Chapter 11

I don't believe I ever gave my father another bad quarter of an hour from that moment. I even went to church on Sunday mornings quite regularly; not his own somewhat severe place of worship, it is true! But the Foundling Hospital. There, in the gallery, would I sit with my sister, and listen to Miss Dolby and Miss Louisa Pyne and Mr. Lawler the bass--and a tenor and alto whose names I cannot recall; and I thought they sang as they ought to have sung, and was deeply moved and comforted--more than by any preachments in the world; and just in the opposite gallery sat Leah with her mother; and I grew fond of nice clean little boys and girls who sing pretty hymns in unison; and afterwards I watched them eat their roast beef, small mites of three and four or five, some of them, and thought how touching it all was--I don't know why! Love or grief? or that touch of nature that makes the whole world kin at about 1 P.M. on Sunday?

One would think that Barty had exerted a bad influence on me, since he seems to have kept me out of all this that was so sweet and new and fresh and wholesome!

He would have been just as susceptible to such impressions as I; even more so, if the same chance had arisen for him--for he was singularly fond of children, the smaller and the poorer the better, even gutter children! and their poor mothers loved him, he was so jolly and generous and kind.

Sometimes I got a letter from him in Blaze, my father's shorthand cipher; it was always brief and bright and hopeful, and full of jokes and funny sketches. And I answered him in Blaze that was long and probably dull.

All that I will tell of him now is not taken from his Blaze letters, but from what he has told me later, by word of mouth--for he was as fond of talking of himself as I of listening--since he was droll and sincere and without guile or vanity; and would have been just as sympathetic a listener as I, if I had cared to talk about Mr. Robert Maurice, of Barge Yard, Bucklersbury. Besides, I am good at hearing between the words and reading between the lines, and all that--and love to exercise this faculty.

* * * * *

Well, he reached Paris in due time, and took a small bedroom on a third floor in the Rue du Faubourg Poissonniere--over a cheap hatter's--opposite the Conservatoire de Musique.

On the first night he was awoke by a terrible invasion--such malodorous swarms of all sizes, from a tiny brown speck to a full-grown lentil, that they darkened his bed; and he slept on the tiled floor after making an island of himself by pouring cold water all round him as a kind of moat; and so he slept for a week of nights, until he had managed to poison off most of these invaders with _poudre insecticide_ ... "mort aux punaises!"

In the daytime he first of all went for a swim at the Passy baths--an immense joy, full of the ghosts of bygone times; then he would spend the rest of his day revisiting old haunts--often sitting on the edge of the stone fountain in the rond-point of the Avenue du Prince Imperial, or de l'Imperatrice, or whatever it was--to gaze comfortably at the outside of the old school, which was now a pensionnat de demoiselles: soon to be pulled down and make room for a new house altogether. He did not attempt to invade these precincts of maiden innocence; but gazed and gazed, and remembered and realized and dreamt: it all gave him unspeakable excitement, and a strange tender wistful melancholy delight for which there is no name. Je connais ca! I also, ghostlike, have paced round the haunts of my childhood.

When the joy of this faded, as it always must when indulged in too freely, he amused himself by sitting in his bedroom and painting Leah's portrait, enlarged and in oils; partly from the very vivid image he had preserved of her in his mind, partly from the stolen photograph. At first he got it very like; then he lost all the likeness and could not recover it; and he worked and worked till he got stupid over it, and his mental image faded quite away.

But for a time this minute examination of the photograph (through a powerful lens he bought on purpose), and this delving search into his own deep consciousness of her, into his keen remembrance of every detail of feature and color and shade of expression, made him realize and idealize and foresee what the face might be some day--and what its owner might become.

And a horror of his life in London came over him like a revelation--a blast--a horrible surprise! Mere sin is ugly when it's no more; and _so_ beastly to remember, unless the sinner be thoroughly acclimatized; and Barty was only twenty-two, and hated deceit and cruelty in any form. Oh, poor, weak, frail fellow-sinner--whether Vivien or Guinevere! How sadly unjust that loathing and satiety and harsh male contempt should kill man's ruth and pity for thee, that wast so kind to man! What a hellish after-math!

Poor Barty hadn't the ghost of a notion how to set to work about becoming a painter, and didn't know a soul in Paris he cared to go and consult, although there were many people he might have discovered whom he had known: old school-fellows, and friends of the Archibald Rohans--who would have been only too glad.

So he took to wandering listlessly about, lunching and dining at cheap suburban restaurants, taking long walks, sitting on benches, leaning over parapets, and longing to tell people who he was, his age, how little money he'd got, what lots of friends he had in England, what a nice little English girl he knew, whose portrait he didn't know how to paint--any idiotic nonsense that came into his head, so at least he might talk about something or somebody that interested him.

