Chapter 12

Nor did Barty ever again meet Lirieux, in whose existence a change had also been wrought by fortune; but whether for good or evil I can't say. He was taken to Italy and Greece by a wealthy relative. What happened to him there--whether he ever came back, or succeeded or failed--Barty never heard! He dropped out of Barty's life as completely as if he had been drowned like his old friend.

These episodes, like many others past and to come in this biography, had no particular influence on Barty Josselin's career, and no reference to them is to be found in anything he has ever written. My only reason for telling them is that I found them so interesting when he told _me_, and so characteristic of himself. He was "bon raconteur." I'm afraid I'm not, and that I've lugged these good people in by the hair of the head; but I'm doing my best. "La plus belle fille au monde ne peut donner que ce qu'elle a!"

I look to my editor to edit me--and to my illustrator to pull me through.

* * * * *

That autumn (1856) my father went to France for six weeks, on business. My sister Ida went with the Gibsons to Ramsgate, and I remained in London with my mother. I did my best to replace my father in Barge Yard, and when he came back he was so pleased with me (and I think with himself also) that he gave me twenty pounds, and said, "Go to Paris for a week, Bob, and see Barty, and give him this, with my love."

And "this" was another twenty-pound note. He had never given me such a sum in my life--not a quarter of it; and "this" was the first time he had ever tipped Barty.

Things were beginning at last to go well with him. He had arranged to sell the vintages of Bordeaux and Champagne, as well as those of Burgundy; and was dreaming of those of Germany and Portugal and Spain. Fortune was beginning to smile on Barge Yard, and ours was to become the largest wine business in the world--comme tout un chacun sait.

I started for Paris that very night, and knocked at Barty's bedroom door by six next morning; it was hardly daylight--a morning to be remembered; and what a breakfasting at Babet's, after a rather cold swim in the Passy school of natation, and a walk all round the outside of the school that was once ours!

Barty looked very well, but very thin, and his small sprouting beard and mustache had quite altered the character of his face. I shall distress my lady readers if I tell them the alteration was not an improvement; so I won't.

What a happy week that was to me I leave to the reader's imagination. We took a large double-bedded room at the Hotel de Lille et d'Albion in case we might want to smoke and talk all night; we did, I think, and had our coffee brought up to us in the morning.

I will not attempt to describe the sensations of a young man going back to his beloved Paris "after five years." Tout ca, c'est de l'histoire ancienne. And Barty and Paris together--that is not for such a pen as mine.

I showed him a new photograph of Leah Gibson--a very large one and an excellent. He gazed at it a long time with his magnifying-glass and without, all his keen perceptions on the alert; and I watched his face narrowly.

"My eyes! She _is_ a beautiful young woman, and no mistake!" he said, with a sigh. "You mustn't let her slip through your fingers, Bob!"

"How about that toss?" said I, and laughed.

"Oh, I resign _my_ claim; she's not for the likes o' me. You're going to be a great capitalist--a citizen of credit and renown. I'm Mr. Nobody, of nowhere. Go in and win, my boy; you have my best wishes. If I can scrape together enough money to buy myself a white waistcoat and a decent coat, I'll be your best man; or some left-off things of yours might do--we're about of a size, aren't we? You've become tres bel homme, Bob, plutot bel homme que joli garcon, hein? That's what women are fond of; English women especially. I'm nowhere now, without my uniform and the rest. Is it still Skinner who builds for you? Good old Skinner! Mes compliments!"

This simple little speech took a hidden weight off my mind and left me very happy. I confided frankly to the good Barty that no Sally in any alley had ever been more warmly adored by any industrious young London apprentice than was Leah Gibson by me!

"Ca y est, alors! Je te felicite d'avance, et je garde mes larmes pour quand tu seras parti. Allons diner chez Babet: j'ai soif de boire a ton bonheur!"

Before I left we met an English artist he had known at the British Museum--an excellent fellow, one Walters, who took him under his wing, and was the means of his entering the atelier Troplong in the Rue des Belges as an art student. And thus Barty began his art studies in a proper and legitimate way. It was characteristic of him that this should never have occurred to him before.

