The Martian: A Novel

And he slowly drew with the point of his stick an imaginary line from the five‐franc piece to the left of her, at right angles to where she stood. When the point of the stick was about two feet from the coin, she said:

"Tiens, tiens, I no longer see the piece!"

When the point of the stick had got a foot farther on, she said, "Now I can see the piece again quite plain."

Then he tried the same experiment on her left eye, rightwards, with the same result. Then he experimented with equal success on her father and mother, and found that every eye at No. 36 Rue des Ursulines Blanches had exactly the same blind spot as his own.

Then off he went to Antwerp to see his friends with a light heart – the first light heart he had known for many months; but when he got there he was so preoccupied with what had happened that he did not care to see anybody.

He walked about the ramparts and along the Scheldt, and read and re‐read that extraordinary letter.

Who and what could Martia be?

The reminiscence of some antenatal incarnation of his own soul? the soul of some ancestor or ancestress – of his mother, perhaps? or, perhaps, some occult portion of himself – of his own brain in unconscious cerebration during sleep?

As a child and a small boy, and even as a very young man, he had often dreamt at night of a strange, dim land by the sea, a land unlike any land he had ever beheld with the waking eye, where beautiful aquatic people, mermen and mermaids and charming little mer‐children (of which he was one) lived an amphibious life by day, diving and sporting in the waves.

Splendid caverns, decorated with precious stones, and hung with soft moss, and shining with a strange light; heavenly music, sweet, affectionate caresses – and then total darkness; and yet one knew who and what and where everything and everybody was by some keener sense than that of sight.

It all seemed strange and delightful, but so vague and shadowy it was impossible to remember anything clearly; but ever pervading all things was that feeling of the north which had always been such a comfort to him.

Was this extraordinary letter the result of some such forgotten dream he may have had during the previous night, and which may have prompted him to write it in his sleep? some internal knowledge of the anatomy of his own eye which was denied to him when awake?

Anyhow, it was evidently true about that blind spot in the retina (the punctum cœcum), and that he had been frightening himself out of his wits for nothing, and that his right eye was really sound; and, all through this wondrous yet simple revelation, it was time this old hysterical mock‐disease should die.

Once more life was full of hopes and possibilities, and with such inarticulate and mysterious promptings as he often felt within his soul, and such a hidden gift to guide them, what might he not one day develop into?

Then he went and found Tescheles, and they dined together with a famous pianist, Louis Brassin, and afterwards there was music, and Barty felt the north, and his bliss was transcendent as he went back to Malines by the last train – talking to Martia (as he expressed it to himself) in a confidential whisper which he made audible to his own ear (that she, if it was a she, might hear too); almost praying, in a fervor of hope and gratitude; and begging for further guidance; and he went warmly to sleep, hugging close within himself, somewhere about the region of the diaphragm, an ineffable imaginary something which he felt to be more precious than any possession that had ever yet been his – more precious even than the apple of his remaining eye; and when he awoke next morning he felt he had been most blissfully dreaming all night long, but could not remember anything of his dreams, and on a piece of paper he had left by his bedside was written in pencil, in his own blaze:

"You must depend upon yourself, Barty, not on me. Follow your own instincts when you feel you can do so without self‐reproach, and all will be well with you. – M."

His instincts led him to spend the day in Brussels, and he followed them; he still wanted to walk about and muse and ponder, and Brussels is a very nice, gay, and civilized city for such a purpose – a little Paris, with charming streets and shops and a charming arcade, and very good places to eat and drink in, and hear pretty music.

He did all this, and spent a happy day.

Ho came to the conclusion that the only way to keenly appreciate and thoroughly enjoy the priceless gift of sight in one eye was to lose that of the other; in the kingdom of the blind the one‐eyed is king, and he fully revelled in the royalty that was now his, he hoped, for evermore; but wished for himself as limited a kingdom and as few subjects as possible.

Then back to Malines by the last train – and the sensation of the north, and a good‐night; but no message in the morning – no message from Martia for many mornings to come.

He received, however, a long letter from Lady Caroline.

The old Marquis had died without pain, and with nearly all his family round him; but perfectly childish, as he had been for two or three years. He was to be buried on the following Monday.