There is no city like Paris, no crowd like a Parisian crowd, to make you feel your solitude if you are alone in its midst!

At night he read French novels in bed and drank eau sucree and smoked till he was sleepy; then he cunningly put out his light, and lit it again in a quarter of an hour or so, and exploded what remained of the invading hordes as they came crawling down the wall from above. Their numbers were reduced at last; they were disappearing. Then he put out his candle for good, and went to sleep happy--having at least scored for once in the twenty-four hours. Mort aux punaises!

Twice he went to the Opera Comique, and saw _Richard Coeur de Lion_ and _le Pre aux Clercs_ from the gallery, and was disappointed, and couldn't understand why _he_ shouldn't sing as well as that--he thought he could sing much better, poor fellow! he had a delightful voice, and charm, and the sense of tune and rhythm, and could please quite wonderfully--but he had no technical knowledge whatever, and couldn't be depended upon to sing a song twice the same! He trusted to the inspiration of the moment--like an amateur.

Of course he had to be very economical, even about candle ends, and almost liked such economy for a change; but he got sick of his loneliness, beyond expression--he was a fish out of water.

Then he took it into his head to go and copy a picture at the Louvre--an old master; in this he felt he could not go wrong. He obtained the necessary permission, bought a canvas six feet high, and sat himself before a picture by Nicolas Poussin, I think: a group of angelic women carrying another woman though the air up to heaven.

They were not very much to his taste, but more so than any others. His chief notion about women in pictures was that they should be very beautiful--since they cannot make themselves agreeable in any other way; and they are not always so in the works of the great masters. At least, _he_ thought not. These are matters of taste, of course.

He had no notion of how to divide his canvas into squares--a device by which one makes it easier to get the copy into proper proportion, it seems. He began by sketching the head of the principal woman roughly in the middle of his canvas, and then he wanted to begin painting it at once--he was so impatient.

Students, female students especially, came and interested themselves in his work, and some _rapins_ asked him questions, and tried to help him and give him tips. But the more they told him, the more helpless and hopeless he grew. He soon felt conscious he was becoming quite a funny man again--a centre of interest--in a new line; but it gave him no pleasure whatever.

After a week of this mistaken drudgery he sat despondent one afternoon on a bench in the Champs Elysees and watched the gay people, and thought himself very down on his luck; he was tired and hot and miserable--it was the beginning of July. If he had known how, he would almost have shed tears. His loneliness was not to be borne, and his longing to feel once more the north had become a chronic ache.

A tall, thin, shabby man came and sat by his side, and made himself a cigarette, and hummed a tune--a well-known quartier-latin song--about "Mon Aldegonde, ma blonde," and "Ma Rodogune, ma brune."

Barty just glanced at this jovial person and found he didn't look jovial at all, but rather sad and seedy and out at elbows--by no means of the kind that the fair Aldegonde or her dark sister would have much to say to.

Also that he wore very strong spectacles, and that his brown eyes, when turned Barty's way, vibrated with a quick, tremulous motion and sideways, as if they had the "gigs."

Much moved and excited, Barty got up and put out his hand to the stranger, and said:

"Bonjour, Monsieur Bonzig! comment allez-vous?"

Bonzig opened his eyes at this well-dressed Briton (for Barty had clothes to last him a French lifetime).

"Pardonnez-moi, monsieur--mais je n'ai pas l'honneur de vous remettre!"

"Je m'appelle Josselin--de chez Brossard!"

"Ah! Mon Dieu, mon cher, mon tres-cher!" said Bonzig, and got up and seized Barty's both hands--and all but hugged him.

"Mais quel bonheur de vous revoir! Je pense a vous si souvent, et a Ouittebe! comme vous etes change--et quel beau garcon vous etes! Qui vous aurait reconnu! Dieu de Dieu--c'est un reve! Je n'en reviens pas!" etc., etc....

And they walked off together, and told the other each an epitome of his history since they parted; and dined together cheaply, and spent a happy evening walking up and down the boulevards, and smoking many cigarettes--from the Madeleine to the Porte St.-Martin and back--again and again.

"Non, mon cher Josselin," said Bonzig, in answer to a question of Barty's--"non, I hare not yet seen the sea ..; it will come in time. But at least I am no longer a damned usher (un sacre pion d'etudes); I am an artist--un peintre de marines--at last! It is a happy existence. I fear my talent is not very imposing, but my perseverance is exceptional, and I am only forty-five. Anyhow, I am able to support myself--not in splendor, certainly; but my wants are few and my health is perfect. I will put you up to many things, my dear boy.... We will storm the citadel of fame together...."