So when I parted with the dear fellow things were looking a little brighter for him too.

All through the winter he worked very hard--the first to come, the last to go; and enjoyed his studio life thoroughly.

Such readers as I am likely to have will not require to be told what the interior of a French atelier of the kind is like, nor its domestic economy; nor will I attempt to describe all the fun and the frolic, although I heard it all from Barty in after-years, and very good it was. I almost felt I'd studied there myself! He was a prime favorite--"le Beau Josselin," as he was called.

He made very rapid progress, and had already begun to work in colors by the spring. He made many friends, but led a quiet, industrious life, unrelieved (as far as I know) by any of those light episodes one associates with student life in Paris. His principal amusements through the long winter evenings were the cafe and the brasserie, mild ecarte, a game at billiards or dominoes, and long talks about art and literature with the usual unkempt young geniuses of the place and time--French, English, American.

Then he suddenly took it into his head to go to Antwerp; I don't know who influenced him in this direction, but I arranged to meet him there at the end of April--and we spent a delightful week together, staying at the "Grand Laboureur" in the Place de Meer. The town was still surrounded by the old walls and the moat, and of a picturesqueness that seemed as if it would never pall.

Twice or three times that week British tourists and travelers Landed at the quai by the Place Verte from _The Baron Osy_--and this landing was Barty's delight.

The sight of fair, fresh English girls, with huge crinolines, and their hair done up in chenille nets, made him long for England again, and the sound of their voices went nigh to weakening his resolve. But he stood firm to the last, and saw me off by _The Baron_. I felt a strange "serrement de coeur" as I left him standing there, so firm, as if he had been put "au piquet" by M. Dumollard! and so thin and tall and slender--and his boyish face so grave. Good heavens! How much alone he seemed, who was so little built to live alone!

It is really not too much to say that I would have given up to him everything I possessed in the world--every blessed thing! Except Leah--and Leah was not mine to give!

Now and again Barty's face would take on a look so ineffably, pathetically, angelically simple and childlike that it moved one to the very depths, and made one feel like father and mother to him in one! It was the true revelation of his innermost soul, which in many ways remained that of a child even in his middle age and till he died. All his life he never quite put away childish things!

I really believe that in bygone ages he would have moved the world with that look, and been another Peter the Hermit!

He became a pupil at the academy under De Keyser and Van Lerius, and worked harder than ever.

He took a room nearly all window on a second floor in the Marche aux oeufs, just under the shadow of the gigantic spire which rings a fragment of melody every seven minutes and a half--and the whole tune at midnight, fortissimo.

He laid in a stock of cigars at less than a centime apiece, and dried them in the sun; they left as he smoked them a firm white ash two inches long; and he grew so fond of them that he cared to smoke nothing else.

He rose before the dawn, and went for a swim more than a mile away--got to the academy at six--worked till eight--breakfasted on a little roll called a pistolet, and a cup of coffee; then the academy again from nine till twelve--when dinner, the cheapest he had ever known, but not the worst. Then work again all the afternoon, copying old masters at the Gallery. Then a cheap supper, a long walk along the quais or ramparts or outside--a game of dominoes, and a glass or two of "Malines" or "Louvain"--then bed, without invading hordes; the Flemish are as clean as the Dutch; and there he would soon smoke and read himself to sleep in spite of chimes--which lull you, when once you get "achimatized," as he called it, meaning of course to be funny: a villainous kind of fun--caught, I fear, in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury. It used to rain puns in the City--especially in the Stock Exchange, which is close to Barge Yard.

It was a happy life, and he grew to like it better than any life he had led yet; besides, he improved rapidly, as his facility was great--for painting as for everything he tried his hand at.

He also had a very agreeable social existence.

One morning at the academy, two or three days after his arrival, he was accosted by a fellow-student--one Tescheles--who introduced himself as an old pupil of Troplong's in the Rue des Belges. They had a long chat in French about the old Paris studio. Among other things, Tescheles asked if there were still any English there.