Barty wrote a long letter in reply, telling his aunt how much better he had suddenly become in health and spirits; how he had thought of things, and quite reconciled himself at last to the loss of his left eye, and meant to keep the other and make the best of it he could; how he had heard of a certain Doctor Hasenclever, a famous oculist near Düsseldorf, and would like to consult him; how Düsseldorf was such a healthy town, charming and gay, full of painters and soldiers, the best and nicest people in the world – and also very cheap. Mightn't they try it?

He was very anxious indeed to go back to his painting, and Düsseldorf was as good a school as any, etc., etc., etc. He wrote pages – of the kind he knew she would like, for it was of the kind he liked writing to her; they understood each other thoroughly, he and Lady Caroline, and well he knew that she could only be quite happy in doing whatever he had most at heart.

How he longed to tell her everything! but that must not be. I can imagine all the deep discomfort to poor Barty of having to be discreet for the first time in his life, of having to keep a secret – and from his beloved Aunt Caroline of all people in the world!

That was a happy week he spent – mostly in Antwerp among the painters. He got no more letters from Martia, not for many days to come; but he felt the north every night as he sank into healthy sleep, and woke in the morning full of hope and confidence in himself – at last sans peur et sans reproche.

One day in Brussels he met M. Noiret, who naturally put on a very grave face; they shook hands, and Barty inquired affectionately after the little Italian greyhound, and asked what was the French for "punctum cœcum."

Said Noiret: "Ça s'appelle le point caché– c'est une portion de la rétine avec laquelle on ne peut pas voir…"

Barty laughed and shook hands again, and left the Professor staring.

Then he was a great deal with Father Louis. They went to Ghent together, and other places of interest; and to concerts in Brussels.

The good Dominican was very sorrowful at the prospect of soon losing his friend. Poor Barty! The trial it was to him not to reveal his secret to this singularly kind and sympathetic comrade; not even under the seal of confession! So he did not confess at all; although he would have confessed anything to Father Louis, even if Father Louis had not been a priest. There are the high Catholics, who understand the souls of others, and all the difficulties of the conscience, and do not proselytize in a hurry; and the low Catholics, the converts of the day before yesterday, who will not let a body be!

Father Louis was a very high Catholic indeed.

The Lady Caroline Grey, 12A Scamore Place, London, to M. Josselin, 36 Rue des Ursulines Blanches, Malines:

"My dear little Barty, – Your nice long letter made me very happy – happy beyond description; it makes me almost jealous to think that you should have suddenly got so much better in your health and spirits while I was away: you won't want me any more! That doesn't prevent my longing to get back to you. You must put up with your poor old aunty for a little while yet.

"And now for my news – I couldn't write before. Poor papa was buried on Monday, and we all came back here next day. He has left you £200: c'est toujours ça! Everything seems in a great mess. Your Uncle Runswick2 is going to be very poor indeed; he is going to let Castle Rohan, and live here all the year round. Poor fellow, he looks as old as his father did ten years ago, and he's only sixty‐three! If Algy could only make a good marriage! At forty that's easier said than done.

"Archibald and his wife are at a place called Monte Carlo, where there are gaming‐tables: she gambles fearfully, it seems; and they lead a cat‐and‐dog life. She is plus que coquette, and extravagant to a degree; and he is quite shrunk and prematurely old, and almost shabby, and drinks more brandy than he ought.

"Daphne is charming, and is to come out next spring; she will have £3000 a year, lucky child; all out of chocolate. What nonsense we've all talked about trade! we shall all have to take to it in time. The Lonlay‐Savignac people were wise in their generation.

"And what do you think? Young Digby‐Dobbs wants to marry her, out of the school‐room! He'll be Lord Frognal, you know; and very soon, for his father is drinking himself to death.

"He's in your old regiment, and a great favorite; not yet twenty – he only left Eton last Christmas twelvemonth. She says she won't have him at any price, because he stammers.

"She declares you haven't written to her for three months, and that you owe her an illustrated letter in French, with priests and nuns, and dogs harnessed to a cart.

