The Martian: A Novel

La Tremblaye itself had become a flourishing manufacturing town, and to our jaundiced and disillusioned eyes everybody and everything was as ugly as could be – and I can't say we made much of a bag in the way of souvenirs.

We were told that young Laferté was a barrister at Angers, prosperous and married. We deliberated whether we would hunt him up and talk of old times. Then we reflected how curiously cold and inhospitable Frenchmen can sometimes be to old English friends in circumstances like these – and how little they care to talk of old times and all that, unless it's the Englishman who plays the host.

Ask a quite ordinary Frenchman to come and dine with you in London, and see what a genial and charming person he can be – what a quick bosom friend, and with what a glib and silver tongue to praise the warmth of your British welcome.

Then go and call on him when you find yourself in Paris – and you will soon learn to leave quite ordinary Frenchmen alone, on their own side of the Channel.

Happily, there are exceptions to this rule!

Thus the sweet Laferté remembrance, which had so often come back to me in my dreams, was forever spoiled by this unlucky trip.

It had turned that leaf from the tablets of my memory into a kind of palimpsest, so that I could no longer quite make out the old handwriting for the new, which would not be obliterated, and these were confused lines it was hard to read between – with all my skill!

Altogether we were uncommonly glad to get back to the Villa Montmorency – from the distorted shadows of a nightmare to happy reality.

There, all was fresh and delightful; as boys we had often seen the outside walls of that fine property which had come to the speculative builder at last, but never a glimpse within; so that there was no desecration for us in the modern laying out of that beautiful double garden of ours, whatever there might have been for such ghosts of Montmorencys as chose to revisit the glimpses of the moon.

We haunted Auteuil, Passy, Point du Jour, Suresnes, Courbevoie, Neuilly, Meudon – all the familiar places. Especially we often haunted the neighborhood of the rond point de l'Avenue du Bois de Boulogne.

One afternoon, as he and I and Leah and Ida were driving round what once was our old school, we stopped in the lane not far from the porte‐cochère, and Barty stood up on the box and tried to look over the wall.

Presently, from the grand stone loge which had replaced Jaurion's den, a nice old concierge came out and asked if we desired anything. We told him how once we had been at school on that very spot, and were trying to make out the old trees that had served as bases in "la balle au camp," and that if we really desired anything just then it was that we might become school‐boys once more!

"Ah, ma foi! je comprends ça, messieurs – moi aussi, j'ai été écolier, et j'aimais bien la balle au camp," said the good old man, who had been a soldier.

He informed us the family were away, but that if we liked to come inside and see the garden he was sure his master would have no objection. We jumped at this kind offer and spent quite an hour there, and if I were Barty I could so describe the emotions of that hour that the reader would feel quite as tearfully grateful to me as to Barty Josselin for Chapters III. and IV. in Le Fil de la Vierge, which are really founded, mutatis mutandis, on this self‐same little adventure of ours.

Nothing remained of our old school – not even the outer walls; nothing but the big trees and the absolute ground they grew out of. Beautiful lawns, flower‐beds, conservatories, summer‐houses, ferns, and evergreen shrubs made the place seem even larger than it had once been – the very reverse of what usually happens – and softened for us the disenchantment of the change.

Here, at least, was no desecration of a hallowed spot. When the past has been dead and buried a long while ago there is no sweeter decking for its grave than a rich autumn tangle, all yellow and brown and pale and hectic red, with glossy evergreens and soft, damp moss to keep up the illusion of spring and summer all the year round.

Much to the amusement of the old concierge and his wife, Barty insisted on climbing into a huge horse‐chestnut tree, in which was a natural seat, very high up, where, well hidden by the dense foliage, he and I used to color pipes for boys who couldn't smoke without feeling sick.

Nothing would suit him now but that he must smoke a pipe there while we talked to the good old couple below.

"Moi aussi, je fumais quand c'était défendu; que voulez‐vous? Il faut bien que jeunesse se passe, n'est ce pas?" said the old soldier.

"Ah, dame!" said his old wife, and sighed.