"Oui"--says Barty--"un nomme Valteres"....

Barty pronounced this name as if it were French; and noticed that Tescheles smiled, exclaiming:

"Parbleu, ce bon Valteres--je l'connais bien!"

Next day Tescheles came up to an English student called Fox and said:

"Well, old stick-in-the-mud, how are _you_ getting on?"

"Why, you don't mean to say _you're_ an Englishman?" says Barty to Tescheles.

"Good heavens! you don't mean to say _you_ are! fancy your calling poor old Walters _Valteres_!"

And after that they became very intimate, and that was a good thing for Barty.

The polyglot Tescheles was of a famous musical family, of mixed German and Russian origin, naturalized in England and domiciled in France--a true cosmopolite and a wonderful linguist, besides being also a cultivated musician and excellent painter; and all the musicians, famous or otherwise, that passed through Antwerp made his rooms a favorite resort and house of call. And Barty was introduced into a world as delightful to him as it was new--and to music that ravished his soul with a novel enchantment: Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Schumann--and he found that Schubert had written a few other songs besides the famous "Serenade"!

One evening he was even asked if he could make music himself, and actually volunteered to sing--and sang that famous ballad of Balfe's which seems destined to become immortal in this country--"When other lips" ... _alias_, "Then you'll remember me!"

Strange to say, it was absolutely new to this high musical circle, but they went quite mad over it; and the beautiful melody got naturalized from that moment in Belgium and beyond, and Barty was proclaimed the primo tenore of Antwerp--although he was only a barytone!

A fortnight after this Barty heard "When other lips" played by the "Guides" band in the park at Brussels. Its first appearance out of England--and all through him.

Then he belonged to the Antwerp "Cercle Artistique," where he made many friends and was very popular, as I can well imagine.

Thus he was happier than he had ever been in his life; but for one thing that plagued him now and again: his oft-recurring desire to be conscious once more of the north, which he had not felt for four or five years.

The want of this sensation at certain periods--especially at night--would send a chill thrill of desolation through him like a wave; a wild panic, a quick agony, as though the true meaning of absolute loneliness were suddenly realized by a lightning flash of insight, and it were to last for ever and ever.

This would pass away in a second or two, but left a haunting recollection behind for many hours. And then all was again sunshine, and the world was made of many friends--and solitude was impossible evermore.

One memorable morning this happiness received a check and a great horror befell him. It was towards the end of summer--just before the vacation.

With a dozen others, he was painting the head of an old man from the life, when he became quite suddenly conscious of something strange in his sight. First he shut his left eye and saw with his right quite perfectly; then he shut the right, and lo! whatever he looked at with the left dwindled to a vanishing point and became invisible. No rubbing or bathing of his eye would alter the terrible fact, and he knew what great fear really means, for the first time.

Much kind concern was expressed, and Van Lerius told him to go at once to a Monsieur Noiret, a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, who had attended _him_ for the eyes, and had the reputation of being the first oculist in Belgium.

Barty wrote immediately and an appointment was made, and in three days he saw the great man, half professor, half priest, who took him into a dark chamber lighted by a lamp, and dilated his pupil with atropine, and looked into his eye with the newly discovered "ophthalmoscope."

Professor Noiret told him it was merely a congestion of the retina--for which no cause could be assigned; and that he would be cured in less than a month. That he was to have a seton let into the back of his neck, dry-cup himself on the chest and thighs night and morning, and take a preparation of mercury three times a day. Also that he must go to the seaside immediately--and he recommended Ostend.

Barty told him that he was an impecunious art student, and that Ostend was a very expensive place.

Noiret considerately recommended Blankenberghe, which was cheap; asked for and took his full fee, and said, with a courtly priestly bow:

"If you are not cured, come back in a month. _Au revoir!_"

So poor Barty had the seton put in by a kind of barber-surgeon, and was told how to dress it night and morning; got his medicines and his dry-cupping apparatus, and went off to Blankenberghe quite hopeful.

