The Martian: A Novel

I presented Barty to Mrs. Gibson, who received him with her usual easy cordiality, just as she would have received one of her husband's clerks, or the Prime Minister; or the Prince Consort himself, for that matter. But she looked up into his face with such frank unabashed admiration that I couldn't help laughing – nor could he!

She presented him to Mr. Gibson, who drew himself back and folded his arms and frowned; then suddenly, striking a beautiful stage attitude of surprised emotion, with his hand on his heart, he exclaimed:

"Oh! Monsewer! Esker‐voo ker jer dwaw lah vee? – ah! kel bonnure!"

And this so tickled Barty that he forgot his manners and went into peals of laughter. And from that moment I ceased to exist as the bright particular star in Mr. Gibson's firmament of eligible young men: for in spite of the kink in my nose, and my stolid gravity, which was really and merely the result of my shyness, he had always looked upon me as an exceptionally presentable, proper, and goodly youth, and a most exemplary – that is, if my sister was to be trusted in the matter; for she was my informant.

I'm afraid Barty was not so immediately popular with the young cavaliers of the party – but all came right in due time. For after supper, which was early, Barty played the fool with Mr. Gibson, and taught him how to do a mechanical wax figure, of which he himself was the showman; and the laughter, both baritone and soprano, might have been heard in Russell Square. Then they sang an extempore Italian duet together which was screamingly droll – and so forth.

Leah distinguished herself as usual by being attentive to the material wants of the company: comfortable seats, ices, syrups, footstools for mammas, and wraps; safety from thorough draughts for grandpapas – the inherited hospitality of the clan of Gibson took this form with the sole daughter of their house and home; she had no "parlor tricks."

We remained the latest. It was a full moon, or nearly so – as usual on a balcony; for I remember standing on the balcony with Leah.

A belated Italian organ‐grinder stopped beneath us and played a tune from I Lombardi, called "La mia letizia." Leah's hair was done up for the first time – in two heavy black bands that hid her little ears and framed her narrow chinny face – with a yellow bow plastered on behind. Such was the fashion then, a hideous fashion enough – but we knew no better. To me she looked so lovely in her long white frock – long for the first time – that Tavistock Square became a broad Venetian moonlit lagoon, and the dome of University College an old Italian church, and "La mia letizia" the song of Adria's gondolier.

I asked her what she thought of Barty.

"I really don't know," she said. "He's not a bit romantic, is he?"

"No; but he's very handsome. Don't you think so?"

"Oh yes, indeed – much too handsome for a man. It seems such waste. Why, I now remember seeing him when I was quite a little girl, three or four years ago, at the Duke of Wellington's funeral. He had his bearskin on. Papa pointed him out to us, and said he looked like such a pretty girl! And we all wondered who he could be! And so sad he looked! I suppose it was for the Duke.

"I couldn't think where I'd seen him before, and now I remember – and there's a photograph of him in a stall at the Crystal Palace. Have you seen it? Not that he looks like a girl now! Not a bit! I suppose you're very fond of him? Ida is! She talks as much about Mr. Josselin as she does about you! Barty, she calls him."

"Yes, indeed; he's like our brother. We were boys at school together in France. My sister calls him thee and thou; in French, you know."

"And was he always like that – funny and jolly and good‐natured?"

"Always; he hasn't changed a bit."

"And is he very sincere?"

Just then Barty came on to the balcony: it was time to go. My sister had been fetched away already (in her gondola).

So Barty made his farewells, and bent his gallant, irresistible look of mirthful chivalry and delicate middle‐aged admiration on Leah's upturned face, and her eyes looked up more piercing and blacker than ever; and in each of them a little high light shone like a point of interrogation – the reflection of some white window‐curtain, I suppose; and I felt cold all down my back.

(Barty's daughter, Mary Trevor, often sings a little song of De Musset's. It is quite lovely, and begins:

"Beau chevalier qui partez pour la guerre,Qu'allez‐vous faireSi loin d'ici?Voyez‐vous pas que la nuit est profonde,Et que le mondeN'est que souci?"

It is called "La Chanson de Barberine," and I never hear it but I think of that sweet little white virginal point d'interrogation, and Barty going away to France.)