"And now for news that will delight you: She is to come abroad with me for a twelvemonth, and wishes to go with you and me to Düsseldorf first! Isn't that a happy coincidence? We would all spend the summer there, and then Italy for the winter; you too, if you can (so you must be economical with that £200).

"I have already heard wonders about Dr. Hasenclever, even before your letter came; he cured General Baines, who was given up by everybody here, Lady Palmerston told me; she was here yesterday, by‐the‐bye, and the Duchess of Bermondsey, and both inquired most kindly after you.

"The Duchess looked as handsome as ever, and as proud as a peacock; for last year she presented her niece, Julia Royce, 'the divine Julia,' the greatest beauty ever seen, I am told – with many thousands a year, if you please – Lady Jane Royce's daughter, an only child, and her father's dead. She's six feet high, so you would go mad about her. She's already refused sixty offers, good ones; among them little Lord Orrisroot, the hunchback, who'll have £1000 a day (including Sundays) when he comes into the title – and that can't be very far off, for the wicked old Duke of Deptford has got creeping paralysis, like his father and grandfather before him, and is now quite mad, and thinks himself a postman, and rat‐tats all day long on the furniture. Lady Jane is furious with her for not accepting; and when Julia told her, she slapped her face before the maid!

"There's another gigantic beauty that people have gone mad about – a Polish pianist, who's just married young Harcourt, who's a grandson of that old scamp the Duke of Towers.

"Talking of beauties, whom do you think I met yesterday in the Park? Whom but your stalwart friend Mr. Maurice (he wasn't the beauty), with his sister, your old Paris playfellow, and the lovely Miss Gibson. He introduced them both, and I was delighted with them, and we walked together by the Serpentine; and after five minutes I came to the conclusion that Miss Gibson is as beautiful as it is possible for a dark beauty to be, and as nice as she looks. She isn't dark really, only her eyes and hair; her complexion is like cream: she's a freak of nature. Lucky young Maurice if she is to be his fate – and both well off, I suppose.

"Upon my word, if you were King Cophetua and she the beggar‐maid, I would give you both my blessing. But how is it you never fell in love with the fair Ida? You never told me how handsome she is. She too complained of you as a correspondent, and declares that she gets one letter in return for three she writes you.

"I have bought you some pretty new songs, among others one by Charles Kingsley, which is lovely; about three fishermen and their wives: it reminds one of our dear Whitby! I can play the accompaniment in perfection, and all by heart!

"Give my kindest remembrances to Father Louis and the dear Abbé Lefebvre, and say kind things from me to the Torfses. Martha sends her love to little Frau, and so do I.

"We hope to be in Antwerp in a fortnight, and shall put up at the Grand Laboureur. I shall go to Malines, of course, to say good‐bye to people.

"Tell the Torfses to get my things ready for moving. There will be five of us: I and Martha, and Daphne and two servants of her own; for Daphne's got to take old Mrs. Richards, who won't be parted from her.

"Good‐bye for the present. My dear boy, I thank God on my knees, night and morning for having given you back to me in my old age.

"Your ever affectionate aunt,"Caroline.

"P. S. – You remember pretty little Kitty Hardwicke you used to flirt with, who married young St. Clair, who's now Lord Kidderminster? She's just had three at a birth; she had twins only last year; the Queen's delighted. Pray be careful about never getting wet feet – "

One stormy evening in May, Mrs. Gibson drove Ida and Leah and me and Mr. Babbage, a middle‐aged but very dapper War Office clerk (who was a friend of the Gibson family), to Chelsea, that we might explore Cheyne Walk and its classic neighborhood. I rode on the box by the coachman.

We alighted by the steamboat pier and explored, I walking with Leah.

We came to a very narrow street, quite straight, the narrowest street that could call itself a street at all, and rather long; we were the only people in it. It has since disappeared, with all that particular part of Chelsea.

Suddenly we saw a runaway horse without a rider coming along it at full gallop, straight at us, with a most demoralizing sharp clatter of its iron hoofs on the stone pavement.

"Your backs to the wall!" cried Mr. Babbage, and we flattened ourselves to let the maddened brute go by, bridle and stirrups flying – poor Mrs. Gibson almost faint with terror.

