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.
[Illustration: MARTY]
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."