Then he thanked Mrs. Gibson and said pretty things, and finally called Mr. Gibson dreadful French fancy‐names: "Cascamèche – moutardier du pape, tromblon‐bolivard, vieux coquelicot"; to each of which the delighted Mr. G. answered:

"Voos ayt oon ôter – voos ayt oon ôter!"

And then Barty whisked himself away in a silver cloud of glory. A good exit!

Outside was a hansom waiting, with a carpet‐bag on the top, and we got into it and drove up to Hampstead Heath, to some little inn called the Bull and Bush, near North‐end.

Barty lit his pipe, and said:

"What capital people! Hanged if they're not the nicest people I ever met!"

"Yes," said I.

And that's all that was said during that long drive.

At North‐end we found two or three other hansoms, and Pepys and Ticklets and the little Hebrew tenor art student whose name I've forgotten, and several others.

We had another supper, and made a night of it. There was a piano in a small room opening on to a kind of little terrace, with geraniums, over a bow‐window. We had music and singing of all sorts. Even I sang – "The Standard‐bearer" – and rather well. My sister had coached me; but I did not obtain an encore.

The next day dawned, and Barty had a wash and changed his clothes, and we walked all over Hampstead Heath, and saw London lying in a dun mist, with the dome and gilded cross of St. Paul's rising into the pale blue dawn; and I thought what a beastly place London would be without Barty – ‐but that Leah was there still, safe and sound asleep in Tavistock Square!

Then back to the inn for breakfast. Barty, as usual, fresh as paint. Happy Barty, off to Paris!

And then we all drove down to London Bridge to see him safe into the Boulogne steamer. All his luggage was on board. His late soldier‐servant was there – a splendid fellow, chosen for his length and breadth as well as his fidelity; also the Snowdrop, who was lachrymose and in great grief. It was a most affectionate farewell all round.

"Good‐bye, Bob. I won that toss —didn't I?"

Oddly enough, I was thinking of that, and didn't like it.

"What rot! it's only a joke, old fellow!" said Barty.

All this about an innocent little girl just fifteen, the daughter of a low‐comedy John Gilpin: a still somewhat gaunt little girl, whose budding charms of color, shape, and surface were already such that it didn't matter whether she were good or bad, gentle or simple, rich or poor, sensible or an utter fool.

C'est toujours comme ça!

We watched the steamer pick its sunny way down the Thames, with Barty waving his hat by the man at the wheel; and I walked westward with the little Hebrew artist, who was so affected at parting with his hero that he had tears in his lovely voice. It was not till I had complimented him on his wonderful B‐flat that he got consoled; and he talked about himself, and his B‐flat, and his middle G, and his physical strength, and his eye for color, all the way from the Mansion House to the Foundling Hospital; when we parted, and he went straight to his drawing‐board at the British Museum – an anticlimax!

I found my mother and sister at their late breakfast, and was scolded; and I told them Barty had got off, and wouldn't come back for long – it might not be for years!

"Thank Heaven!" said my dear mother, and I was not pleased.

Says my sister:

"Do you know, he's actually stolen Leah's photograph, that she gave me for my birthday. He asked me for it and I wouldn't give it him – and it's gone!"

Then I washed and put on my work‐a‐day clothes, and went straight to Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, and made myself a bed on the floor with my great‐coat, and slept all day.

Oh heavens! what a dull book this would be, and how dismally it would drag its weary length along, if it weren't all about the author of Sardonyx!

But is there a lost corner anywhere in this planet where English is spoken (or French) in which The Martian won't be bought and treasured and spelt over and over again like a novel by Dickens or Scott (or Dumas) – for Josselin's dear sake! What a fortune my publishers would make if I were not a man of business and they were not the best and most generous publishers in the world! And all Josselin's publishers – French, English, German, and what not – down to modern Sanscrit! What millionaires – if it hadn't been for this little busy bee of a Bob Maurice!

Poor Barty! I am here! à bon chat, bon rat!

And what on earth do I want a fortune for? Barty's dead, and I've got so much more than I need, who am of a frugal mind – and what I've got is all going to little Josselins, who have already got so much more than they need, what with their late father and me; and my sister, who is a widow and childless, and "riche à millions" too! and cares for nobody in all this wide world but little Josselins, who don't care for money in the least, and would sooner work for their living – even break stones on the road – anything sooner than loaf and laze and loll through life. We all have to give most of it away – not that I need proclaim it from the house‐tops! It is but a dull and futile hobby, giving away to those who deserve; they soon leave off deserving.