Leah, instead of flattening herself against the wall, put her arms round her mother, making of her own body a shield for her, and looked round at the horse as it came tearing up the street, striking sparks from the flag‐stones.

Nobody was hurt, for a wonder; but Mrs. Gibson was quite overcome. Mr. Babbage was very angry with Leah, whose back the horse actually grazed, as he all but caught his hoofs in her crinoline and hit her with a stirrup on the shoulder.

I could only think of Leah's face as she looked round at the approaching horse, with her protecting arms round her mother. It was such a sudden revelation to me of what she really was, and its expression was so hauntingly impressive that I could think of nothing else. Its mild, calm courage, its utter carelessness of self, its immense tenderness – all blazed out in such beautiful lines, in such beautiful white and black, that I lost all self‐control; and when we walked back to the pier, following the rest of the party, I asked her to be my wife.

She turned very pale again, and the flesh of her chin quivered as she told me that was quite impossible – and could never be.

I asked her if there was anybody else, and she said there was nobody, but that she did not wish ever to marry; that, beyond her parents and Ida, she loved and respected me more than anybody else in the whole world, but that she could never marry me. She was much agitated, and said the sweetest, kindest things, but put all hope out of the question at once.

It was the greatest blow I have ever had in my life.

Three days after, I went to America; and before I came back I had started in New York the American branch of the house of Vougeot‐Conti, and laid the real foundation of the largest fortune that has ever yet been made by selling wine, and of the long political career about which I will say nothing in these pages. On my voyage out I wrote a long blaze letter to Barty, and poured out all my grief, and my resignation to the decree which I felt to be irrevocable. I reminded him of that playful toss‐up in Southampton Row, and told him that, having surrendered all claims myself, the best thing that could happen to me was that she should some day marry him (which I certainly did not think at all likely).

So henceforward, reader, you will not be troubled by your obedient servant with the loves of a prosperous merchant of wines. Had those loves been more successful, and the wines less so, you would never have heard of either.

Whether or not I should have been a happier man in the long‐run I really can't say – mine has been, on the whole, a very happy life, as men's lives go; but I am bound to admit, in all due modesty, that the universe would probably have been the poorer by some very splendid people, and perhaps by some very splendid things it could ill have spared; and one great and beautifully borne sorrow the less would have been ushered into this world of many sorrows.

It was a bright May morning (a year after this) when Barty and his aunt Caroline and his cousin Daphne and their servants left Antwerp for Düsseldorf on the Rhine.

At Malines they had to change trains, and spent half an hour at the station waiting for the express from Brussels and bidding farewell to their Mechlin friends, who had come there to wish them God‐speed: the Abbé Lefebvre, Father Louis, and others; and the Torfses, père et mère; and little Frau, who wept freely as Lady Caroline kissed her and gave her a pretty little diamond brooch. Barty gave her a gold cross and a hearty shake of the hand, and she seemed quite heart‐broken.

Then up came the long, full train, and their luggage was swallowed, and they got in, and the two guards blew their horns, and they left Malines behind them – with a mixed feeling of elation and regret.

They had not been very happy there, but many people had been very kind; and the place, with all its dreariness, had a strange, still charm, and was full of historic beauty and romantic associations.

Passing Louvain, Barty shook his fist at the Catholic University and its scientific priestly professors, who condemned one so lightly to a living death. He hated the aspect of the place, the very smell of it.

At Verviers they left the Belgian train; they had reached the limits of King Leopold's dominions. There was half an hour for lunch in the big refreshment‐room, over which his Majesty and the Queen of the Belgians presided from the wall – nearly seven feet high each of them, and in their regal robes.

Just as the Rohans ordered their repast another English party came to their table and ordered theirs – a distinguished old gentleman of naval bearing and aspect; a still young middle‐aged lady, very handsome, with blue spectacles; and an immensely tall, fair girl, very fully developed, and so astonishingly beautiful that it almost took one's breath away merely to catch sight of her; and people were distracted from ordering their mid‐day meal merely to stare at this magnificent goddess, who was evidently born to be a mother of heroes.

