Darker and darker it grows. I no longer make out the familiar trees and hedges, and forget how cold it is and how dreary.
"Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit—
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées:
Triste—et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit."
"Je marcherai les yeux fixés sur mes pensées,
Sans rien voir au dehors, sans entendre aucun bruit—
Seul, inconnu, le dos courbé, les mains croisées:
Triste—et le jour pour moi sera comme la nuit."
(This is Victor Hugo, not Barty Josselin.)
It's really far away I am—across the sea; across the years, O Posthumus! in a sunny play‑ground that has been built over long ago, or overgrown with lawns and flower‑beds and costly shrubs.
Up rises some vague little rudiment of a hint of a ghost of a sunny, funny old French remembrance long forgotten—a brand‑new old remembrance—a kind of will‑o'‑the‑wisp. Chut! my soul stalks it on tiptoe, while these earthly legs bear this poor old body of clay, by mere reflex action, straight home to the beautiful Elisabethan house on the hill; through the great warm hall, up the broad oak stairs, into the big cheerful music‑room like a studio—ruddy and bright with the huge log‑fire opposite the large window. All is on an ample scale at Marsfield, people and things! and I! sixteen stone, good Lord!
How often that window has been my beacon on dark nights! I used to watch for it from the train—a landmark in a land of milk and honey—the kindliest light that ever led me yet on earth.
I sit me down in my own particular chimney‑corner, in my own cane‑bottomed chair by the fender, and stare at the blaze with my friend the mastiff. An old war‑battered tomcat Barty was fond of jumps up and makes friends too. There goes my funny little French remembrance, trying to fly up the chimney like a burnt love‑letter....
Barty's eldest daughter (Roberta), a stately, tall Hebe in black, brings me a very sizable cup of tea, just as I like it. A well‑grown little son of hers, a very Ganymede, beau comme le jour, brings me a cigarette, and insists on lighting it for me himself. I like that too.
Another daughter of Barty's, "la rossignolle," as we call her—though there is no such word that I know of—goes to the piano and sings little French songs of forty, fifty years ago—songs that she has learnt from her dear papa.