Every tree in this enchanted place had its history – every corner, every square yard of soil. I will not inflict these histories on the reader; I will restrain myself with all my might, and merely state that just as the old school had been replaced by this noble dwelling the noble dwelling itself has now been replaced, trees and garden and all, by a stately palace many stories high, which rears itself among so many other stately palaces that I can't even identify the spot where once stood the Institution F. Brossard!

Later, Barty made me solemnly pledge my word that if he and Leah should pre‐decease me I would see to their due cremating and the final mingling of their ashes; that a portion of these – say half – should be set apart to be scattered on French soil, in places he would indicate in his will, and that the lion's share of that half should be sprinkled over the ground that once was our play‐ground, with – or without – the legitimate owner's permission.

(Alas! and ah me! These instructions would have been carried out to the letter but that the place itself is no more; and, with a conviction that I should be merely acting just as they would have wished, I took it on myself to mingle with their ashes those of a very sweet and darling child of theirs, dearer to them and to me and to us all than any creature ever born into this cruel universe; and I scattered a portion of these precious remains to the four winds, close by the old spot we so loved.)

Yes, that was a memorable holiday; the charming fête de St. Cloud was in full swing – it was delightful to haunt it once more with those dear young people so little dreamt of when Barty and I first got into scrapes there, and were duly punished by Latin verbs to conjugate in our best handwriting for Bonzig or Dumollard.

Then he and I would explore the so changed Bois de Boulogne for the little "Mare aux Biches," where his father had fallen under the sword of Lieutenant Rondelys; but we never managed to find it: perhaps it had evaporated; perhaps the does had drunk it all up, before they, too, had been made to vanish, before the German invader – or inside him; for he was fond of French venison, as well as of French clocks! He was a most omnivorous person.

Then Paris had endless charms for us both, and we relieved ourselves at last of that long homesickness of years, and could almost believe we were boys again, as we dived into such old and well‐remembered streets as yet remained.

There were still some slums we had loved; one or two of them exist even now. Only the other day I saw the Rue de Cléry, the Rue de la Lune, the Rue de la Montagne – all three on the south side of the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle: they are still terrible to look at from the genial Boulevard, even by broad daylight – the houses so tall, so irregular, the streets so narrow and winding and black. They seemed to us boys terrible, indeed, between eight and nine on a winter's evening, with just a lamp here and there to make their darkness visible. Whither they led I can't say; we never dared explore their obscure and mysterious recesses. They may have ended in the cour des miracles for all we knew – it was nearly fifty years ago – and they may be quite virtuous abodes of poverty to‐day; but they seemed to us then strange, labyrinthine abysses of crime and secret dens of infamy, where dreadful deeds were done in the dead of long winter nights. Evidently, to us in those days, whoever should lose himself there would never see daylight again; so we loved to visit them after dark, with our hearts in our mouths, before going back to school.

We would sit on posts within call of the cheerful Boulevard, and watch mysterious women hurry up and down in the cold, out of darkness into light and back again, poor creatures – dingy moths, silent but ominous night‐jars, forlorn women of the town – ill‐favored and ill‐dressed, some of them all but middle‐aged, in common caps and aprons, with cotton umbrellas, like cooks looking for a situation.

They never spoke to us, and seemed to be often brutally repulsed by whatever men they did speak to – mostly men in blouses.

"Ô dis‐donc, Hôrtense! qu'y faît froid! quand donc qu'y s'ra ônze heures, q'nous allions nous coûcher?"

So said one of them to another one cold, drizzly night, in a raucous voice, with low intonations of the gutter. The dimly felt horror and despair and pathos of it sent us away shivering to our Passy omnibus as fast as our legs could carry us.

That phrase has stuck in my memory ever since. Thank Heaven! the eleventh hour must have struck long ago, and Hortense and her friend must be fast asleep and well out of the cold by now – they need walk those evil streets no more…

When we had exhausted it all, and we felt homesick for England again, it was good to get back to Marsfield, high up over the Thames – so beautiful in its rich October colors which the river reflected – with its old trees that grew down to the water's edge, and brooded by the boat‐house there in the mellow sunshine.

