. At all events, he wouldn't hear of payment "for many years to come! The finest figure in the whole Household Brigade! – the idea!"

Soon Barty got a few sketches into obscure illustrated papers, and thought his fortune was made. The first was a little sketch in the manner of John Leech, which he took to the British Lion, just started as a rival to Punch. The British Lion died before the sketch appeared, but he got a guinea for it, and bought a beautiful volume of Tennyson, illustrated by Millais, Holman Hunt, Rossetti, and others, and made a sketch on the fly‐leaf of a lovely female with black hair and black eyes, and gave it to Leah Gibson. It was his old female face of ten years ago; yet, strange to say, the very image of Leah herself (as it had once been that of his mother).

The great happiness of his life just then was to go to the opera with Mrs. Gibson and Leah and Mr. Babbage (the family friend), who could get a box whenever he liked, and then to sup with them afterwards in Conduit Street, over the Emporium of the "Universal Fur Company," and to imitate Signor Giuglini for the delectation of Mr. Gibson, whose fondness for Barty soon grew into absolute worship!

And Leah, so reserved and self‐contained in general company, would laugh till the tears ran down her cheeks; and the music of her laughter, which was deep and low, rang more agreeably to Barty's ear than even the ravishing strains of Adelina Patti – the last of the great prime donne of our time, I think – whose voice still stirs me to the depths, with vague remembrance of fresh girlish innocence turned into sound.

Long life to her and to her voice! Lovely voices should never fade, nor pretty faces either!

Sometimes I replaced Mr. Babbage and escorted Mrs. Gibson to the opera, leaving Leah to Barty; for on fine nights we walked there, and the ladies took off their bonnets and shawls in the box, which was generally on the upper tier, and we looked down on Scatcherd and my mother and sister in the stalls. Then back to Conduit Street to supper. It was easy with half an eye to see the way things were going. I can't say I liked it. No man would, I suppose. But I reconciled myself to the inevitable, and bore up like a stoic.

L'amitié est l'amour sans ailes! A happy intimate friendship, a wingless love that has lasted more than thirty years without a break, is no bad substitute for tumultuous passions that have missed their mark! I have been as close a friend to Barty's wife as to Barty himself, and all the happiness I have ever known has come from them and theirs.

Walking home, poor Mrs. Gibson would confide to me her woes and anxieties, and wail over the past glories of Tavistock Square and all the nice people who lived there, and in Russell Square and Bedford Street and Gower Street, many of whom had given up calling on her now that she lived over a shop. Not all the liveliness of Bond Street and Regent Street combined (which Conduit Street so broadly and genially connected with each other) could compensate her for the lost gentility, the aristocratic dullness and quiet and repose, "almost equal to that of a West End square."

Then she believed that business was not going on well, since Mr. Gibson talked of giving up his Cheapside establishment; he said it was too much for him to look after. But he had lost much of his fun, and seemed harassed and thin, and muttered in his sleep; and the poor woman was full of forebodings, some of which were to be justified by the events that followed.

About this time Leah, who had forebodings too, took it into her head to attend a class for book‐keeping, and in a short time thoroughly mastered the science in all its details. I'm afraid she was better at this kind of work than at either drawing or music, both of which she had been so perseveringly taught. She could read off any music at sight quite glibly and easily, it is true – the result of hard plodding – but could never play to give real pleasure, and she gave it up. And with singing it was the same; her voice was excellent and had been well trained, but when she heard the untaught Barty she felt she was no singer, and never would be, and left off trying. Yet nobody got more pleasure out of the singing of others – especially Barty's and that of young Mr. Santley, who was her pet and darling, and whom she far preferred to that sweetest and suavest of tenors, Giuglini, about whom we all went mad. I agreed with her. Giuglini's voice was like green chartreuse in a liqueur‐glass; Santley's like a bumper of the very best burgundy that ever was! Oh that high G! Romané‐Conti, again; and in a quart‐pot! En veux‐tu? en voilà!