And there things happened to him which I really think are worth telling; in the first place, because, even if they did not concern Barty Josselin, they should be amusing for their own sake--that is, if I could only tell them as he told me afterwards; and I will do my best!

And then he was nearing the end of the time when he was to remain as other mortals are. His new life was soon to open, the great change to which we owe the Barty Josselin who had changed the world for _us_!

Besides, this is a biography--not a novel--not literature! So what does it matter how it's written, so long as it's all true!

Part Fifth

"O celeste haine, Comment t'assouvir? O souffrance humaine, Qui te peut guerir? Si lourde est ma peine J'en voudrais mourir-- Tel est mon desir!

"Navre de comprendre, Las de compatir, Pour ne plus entendre, Ni voir, ni sentir, Je suis pret a rendre Mon dernier soupir-- Et c'est mon desir!

"Ne plus rien connaitre, Ni me souvenir-- Ne jamais renaitre, Ni me rendormir-- Ne plus jamais etre, Mais en bien finir-- Voila mon desir!"--Anon.

Barty went third class to Bruges, and saw all over it, and slept at the "Fleur de Ble," and heard new chimes, and remembered his Longfellow.

Next morning, a very fine one, as he was hopefully smoking his centime cigar with immense relish near the little three-horsed wagonette that was to bear him to Blankenberghe, he saw that he was to have three fellow-passengers, with a considerable amount of very interesting luggage, and rejoiced.

First, a tall man about thirty, in a very smart white summer suit, surmounted by a jaunty little straw hat with a yellow ribbon. He was strikingly handsome, and wore immense black whiskers but no mustache, and had a most magnificent double row of white, pearly teeth, which he showed very much when he smiled, and he smiled very often. He was evidently a personage of importance and very well off, for he gave himself great airs and ordered people about and chaffed them, and it made them laugh instead of making them angry; and he was obeyed with wonderful alacrity. He spoke French fluently, but with a marked Italian accent.

Next, a very blond lady of about the same age, not beautiful, but rather overdressed, and whose accent, when she spoke French, was very German, and who looked as if she might be easily moved to wrath. Now and then she spoke to the gentleman in a very audible Italian aside, and Barty was able to gather that her Italian was about as rudimentary as his own.

Last and least, a pale, plain, pathetic little girl of six or eight, with a nose rather swollen, and a black plait down her back, and large black eyes, something like Leah Gibson's; and she never took these eyes off Barty's face.

Their luggage consisted of two big trunks, a guitar and violin (in their cases), and music-books bound together by a rope.

"Vous allez a Blankenberghe, mossie?" said the Italian, with a winning smile.

Barty answered in the affirmative, and the Italian smiled ecstatic delight.

"Je souis bienn content--nous ferons route ensiemble...." I will translate: "I call myself Carlo Veronese--first barytone of the theatre of La Scala, Milan. The signora is my second wife; she is prima donna assoluta of the grand opera, Naples. The little ragazza is my daughter by my first wife. She is the greatest violinist of her age now living--un' prodige, mossie--un' fenomeno!"

Barty, charmed with his new acquaintance, gave the signore his card, and Carlo Veronese invited him graciously to take a seat in the wagonette, as if it were his own private carriage. Barty, who was the most easily impressed person that ever lived, accepted with as much sincere gratitude as if he hadn't already paid for his place, and they started on their sunny drive of eight miles along the dusty straight Belgian chaussee, bordered with poplars on either side, and paved with flagstones all the way to Blankenberghe.

Signor Veronese informed Barty that on their holiday travels they always managed to combine profit with pleasure, and that he proposed giving a grand concert at the Cafe on the Plage, or the Kursaal, next day; that he was going to sing Figaro's great song in the _Barbiere_, and the signora would give "_Roberto, toua que z'aime_" in French (or, rather, "_Ropert, doi que ch'aime_," as _she_ called it, correcting his accent), and the fenomeno, whose name was Marianina, would play an arrangement of the "Carnival of Venice" by Paganini.

"Ma vous aussi, vous etes mousicien--je vois ca par la votre figoure!"