And then again when it became cold and dreary, at Christmas‐time there was my big house at Lancaster Gate, where Josselins were fond of spending some of the winter months, and where I managed to find room for them all – with a little squeezing during the Christmas holidays when the boys came home from school. What good times they were!

"On May 24th, at Marsfield, Berks, the wife of Bartholomew Josselin, of a daughter" – or, as Leah put it in her diary, "our seventh daughter and ninth child – to be called Martia, or Marty for short."

It seems that Marty, prepared by her first ablution for this life, and as she lay being powdered on Mrs. Jones's motherly lap, was of a different type to her predecessors – much whiter, and lighter, and slighter; and she made no exhibition of that lusty lung‐power which had so characterized the other little Barties on their introduction to this vale of tears.

Her face was more regularly formed and more highly finished, and in a few weeks grew of a beauty so solemn and pathetic that it would sometimes make Mrs. Jones, who had lost babies of her own, shed motherly tears merely to look at her.

Even I felt sentimental about the child; and as for Barty, he could talk of nothing else, and made those rough and hasty silver‐point studies of her head and face – mere sketches – which, being full of obvious faults, became so quickly famous among æsthetic and exclusive people who had long given up Barty as a writer on account of his scandalous popularity.

Alas! even those silver‐points have become popular now, and their photogravures are in the shop‐windows of sea‐side resorts and in the back parlors of the lower middle‐class; so that the æsthetic exclusives who are up to date have had to give up Barty altogether. No one is sacred in those days – not even Shakespeare and Michael Angelo.

We shall be hearing Schumann and Wagner on the piano‐organ, and "nous autres" of the cultured classes will have to fall back on Balfe and Byron and Landseer.

In a few months little Marty became famous for this extra beauty all over Henley and Maidenhead.

She soon grew to be the idol of her father's heart, and her mother's, and Ida's. But I really think that if there was one person who idolized her more than all the rest, it was I, Bob Maurice.

She was extremely delicate, and gave us much anxiety and many alarms, and Dr. Knight was a very constant visitor at Marsfield Lodge. It was fortunate, for her sake, that the Josselins had left Campden Hill and made their home in Marsfield.

Nine of these children – including one not yet born then – developed there into the finest and completest human beings, take them for all in all, that I have ever known; nine – a good number!

"Numero Deus impare gaudet."

Or, as poor Rapaud translated this (and was pinched black and blue by Père Brossard in consequence):

"Le numéro deux se réjouit d'être impair!" (Number two takes a pleasure in being odd!)

The three sons – one of them now in the army, as becomes a Rohan; and one a sailor, as becomes a Josselin; and one a famous actor, the true Josselin of all – are the very types of what I should like for the fathers of my grandchildren, if I had marriageable daughters of my own.

And as for Barty's daughters, they are all – but one – so well known in society and the world – so famous, I may say – that I need hardly mention them here; all but Marty, my sweet little "maid of Dove."

When Barty took Marsfield he and I had entered what I have ever since considered the happiest decade of a successful and healthy man's life – the forties.

"Wait till you get to forty year!"

So sang Thackeray, but with a very different experience to mine. He seemed to look upon the fifth decade as the grave of all tender illusions and emotions, and exult!

My tender illusions and emotions became realties – things to live by and for. As Barty and I "dipped our noses in the Gascon wine" – Vougeot‐Conti & Co. – I blessed my stars for being free of Marsfield, which was, and is still, my real home, and for the warm friendship of its inhabitants who have been my real family, and for several years of unclouded happiness all round.

Even in winter what a joy it was, after a long solitary walk, or ride, or drive, or railway journey, to suddenly find myself at dusk in the midst of all that warmth and light and gayety; what a contrast to the House of Commons; what a relief after Barge Yard or Downing Street; what tea that was, what crumpets and buttered toast, what a cigarette; what romps and jokes, and really jolly good fun; and all that delightful untaught music that afterwards became so cultivated! Music was a special inherited gift of the entire family, and no trouble or expense was ever spared to make the best and the most of it.

Roberta became the most finished and charming amateur pianist I ever heard, and as for Mary la rossignolle– Mrs. Trevor – she's almost as famous as if she had made singing her profession, as she once so wished to do. She married happily instead, a better profession still; and though her songs are as highly paid for as any – except, perhaps, Madame Patti's – every penny goes to the poor.

She can make a nigger melody sound worthy of Schubert and a song of Schumann go down with the common herd as if it were a nigger melody, and obtain a genuine encore for it from quite simple people.

Why, only the other night she and her husband dined with me at the Bristol, and we went to Baron Schwartzkind's in Piccadilly to meet Royal Highnesses.

Up comes the Baron with:

"Ach, Mrs. Drefor! vill you not zing zomzing? ze Brincess vould be so jarmt."

"I'll sing as much as you like, Baron, if you promise me you'll send a checque for £50 to the Foundling Hospital to‐morrow morning," says Mary.

"I'll send another fifty, Baron," says Bob Maurice. And the Baron had to comply, and Mary sang again and again, and the Princess was more than charmed.

She declared herself enchanted, and yet it was Brahms and Schumann that Mary sang; no pretty little English ballad, no French, no Italian.

"Aus meinen Thränen spriessenViel' blühende Blumen hervor;Und meine Seufze wardenEin Nachtigallen Chor…"

So sang Mary, and I declare some of the royal eyes were moist.

They all sang and played, these Josselins; and tumbled and acted, and were droll and original and fetching, as their father had been and was still; and, like him, amiable and full of exuberant life; and, like their mother, kind and appreciative and sympathetic and ever thoughtful of others, without a grain of selfishness or conceit.

They were also great athletes, boys and girls alike; good swimmers and riders, and first‐rate oars. And though not as good at books and lessons as they might have been, they did not absolutely disgrace themselves, being so quick and intelligent.

Amid all this geniality and liveliness at home and this beauty of surrounding nature abroad, little Marty seemed to outgrow in a measure her constitutional delicacy.

It was her ambition to become as athletic as a boy, and she was persevering in all physical exercises – and throw stones very straight and far, with a quite easy masculine sweep of the arm; I taught her myself.

It was also her ambition to draw, and she would sit for an hour or more on a high stool by her father, or on the arm of his chair, and watch him at his work in silence. Then she would get herself paper and pencil, and try and do likewise; but discouragement would overtake her, and she would have to give it up in despair, with a heavy sigh and a clouded look on her lovely little pale face; and yet they were surprisingly clever, these attempts of hers.

Then she took to dictating a novel to her sisters and to me: it was all about an immense dog and three naughty boys, who were awful dunces at school and ran away to sea, dog and all; and performed heroic deeds in Central Africa, and grew up there, "booted and bearded, and burnt to a brick!" and never married or fell in love, or stooped to any nonsense of that kind.

This novel, begun in the handwriting of all of us, and continued in her own, remained unfinished; and the precious MS. is now in my possession. I have read it oftener than any other novel, French or English, except, perhaps, Vanity Fair!

I may say that I had something to do with the development of her literary faculty, as I read many good books to her before she could read quite comfortably for herself: Evenings at Home, The Swiss Family Robinson, Gulliver, Robinson Crusoe, books by Ballantyne, Marryat, Mayne Reid, Jules Verne, etc., and Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, The Wreck of the Grosvenor, and then her father's books, or some of them.

But even better than her famous novel were the stories she improvised to me in a small boat which I often rowed up‐stream while she steered – one story, in particular, that had no end; she would take it up at any time.

She had imagined a world where all trees and flowers and vegetation (and some birds) were the size they are now; but men and beasts no bigger than Lilliputians, with houses and churches and buildings to match – and a family called Josselin living in a beautiful house called Marsfield, as big as a piano organ.

Endless were the adventures by flood and field of these little people: in the huge forest and on the gigantic river which it took them nearly an hour to cross in a steam‐launch when the wind was high, or riding trained carrier‐pigeons to distant counties, and the coasts of Normandy, Brittany, and Picardy, where everything was on a similar scale.

It would astonish me to find how vivid and real she could make these imaginations of hers, and to me how fascinating – oddly enough she reserved them for me only, and told no one else.

There was always an immensely big strong man, one Bobby Maurice, a good‐natured giant, nearly three inches high and over two ounces in weight, who among other feats would eat a whole pea at a sitting, and hold out an acorn at arm's‐length, and throw a pepper‐corn over two yards – which has remained the record.

Then, coming back down‐stream, she would take the sculls and I the tiller, and I would tell her (in French) all about our school adventures at Brossard's and Bonzig, and the Lafertés, and the Revolution of February; and in that way she picked up a lot of useful and idiomatic Parisian which considerably astonished Fräulein Werner, the German governess, who yet knew French almost as well as her own language – almost as well as Mr. Ollendorff himself.

She also changed one of the heroes in her famous novel, Tommy Holt, into a French boy, and called him Rapaud!

She was even more devoted to animals than the rest of the family: the beautiful Angora, Kitty, died when Marty was five, from an abscess in her cheek, where she'd been bitten by a strange bull‐terrier; and Marty tearfully wrote her epitaph in a beautiful round hand —

"Here lies Kitty, full of grace;Died of an abbess in her face!"

This was her first attempt at verse‐making, and here's her last, from the French of Sully‐Prudhomme:

"If you but knew what tears, alas!One weeps for kinship unbestowed,In pity you would sometimes passMy poor abode!"If you but knew what balm, for allDespond, lies in an angel's glance,Your looks would on my window fallAs though by chance!"If you but knew the heart's delightTo feel its fellow‐heart is by,You'd linger, as a sister might,These gates anigh!"If you but knew how oft I yearnFor one sweet voice, one presence dear,Perhaps you'd even simply turnAnd enter here!"

She was only just seventeen when she wrote them, and, upon my word, I think they're almost as good as the original!

Her intimate friendship with Chucker‐out, the huge St. Bernard, lasted for nearly both their lives, alas! It began when they both weighed exactly the same, and I could carry both in one arm. When he died he turned the scale at sixteen stone, like me.

It has lately become the fashion to paint big dogs and little girls, and engravings of these pictures are to be seen in all the print‐sellers' shops. It always touches me very much to look at these works of art, although – and I hope it is not libellous to say so – the big dog is always hopelessly inferior in beauty and dignity and charm to Chucker‐out, who was champion of his day. And as for the little girls —Ah, mon Dieu!

Such pictures are not high art of course, and that is why I don't possess one, as I've got an æsthetic character to keep up; but why they shouldn't be I can't guess. Is it because no high artist – except Briton Riviere – will stoop to so easily understood a subject?

A great master would not be above painting a small child or a big dog separately – why should he be above putting them both in the same picture? It would be too obvious, I suppose – like a melody by Mozart, or Handel's "Harmonious Blacksmith," or Schubert's Serenade, and other catchpenny tunes of the same description.

I was also very intimate with Chucker‐out, who made more of me than he even did of his master.

One night I got very late to Marsfield by the last train, and, letting myself in with my key, I found Chucker‐out waiting for me in the hall, and apparently in a very anxious frame of mind, and extremely demonstrative, wanting to say something more than usual – to confide a trouble, to confess!

We went up into the big music‐room, which was still lighted, and lay on a couch together; he, with his head on my knees, whimpering softly as I smoked and read a paper.

Presently Leah came in and said:

"Such an unfortunate thing happened; Marty and Chucker‐out were playing on the slope, and he knocked her down and sprained her knee."

As soon as Chucker‐out heard Marty's name he sat up and whined piteously, and pawed me down with great violence; pawed three buttons off my waistcoat and broke my watch‐chain – couldn't be comforted; the misadventure had been preying on his mind for hours.

I give this subject to Mr. Briton Riviere, who can paint both dogs and children, and everything else he likes. I will sit for him myself, if he wishes, and as a Catholic priest! He might call it a confession – and an absolution! or, "The Secrets of the Confessional."

The good dog became more careful in future, and restrained his exuberance even going down‐stairs with Marty on the way to a ramble in the woods, which excited him more than anything; if he came down‐stairs with anybody else, the violence of his joy was such that one had to hold on by the banisters. He was a dear, good beast, and a splendid body‐guard for Marty in her solitary woodland rambles – never left her side for a second. I have often watched him from a distance, unbeknown to both; he was proud of his responsibility – almost fussy about it.