"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: