To the south the shining river ebbs and flows, between its big ship‐building yards and the railway to York, under endless moving craft and a forest of masts, now straight on end, now slanting helplessly on one side when there's not water enough to float their keels; and the long row of Cornish fishing‐smacks, two or three deep.
How the blue smoke of their cooking wreathes upward in savory whiffs and whirls! They are good cooks, these rovers from Penzance, and do themselves well, and remind us that it is time to go and get lunch at the hotel.
We do, and do ourselves uncommonly well also; and afterwards we take a boat, we four (if the tide serves), and row up for a mile or so to a certain dam at Ruswarp, and there we take another boat on a lovely little secluded river, which is quite independent of tides, and where for a mile or more the trees bend over us from either side as we leisurely paddle along and watch the leaping salmon‐trout, pulling now and then under a drooping ash or weeping‐willow to gaze and dream or chat, or read out loud from Sylvia's Lovers; Sylvia Robson once lived in a little farm‐house near Upgang, which we know well, and at Whitby every one reads about Sylvia Robson; or else we tell stories, or inform each other what a jolly time we're having, and tease old Chucker‐out, who gets quite excited, and we admire the discretion with which he disposes of his huge body as ballast to trim the boat, and remains perfectly still in spite of his excitement for fear he should upset us. Indeed, he has been learning all his life how to behave in boats, and how to get in and out of them.
And so on till tea‐time at five, and we remember there's a little inn at Sleights, where the scones are good; or, better still, a leafy garden full of raspberry‐bushes at Cock Mill, where they give excellent jam with your tea, and from which there are three ways of walking back to Whitby when there's not enough water to row – and which is the most delightful of those three ways has never been decided yet.
Then from the stone pier we watch a hundred brown‐sailed Cornish fishing‐smacks follow each other in single file across the harbor bar and go sailing out into the west as the sun goes down – a most beautiful sight, of which Marty feels all the mystery and the charm and the pathos, and Chips all the jollity and danger and romance.
Then to the trap, and home all four of us au grand trot, between the hedge‐rows and through the splendid woods of Castle Rohan; there at last we find all the warmth and light and music and fun of Marsfield, and many good things besides: supper, dinner, tea – all in one; and happy, healthy, hungry, indefatigable boys and girls who've been trapesing over miles and miles of moor and fell, to beautiful mills and dells and waterfalls – too many miles for slender Marty or little Chips; or even Bob and Chucker‐out – who weigh thirty‐two stone between them, and are getting lazy in their old age, and fat and scant of breath.
Whitby is an ideal place for young people; it almost makes old people feel young themselves there when the young are about; there is so much to do.
I, being the eldest of the large party, chummed most of the time with the two youngest and became a boy again; so much so that I felt myself almost a sneak when I tactfully tried to restrain such exuberance of spirits on their part as might have led them into mischief: indeed it was difficult not to lead them into mischief myself; all the old inventiveness (that had got me and others into so many scrapes at Brossard's) seemed to come back, enhanced by experience and maturity.
At all events, Marty and Chips were happier with me than without – of that I feel quite sure, for I tested it in many ways.
I always took immense pains to devise the kinds of excursion that would please them best, and these never seemed to fail of their object; and I was provident and well skilled in all details of the commissariat (Chips was healthily alimentative); I was a very Bradshaw at trains and times and distances, and also, if I am not bragging too much, and making myself out an Admirable Crichton, extremely weatherwise, and good at carrying small people pickaback when they got tired.
Marty was well up in local folk‐lore, and had mastered the history of Whitby and St. Hilda, and Sylvia Robson; and of the old obsolete whaling‐trade, in which she took a passionate interest; and fixed poor little Chips's mind with a passion for the Polar regions (he is now on the coast of Senegambia).
We were much on the open sea ourselves, in cobles; sometimes the big dog with us – "Joomboa," as the fishermen called him; and they marvelled at his good manners and stately immobility in a boat.
One afternoon – a perfect afternoon – we took tea at Runswick, from which charming little village the Whitbys take their second title, and had ourselves rowed round the cliffs to Staithes, which we reached just before sunset; Chips and his sister also taking an oar between them, and I another. There, on the brink of the little bay, with the singularly quaint and picturesque old village behind it, were fifty fishing‐boats side by side waiting to be launched, and all the fishing population of Staithes were there to launch them – men, women and children; as we landed we were immediately pressed into the service.
Marty and Chips, wild with enthusiasm, pushed and yo‐ho'd with the best; and I also won some commendation by my hearty efforts in the common cause. Soon the coast was clear of all but old men and boys, women and children, and our four selves; and the boats all sailed westward, in a cluster, and lost themselves in the golden haze. It was the prettiest sight I ever saw, and we were all quite romantic about it.
Chucker‐out held a small court on the sands, and was worshipped and fed with stale fish by a crowd of good‐looking and agreeable little lasses and lads who called him "Joomboa," and pressed Chips and Marty for biographical details about him, and were not disappointed. And I smoked a pipe of pipes with some splendid old salts, and shared my Honeydew among them.
Nous étions bien, là!
So sped those happy weeks – with something new and exciting every day – even on rainy days, when we wore waterproofs and big india‐rubber boots and sou'westers, and Chucker‐out's coat got so heavy with the soak that he could hardly drag himself along: and we settled, we three at least, that we would never go to France or Scotland – never any more – never anywhere in the world but Whitby, jolly Whitby —
Ah me! l'homme propose…
Marty always wore a red woollen fisherman's cap that hung down behind over the waving masses of her long, thick yellow hair – a blue jersey of the elaborate kind women knit on the Whitby quay – a short, striped petticoat like a Boulogne fishwife's, and light brown stockings on her long, thin legs.
I have a photograph of her like that, holding a shrimping‐net; with a magnifying‐glass, I can see the little high‐light in the middle of each jet‐black eye – and every detail and charm and perfection of her childish face. Of all the art‐treasures I've amassed in my long life, that is to me the most beautiful, far and away – but I can't look at it yet for more than a second at a time…
"O tempo passato, perchè non ritorni?"
As Mary is so fond of singing to me sometimes, when she thinks I've got the blues. As if I haven't always got the blues!
All Barty's teaching is thrown away on me, now that he's not here himself to point his moral —
"Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte …"
Heaven bless thee, Mary dear, rossignolet de mon âme! Would thou wert ever by my side! fain would I keep thee for myself in a golden cage, and feed thee on the tongues of other nightingales, so thou mightst warble every day, and all day long. By some strange congenital mystery the native tuning of thy voice is such, for me, that all the pleasure of my past years seems to go forever ringing in every single note. Thy dear mother speaks again, thy gay young father rollicks and jokes and sings, and little Marty laughs her happy laugh.
Da capo, e da capo, Mary – only at night shouldst thou cease from thy sweet pipings, that I might smoke myself to sleep, and dream that all is once more as it used to be.
The writing, such as it is, of this life of Barty Josselin – which always means the writing of so much of my own – has been to me, up to the present moment, a great source of consolation, almost of delight, when the pen was in my hand and I dived into the past.
But now the story becomes such a record of my own personal grief that I have scarcely the courage to go on; I will get through it as quickly as I can.
It was at the beginning of the present decade that the bitter thing arose – medio de fonte leporum; just as all seemed so happy and secure at Marsfield.
One afternoon in May I arrived at the house, and nobody was at home; but I was told that Marty was in the wood with old Chucker‐out, and I went thither to find her, loudly whistling a bar which served as a rallying signal to the family. It was not answered, but after a long hunt I found Marty lying on the ground at the foot of a tree, and Chucker‐out licking her face and hands.
She had been crying, and seemed half‐unconscious.
When I spoke to her she opened her eyes and said:
"Oh, Uncle Bob, I have hurt myself so! I fell down that tree. Do you think you could carry me home?"
Beside myself with terror and anxiety, I took her up as gently as I could, and made my way to the house. She had hurt the base of her spine as she fell on the roots of the tree; but she seemed to get better as soon as Sparrow, the nurse, had undressed her and put her to bed.
I sent for the doctor, however, and he thought, after seeing her, that I should do well to send for Dr. Knight.
Just then Leah and Barty came in, and we telegraphed for Dr. Knight, who came at once.
Next day Dr. Knight thought he had better have Sir – , and there was a consultation.
Marty kept her bed for two or three days, and then seemed to have completely recovered but for a slight internal disturbance, brought on by the concussion, and which did not improve.
One day Dr. Knight told me he feared very much that this would end in a kind of ataxia of the lower limbs – it might be sooner or later; indeed, it was Sir – 's opinion that it would be sure to do so in the end – that spinal paralysis would set in, and that the child would become a cripple for life, and for a life that would not be long.
I had to tell this to her father and mother.
Marty, however, recovered all her high spirits. It was as if nothing had happened or could happen, and during six months everything at Marsfield went on as usual but for the sickening fear that we three managed to conceal in our hearts, even from each other.
At length, one day as Marty and I were playing lawn‐tennis, she suddenly told me that her feet felt as if they were made of lead, and I knew that the terrible thing had come…
I must really pass over the next few months.
In the summer of the following year she could scarcely walk without assistance, and soon she had to go about in a bath‐chair.
Soon, also, she ceased to be conscious when her lower limbs were pinched and pricked till an interval of about a second had elapsed, and this interval increased every month. She had no natural consciousness of her legs and feet whatever unless she saw them, although she could move them still and even get in and out of bed, or in and out of her bath‐chair, without much assistance, so long as she could see her lower limbs. Often she would stumble and fall down, even on a grassy lawn. In the dark she could not control her movements at all.
She was also in constant pain, and her face took on permanently the expression that Barty's often wore when he thought he was going blind in Malines, although, like him in those days, she was always lively and droll, in spite of this heavy misfortune, which seemed to break every heart at Marsfield except her own.
For, alas! Barty Josselin, who has so lightened for us the sorrow of mere bereavement, and made quick‐coming death a little thing – for some of us, indeed, a lovely thing – has not taught us how to bear the sufferings of those we love, the woful ache of pity for pangs we are powerless to relieve and can only try to share.
Endeavor as I will, I find I cannot tell this part of my story as it should be told; it should be a beautiful story of sweet young feminine fortitude and heroic resignation – an angel's story.
During the four years that Martia's illness lasted the only comfort I could find in life was to be with her – reading to her, teaching her blaze, rowing her on the river, driving her, pushing or dragging her bath‐chair; but, alas! watching her fade day by day.
Strangely enough, she grew to be the tallest of all her sisters, and the most beautiful in the face; she was so wasted and thin she could hardly be said to have had a body or limbs at all.
I think the greatest pleasure she had was to lie and be sung to by Mary or her father, or played to by Roberta, or chatted to about domestic matters by Leah, or read to by me. She took the keenest interest in everything that concerned us all; she lived out of herself entirely, and from day to day, taking short views of life.
It filled her with animation to see the people who came to the house and talk with them; and among these she made many passionately devoted friends.
There were also poor children from the families of laborers in the neighborhood, in whom she had always taken a warm interest. She now organized them into regular classes, and taught and amused them and told them stories, sang funny songs to them, and clothed and fed them with nice things, and they grew to her an immense hobby and constant occupation.
She also became a quite surprising performer on the banjo, which her father had taught her when she was quite a little girl, and invented charming tunes and effects and modulations that had never been tried on that humble instrument before. She could have made a handsome living out of it, crippled as she was.
She seemed the busiest, drollest, and most contented person in Marsfield; she all but consoled us for the dreadful thing that had happened to herself, and laughingly pitied us for pitying her.
So much for the teaching of Barty Josselin, whose books she knew by heart, and constantly read and reread.
And thus, in spite of all, the old, happy, resonant cheerfulness gradually found its way back to Marsfield, as though nothing had happened; and poor broken Marty, who had always been our idol, became our goddess, our prop and mainstay, the angel in the house, the person for every one to tell their troubles to – little or big – their jokes, their good stories; there was never a laugh like hers, so charged with keen appreciation of the humorous thing, the relish of which would come back to her again and again at any time – even in the middle of the night when she could not always sleep for her pain; and she would laugh anew.
Ida Scatcherd and I, with good Nurse Sparrow to help, wished to take her to Italy – to Egypt – but she would not leave Marsfield, unless it were to spend the winter months with all of us at Lancaster Gate, or the autumn in the Highlands or on the coast of Normandy.
And indeed neither Barty nor Leah nor the rest could have got on without her; they would have had to come, too – brothers, sisters, young husbands, grandchildren, and all.
Never but once did she give way. It was one June evening, when I was reading to her some favorite short poems out of Browning's Men and Women on a small lawn surrounded with roses, and of which she was fond.
The rest of the family were on the river, except her father and mother, who were dressing to go and dine with some neighbors; for a wonder, as they seldom dined away from home.
The carriage drove up to the door to fetch them, and they came out on the lawn to wish us good‐night.
Never had I been more struck with the splendor of Barty and his wife, now verging towards middle age, as they bent over to kiss their daughter, and he cut capers and cracked little jokes to make her laugh.
Leah's hair was slightly gray and her magnificent figure somewhat matronly, but there were no other signs of autumn; her beautiful white skin was still as delicate as a baby's, her jet‐black eyes as bright and full, her teeth just as they were thirty years back.
Tall as she was, her husband towered over her, the finest and handsomest man of his age I have ever seen. And Marty gazed after them with her heart in her eyes as they drove off.
"How splendid they are, Uncle Bob!"
Then she looked down at her own shrunken figure and limbs – her long, wasted legs and her thin, slight feet that were yet so beautifully shaped.
And, hiding her face in her hands, she began to cry:
"And I'm their poor little daughter – oh dear, oh dear!"
She wept silently for a while, and I said nothing, but endured an agony such as I cannot describe.
Then she dried her eyes and smiled, and said:
"What a goose I am," and, looking at me —
"Oh! Uncle Bob, forgive me; I've made you very unhappy – it shall never happen again!"
Suddenly the spirit moved me to tell her the story of Martia.
Leah and Barty and I had often discussed whether she should be told this extraordinary thing, in which we never knew whether to believe or not, and which, if there were a possibility of its being true, concerned Marty so directly.
They settled that they would leave it entirely to me – to tell her or not, as my own instinct would prompt me, should the opportunity occur.
My instinct prompted me to do so now. I shall not forget that evening.
The full moon rose before the sun had quite set, and I talked on and on. The others came in to dinner. She and I had some dinner brought to us out there, and on I talked – and she could scarcely eat for listening. I wrapped her well up, and lit pipe after pipe, and went on talking, and a nightingale sang, but quite unheard by Marty Josselin.
She did not even hear her sister Mary, whose voice went lightly up to heaven through the open window:
"Oh that we two were maying!"
And when we parted that night she thanked and kissed me so effusively I felt that I had been happily inspired.
"I believe every word of it's true; I know it, I feel it! Uncle Bob, you have changed my life; I have often desponded when nobody knew – but never again! Dear papa! Only think of him! As if any human being alive could write what he has written without help from above or outside. Of course it's all true; I sometimes think I can almost remember things… I'm sure I can."
Barty and Leah were well pleased with me when they came home that night.
That Marty was doomed to an early death did not very deeply distress them. It is astonishing how lightly they thought of death, these people for whom life seemed so full of joy; but that she should ever be conscious of the anguish of her lot while she lived was to them intolerable – a haunting preoccupation.
To me, a narrower and more selfish person, Marty had almost become to me life itself – her calamity had made her mine forever; and life without her had become a thing not to be conceived: her life was my life.
That life of hers was to be even shorter than we thought, and I love to think that what remained of it was made so smooth and sweet by what I told her that night.
I read all Martia's blaze letters to her, and helped her to read them for herself, and so did Barty. She got to know them by heart – especially the last; she grew to talk as Martia wrote; she told me of strange dreams she had often had – dreams she had told Sparrow and her own brothers and sisters when she was a child – wondrous dreams, in their seeming confirmation of what seemed to us so impossible. Her pains grew slighter and ceased.
And now her whole existence had become a dream – a tranquil, happy dream; it showed itself in her face, its transfigured, unearthly beauty – in her cheerful talk, her eager sympathy; a kind of heavenly pity she seemed to feel for those who had to go on living out their normal length of days. And always the old love of fun and frolic and pretty tunes.
Her father would make her laugh till she cried, and the same fount of tears would serve when Mary sang Brahms and Schubert and Lassen to her – and Roberta played Chopin and Schumann by the hour.
So she might have lived on for a few years – four or five – even ten. But she died at seventeen, of mere influenza, very quickly and without much pain. Her father and mother were by her bedside when her spirit passed away, and Dr. Knight, who had brought her into the world.
She woke from a gentle doze and raised her head, and called out in a clear voice:
"Barty – Leah – come, to me, come!"
And fell back dead.
Barty bowed his head and face on her hand, and remained there as if asleep. It was Leah who drew her eyelids down.
An hour later Dr. Knight came to me, his face distorted with grief.
"It's all over?" I said.
"Yes, it's all over."
"And Leah?"
"Mrs. Josselin is with her husband. She's a noble woman; she seems to bear it well."
"And Barty?"
"Barty Josselin is no more."