How fortunate that so much money is really wanted by people who don't deserve it any more than I do; and who, besides, are so weak and stupid and lazy and honest – or so incurably dishonest – that they can't make it for themselves! I have to look after a good many of these people. Barty was fond of them, honest or not. They are so incurably prolific; and so was he, poor dear boy! but, oh, the difference! Grapes don't grow on thorns, nor figs on thistles!

I'm a thorn, alas! in my own side, more often than not – and a thistle in the sides of a good many donkeys, whom I feed because they're too stupid or too lazy to feed themselves! But at least I know my place, and the knowledge is more bother to me than all my money, and the race of Maurice will soon be extinct.

When Barty went to foreign parts, on the 2d of May, 1856, I didn't trouble myself about such questions as these.

Life was so horribly stale in London without Barty that I became a quite exemplary young man when I woke up from that long nap on the floor of my laboratory in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury; a reformed character: from sheer grief, I really believe!

I thought of many things – ugly things – very ugly things indeed – and meant to have done with them. I thought of some very handsome things too – a pair of beautiful crown‐jewels, each rare as the black tulip – and in each of them a bright little sign like this:?

I don't believe I ever gave my father another bad quarter of an hour from that moment. I even went to church on Sunday mornings quite regularly; not his own somewhat severe place of worship, it is true! But the Foundling Hospital. There, in the gallery, would I sit with my sister, and listen to Miss Dolby and Miss Louisa Pyne and Mr. Lawler the bass – and a tenor and alto whose names I cannot recall; and I thought they sang as they ought to have sung, and was deeply moved and comforted – more than by any preachments in the world; and just in the opposite gallery sat Leah with her mother; and I grew fond of nice clean little boys and girls who sing pretty hymns in unison; and afterwards I watched them eat their roast beef, small mites of three and four or five, some of them, and thought how touching it all was – I don't know why! Love or grief? or that touch of nature that makes the whole world kin at about 1 P.M. on Sunday?

One would think that Barty had exerted a bad influence on me, since he seems to have kept me out of all this that was so sweet and new and fresh and wholesome!

He would have been just as susceptible to such impressions as I; even more so, if the same chance had arisen for him – for he was singularly fond of children, the smaller and the poorer the better, even gutter children! and their poor mothers loved him, he was so jolly and generous and kind.

Sometimes I got a letter from him in Blaze, my father's shorthand cipher; it was always brief and bright and hopeful, and full of jokes and funny sketches. And I answered him in Blaze that was long and probably dull.

All that I will tell of him now is not taken from his Blaze letters, but from what he has told me later, by word of mouth – for he was as fond of talking of himself as I of listening – since he was droll and sincere and without guile or vanity; and would have been just as sympathetic a listener as I, if I had cared to talk about Mr. Robert Maurice, of Barge Yard, Bucklersbury. Besides, I am good at hearing between the words and reading between the lines, and all that – and love to exercise this faculty.

Well, he reached Paris in due time, and took a small bedroom on a third floor in the Rue du Faubourg Poissonnière – over a cheap hatter's – opposite the Conservatoire de Musique.

On the first night he was awoke by a terrible invasion – such malodorous swarms of all sizes, from a tiny brown speck to a full‐grown lentil, that they darkened his bed; and he slept on the tiled floor after making an island of himself by pouring cold water all round him as a kind of moat; and so he slept for a week of nights, until he had managed to poison off most of these invaders with poudre insecticide … "mort aux punaises!"

In the daytime he first of all went for a swim at the Passy baths – an immense joy, full of the ghosts of by‐gone times; then he would spend the rest of his day revisiting old haunts – often sitting on the edge of the stone fountain in the rond‐point of the Avenue du Prince Impérial, or de l'Impératrice, or whatever it was – to gaze comfortably at the outside of the old school, which was now a pensionnat de demoiselles: soon to be pulled down and make room for a new house altogether. He did not attempt to invade these precincts of maiden innocence; but gazed and gazed, and remembered and realized and dreamt: it all gave him unspeakable excitement, and a strange tender wistful melancholy delight for which there is no name. Je connais ça! I also, ghostlike, have paced round the haunts of my childhood.