Barty modestly disclaimed all pretensions, and said he was only an art student--a painter.

"All the arts are brothers," said the signore, and the little signorina stole her hand into Barty's and left it there.

"Listen," said the signore; "why not arrange to live together, you and we? I hate throwing away money on mere pomposity and grandiosity and show. We always take a little furnished apartment, elle et moi. Then I go and buy provisions, bon marche--and she cooks them--and we have our meals better than at the hotel and at half the price! Join us, unless you like to throw your money by the window!"

The Signorina Marianina's little brown hand gave Barty's a little warm squeeze, and Barty was only too delighted to accept an arrangement that promised to be so agreeable and so practically wise.

They arrived at Blankenberghe, and, leaving their luggage at the wagonette station, went in search of lodgings. These were soon found in a large attic at the top of a house, over a bakery. One little mansarde, with a truckle-bed and wash-hand stand, did for the family of Veronese; another, smaller still, for Barty.

Other mansardes also opened on to the large attic, or grenier, where there were sacks of grain and of flour, and a sweet smell of cleanliness. Barty wondered that such economical arrangements could suit his new friends, but was well pleased; a weight was taken off his mind. He feared a style of living he could not have afforded to share, and here were all difficulties smoothed away without any trouble whatever.

They got in their luggage, and Barty went with the signore in search of bread and meat and wine and ground coffee. When they got back, a little stove was ready lighted in the Veronese garret; they cooked the food in a frying-pan, opening the window wide and closing the door, as the signore thought it useless to inform the world by the sense of smell that they did their cooking _en famille_; and Barty enjoyed the meal immensely, and almost forgot his trouble, but for the pain of his seton.

After lunch the signore produced his placards, already printed by hand, and made some paste in an iron pot, and the signora made coffee. And Veronese tuned his guitar and said:

"Je vais vous canter couelquecose--una piccola cosa da niente!--vous comprenez l'Italien?"

"Oh yes," said Barty: he had picked up a deal of Italian and many pretty Italian canzonets from his friend old Pergolese, who kept the Italian eating-house in Rupert Street. "Sing me a stornella--je les adore."

And he set himself to listen, with his heart in his mouth from sheer pleasurable anticipation.

The signore sang a pretty little song, by Gordigiani, called "Il vero amore." Barty knew it well.

"E lo mio amor e andato a soggiornare A Lucca bella--e diventar signore...."

Alas for lost illusions! The signore's voice was a coarse, unsympathetic, strident buffo bass, not always quite in the middle of the note; nor, in spite of his native liveliness of accent and expression, did he make the song interesting or pretty in the least.

Poor Barty had fallen from the skies; but he did his best not to show his disenchantment, and this, from a kind and amiable way he always had and a constant wish to please, was not difficult.

Then the signora sang "O mon Fernand!" from the _Favorita_, in French, but with a hideous German accent and a screech as of some Teutonic peacock, and without a single sympathetic note; though otherwise well in tune, and with a certain professional knowledge of what she was about.

And then poor Marianina was made to stand up on six music-books, opposite a small music-easel, and play her "Carnival of Venice" on the violin. Every time she made a false note in the difficult variations, her father, with his long, thick, hairy middle finger, gave her a fierce fillip on the nose, and she had to swallow her tears and play on. Barty was almost wild with angry pity, but dissembled, for fear of making her worse enemies in her father and stepmother.

Not that the poor little thing played badly; indeed, she played surprisingly well for her age, and Barty was sincere in his warm commendation of her talent.

"Et vous ne cantez pas du tout--du tout?" said Veronese.

"Oh, si, quelquefois!"

"Cantez couelquecoze--ze vous accompagnerai sous la guitare!--n'ayez pas paoure--nous sommes indoulgents, elle et moi--"

"Oh--je m'accompagnerai bien moi-meme comme je pourrai--" said Barty, and took the guitar, and sang a little French Tyrolienne called "Fleur des Alpes," which he could always sing quite beautifully; and the effect was droll indeed.