These British travellers had a valet, a courier, and two maids, and were evidently people of consequence.

Suddenly the lady with the blue spectacles (who had seated herself close to the Rohan party) got up and came round the table to Barty's aunt and said:

"You don't remember me, Lady Caroline; Lady Jane Royce!"

And an old acquaintance was renewed in this informal manner – possibly some old feud patched up.

Then everybody was introduced to everybody else, and they all lunched together, a scramble!

It turned out that Lady Jane Royce was in some alarm about her eyes, and was going to consult the famous Dr. Hasenclever, and had brought her daughter with her, just as the London season had begun.

Her daughter was the "divine Julia" who had refused so many splendid offers – among them the little hunchback Lord who was to have a thousand a day, "including Sundays"; a most unreasonable young woman, and a thorn in her mother's flesh.

The elderly gentleman, Admiral Royce, was Lady Jane's uncle‐in‐law, whose eyes were also giving him a little anxiety. He was a charming old stoic, by no means pompous or formal, or a martinet, and declared he remembered hearing of Barty as the naughtiest boy in the Guards; and took an immediate fancy to him in consequence.

They had come from Brussels in the same train that had brought the Rohans from Malines, and they all journeyed together from Verviers to Düsseldorf in the same first‐class carriage, as became English swells of the first water – for in those days no one ever thought of going first‐class in Germany except the British aristocracy and a few native royalties.

The divine Julia turned out as fascinating as she was fair, being possessed of those high spirits that result from youth and health and fancy‐freedom, and no cares to speak of. She was evidently also a very clever and accomplished young lady, absolutely without affectation of any kind, and amiable and frolicsome to the highest degree – a kind of younger Barty Josselin in petticoats; oddly enough, so like him in the face she might have been his sister.

Indeed, it was a lively party that journeyed to Düsseldorf that afternoon in that gorgeously gilded compartment, though three out of the six were in deep mourning; the only person not quite happy being Lady Jane, who, in addition to her trouble about her eyes (which was really nothing to speak of), began to fidget herself miserably about Barty Josselin; for that wretched young detrimental was evidently beginning to ingratiate himself with the divine Julia as no young man had ever been known to do before, keeping her in fits of laughter, and also laughing at everything she said herself.

Alas for Lady Jane! it was to escape the attentions of a far less dangerous detrimental, and a far less ineligible one, that she had brought her daughter with her all the way to Riffrath – "from Charybdis to Scylla," as we used to say at Brossard's, putting the cart before the horse, more Latino!

I ought also to mention that a young Captain Graham‐Reece was a patient of Dr. Hasenclever's just then – and Captain Graham‐Reece was heir to the octogenarian Earl of Ironsides, who was one of the four wealthiest peers in the United Kingdom, and had no direct descendants.

When they reached Düsseldorf they all went to the Breidenbacher Hotel, where rooms had been retained for them, all but Barty, who, as became his humbler means, chose the cheaper hotel Domhardt, which overlooks the market‐place adorned by the statue of the Elector that Heine has made so famous.

He took a long evening walk through the vernal Hof Gardens and by the Rhine, and thought of the beauty and splendor of the divine Julia; and sighed, and remembered that he was Mr. Nobody of Nowhere, pictor ignotus, with only one eye he could see with, and possessed of a fortune which invested in the 3 per cents would bring him in just £6 a year – and made up his mind he would stick to his painting and keep as much away from her divinity as possible.

"O Martia, Martia!" he said, aloud, as he suddenly felt the north at the right of him, "I hope that you are some loving female soul, and that you know my weakness – namely, that one woman in every ten thousand has a face that drives me mad; and that I can see just as well with one eye as with two, in spite of my punctum cœcum! and that when that face is all but on a level with mine, good Lord! then am I lost indeed! I am but a poor penniless devil, without a name; oh, keep me from that ten‐thousandth face, and cover my retreat!"

Next morning Lady Jane and Julia and the Admiral left for Riffrath – and Barty and his aunt and cousin went in search of lodgings; sweet it was, and bright and sunny, as they strolled down the broad Allée Strasse; a regiment of Uhlans came along on horseback, splendid fellows, the band playing the "Lorelei."