When the joy of this faded, as it always must when indulged in too freely, he amused himself by sitting in his bedroom and painting Leah's portrait, enlarged and in oils; partly from the very vivid image he had preserved of her in his mind, partly from the stolen photograph. At first he got it very like; then he lost all the likeness and could not recover it; and he worked and worked till he got stupid over it, and his mental image faded quite away.

But for a time this minute examination of the photograph (through a powerful lens he bought on purpose), and this delving search into his own deep consciousness of her, into his keen remembrance of every detail of feature and color and shade of expression, made him realize and idealize and foresee what the face might be some day – and what its owner might become.

And a horror of his life in London came over him like a revelation – a blast – a horrible surprise! Mere sin is ugly when it's no more; and so beastly to remember, unless the sinner be thoroughly acclimatized; and Barty was only twenty‐two, and hated deceit and cruelty in any form. Oh, poor, weak, frail fellow‐sinner – whether Vivien or Guinevere! How sadly unjust that loathing and satiety and harsh male contempt should kill man's ruth and pity for thee, that wast so kind to man! what a hellish after‐math!

Poor Barty hadn't the ghost of a notion how to set to work about becoming a painter, and didn't know a soul in Paris he cared to go and consult, although there were many people he might have discovered whom he had known: old school‐fellows, and friends of the Archibald Rohans – who would have been only too glad.

So he took to wandering listlessly about, lunching and dining at cheap suburban restaurants, taking long walks, sitting on benches, leaning over parapets, and longing to tell people who he was, his age, how little money he'd got, what lots of friends he had in England, what a nice little English girl he knew, whose portrait he didn't know how to paint – any idiotic nonsense that came into his head, so at least he might talk about something or somebody that interested him.

There is no city like Paris, no crowd like a Parisian crowd, to make you feel your solitude if you are alone in its midst!

At night he read French novels in bed and drank eau sucrée and smoked till he was sleepy; then he cunningly put out his light, and lit it again in a quarter of an hour or so, and exploded what remained of the invading hordes as they came crawling down the wall from above. Their numbers were reduced at last; they were disappearing. Then he put out his candle for good, and went to sleep happy – having at least scored for once in the twenty‐four hours. Mort aux punaises!

Twice he went to the Opéra Comique, and saw Richard Cœur de Lion and le Pré aux Clercs from the gallery, and was disappointed, and couldn't understand why he shouldn't sing as well as that – he thought he could sing much better, poor fellow! he had a delightful voice, and charm, and the sense of tune and rhythm, and could please quite wonderfully – but he had no technical knowledge whatever, and couldn't be depended upon to sing a song twice the same! He trusted to the inspiration of the moment – like an amateur.

Of course he had to be very economical, even about candle ends, and almost liked such economy for a change; but he got sick of his loneliness, beyond expression – he was a fish out of water.

Then he took it into his head to go and copy a picture at the Louvre – an old master; in this he felt he could not go wrong. He obtained the necessary permission, bought a canvas six feet high, and sat himself before a picture by Nicolas Poussin, I think: a group of angelic women carrying another woman though the air up to heaven.

They were not very much to his taste, but more so than any others. His chief notion about women in pictures was that they should be very beautiful – since they cannot make themselves agreeable in any other way; and they are not always so in the works of the great masters. At least, he thought not. These are matters of taste, of course.

He had no notion of how to divide his canvas into squares – a device by which one makes it easier to get the copy into proper proportion, it seems. He began by sketching the head of the principal woman roughly in the middle of his canvas, and then he wanted to begin painting it at once – he was so impatient.

Students, female students especially, came and interested themselves in his work, and some rapins asked him questions, and tried to help him and give him tips. But the more they told him, the more helpless and hopeless he grew. He soon felt conscious he was becoming quite a funny man again – a centre of interest – in a new line; but it gave him no pleasure whatever.

After a week of this mistaken drudgery he sat despondent one afternoon on a bench in the Champs Élysées and watched the gay people, and thought himself very down on his luck; he was tired and hot and miserable – it was the beginning of July. If he had known how, he would almost have shed tears. His loneliness was not to be borne, and his longing to feel once more the north had become a chronic ache.

A tall, thin, shabby man came and sat by his side, and made himself a cigarette, and hummed a tune – a well‐known quartier‐latin song – about "Mon Aldegonde, ma blonde," and "Ma Rodogune, ma brune."

Barty just glanced at this jovial person and found he didn't look jovial at all, but rather sad and seedy and out at elbows – by no means of the kind that the fair Aldegonde or her dark sister would have much to say to.

Also that he wore very strong spectacles, and that his brown eyes, when turned Barty's way, vibrated with a quick, tremulous motion and sideways, as if they had the "gigs."

Much moved and excited, Barty got up and put out his hand to the stranger, and said:

"Bonjour, Monsieur Bonzig! comment allez‐vous?"

Bonzig opened his eyes at this well‐dressed Briton (for Barty had clothes to last him a French lifetime).

"Pardonnez‐moi, monsieur – mais je n'ai pas l'honneur de vous remettre!"

"Je m'appelle Josselin – de chez Brossard!"

"Ah! Mon Dieu, mon cher, mon très‐cher!" said Bonzig, and got up and seized Barty's both hands – and all but hugged him.

"Mais quel bonheur de vous revoir! Je pense à vous si souvent, et à Ouittebé! comme vous êtes changé – et quel beau garçon vous êtes! qui vous aurait reconnu! Dieu de Dieu – c'est un rêve! Je n'en reviens pas!" etc., etc…

And they walked off together, and told the other each an epitome of his history since they parted; and dined together cheaply, and spent a happy evening walking up and down the boulevards, and smoking many cigarettes – from the Madeleine to the Porte St.‐Martin and back – again and again.

"Non, mon cher Josselin," said Bonzig, in answer to a question of Barty's – "non, I hare not yet seen the sea ..; it will come in time. But at least I am no longer a damned usher (un sacré pion d'études); I am an artist – un peintre de marines – at last! It is a happy existence. I fear my talent is not very imposing, but my perseverance is exceptional, and I am only forty‐five. Anyhow, I am able to support myself – not in splendor, certainly; but my wants are few and my health is perfect. I will put you up to many things, my dear boy… We will storm the citadel of fame together…"

Bonzig had a garret somewhere, and painted in the studio of a friend, not far from Barty's lodging. This friend, one Lirieux, was a very clever young man – a genius, according to Bonzig. He drew illustrations on wood with surprising quickness and facility and verve, and painted little oil‐pictures of sporting life – a garde champêtre in a wood with his dog, or with his dog on a dusty road, or crossing a stream, or getting over a stile, and so forth. The dog was never left out; and these things he would sell for twenty, thirty, even fifty francs. He painted very quick and very well. He was also a capital good fellow, industrious and cultivated and refined, and full of self‐respect.

Next to his studio he had a small bedroom which he shared with a younger brother, who had just got a small government appointment that kept him at work all day, in some ministère. In this studio Bonzig painted his marines – still helping himself from La France Maritime, as he used to do at Brossard's.

He was good at masts and cordage against an evening sky – "l'heure où le jaune de Naples rentre dans la nature," as he called it. He was also excellent at foam, and far‐off breakers, and sea‐gulls, but very bad at the human figure – sailors and fishermen and their wives. Sometimes Lirieux would put one in for him with a few dabs.

As soon as Bonzig had finished a picture, which didn't take very long, he carried it round, still wet, to the small dealers, bearing it very carefully aloft, so as not to smudge it. Sometimes (if there were a sailor by Lirieux) he would get five or even ten francs for it; and then it was "Mon Aldegonde" with him all the rest of the day; for success always took the form, in his case, of nasally humming that amorous refrain.

But it very often happened that he was dumb, poor fellow – no supper, no song!

Lirieux conceived such a liking for Barty that he insisted on taking him into his studio as a pupil‐assistant, and setting him to draw things under his own eye; and Barty would fill Bonzig's French sea pieces with Whitby fishermen, and Bonzig got to sing "Mon Aldegonde" much oftener than before.

And chumming with these two delightful men, Barty grew to know a clean, quiet happiness which more than made up for lost past splendors and dissipations and gay dishonor. He wasn't even funny; they wouldn't have understood it. Well‐bred Frenchmen don't understand English fun – not even in the quartier latin, as a general rule. Not that it's too subtle for them; that's not why!