Bonzig had a garret somewhere, and painted in the studio of a friend, not far from Barty's lodging. This friend, one Lirieux, was a very clever young man--a genius, according to Bonzig. He drew illustrations on wood with surprising quickness and facility and verve, and painted little oil-pictures of sporting life--a garde champetre in a wood with his dog, or with his dog on a dusty road, or crossing a stream, or getting over a stile, and so forth. The dog was never left out; and these things he would sell for twenty, thirty, even fifty francs. He painted very quick and very well. He was also a capital good fellow, industrious and cultivated and refined, and full of self-respect.

Next to his studio he had a small bedroom which he shared with a younger brother, who had just got a small government appointment that kept him at work all day, in some ministere. In this studio Bonzig painted his marines--still helping himself from _La France Maritime_, as he used to do at Brossard's.

He was good at masts and cordage against an evening sky--"l'heure ou le jaune de Naples rentre dans la nature," as he called it. He was also excellent at foam, and far-off breakers, and sea-gulls, but very bad at the human figure--sailors and fishermen and their wives. Sometimes Lirieux would put one in for him with a few dabs.

As soon as Bonzig had finished a picture, which didn't take very long, he carried it round, still wet, to the small dealers, bearing it very carefully aloft, so as not to smudge it. Sometimes (if there were a sailor by Lirieux) he would get five or even ten francs for it; and then it was "Mon Aldegonde" with him all the rest of the day; for success always took the form, in his case, of nasally humming that amorous refrain.

But it very often happened that he was dumb, poor fellow--no supper, no song!

Lirieux conceived such a liking for Barty that he insisted on taking him into his studio as a pupil-assistant, and setting him to draw things under his own eye; and Barty would fill Bonzig's French sea pieces with Whitby fishermen, and Bonzig got to sing "Mon Aldegonde" much oftener than before.

And chumming with these two delightful men, Barty grew to know a clean, quiet happiness which more than made up for lost past splendors and dissipations and gay dishonor. He wasn't even funny; they wouldn't have understood it. Well-bred Frenchmen don't understand English fun--not even in the quartier latin, as a general rule. Not that it's too subtle for them; _that's_ not why!

Thus pleasantly August wore itself away, Bonzig and Barty nearly always dining together for about a franc apiece, including the waiter, and not badly. Bonzig knew all the cheap eating-houses in Paris, and what each was specially renowned for--"bonne friture," "fricassee de lapin," "pommes sautees," "soupe aux choux," etc., etc.

Then, after dinner, a long walk and talk and cigarettes--or they would look in at a cafe chantant, a bal de barriere, the gallery of a cheap theatre--then a bock outside a cafe--et bonsoir la compagnie!

On September the 1st, Lirieux and his brother went to see their people in the south, leaving the studio to Bonzig and Barty, who made the most of it, though greatly missing the genial young painter, both as a companion and a master and guide.

One beautiful morning Bonzig called for Barty at his cremerie, and proposed they should go by train to some village near Paris and spend a happy day in the country, lunching on bread and wine and sugar at some little roadside inn. Bonzig made a great deal of this lunch. It had evidently preoccupied him.

Barty was only too delighted. They went on the imperiale of the Versailles train and got out at Ville d'Avray, and found the kind of little pothouse they wanted. And Barty had to admit that no better lunch for the price could be than "small blue wine" sweetened with sugar, and a hunch of bread sopped in it.

Then they had a long walk in pretty woods and meadows, sketching by the way, chatting to laborers and soldiers and farm-people, smoking endless cigarettes of caporal; and finally they got back to Paris the way they came--so hungry that Barty proposed they should treat themselves for once to a "prix-fixe" dinner at Carmagnol's, in the Passage Choiseul, where they gave you hors-d'oeuvres, potage, three courses and dessert and a bottle of wine, for two francs fifty--and everything scrupulously clean.

So to the Passage Choiseul they went; but just on the threshold of the famous restaurant (which filled the entire arcade with its appetizing exhalations) Bonzig suddenly remembered, to his great regret, that close by there lived a young married couple of the name of Lousteau, who were great friends of his, and who expected him to dine with them at least once a week.

"I haven't been near them for a fortnight, mon cher, and it is just their dinner hour. I am afraid I must really just run in and eat an _aile de poulet_ and a _peche au vin_ with them, and give them of my news, or they will be mortally offended. I'll be back with you just when you are '_entre la poire et le fromage_'--so, sans adieu!" and he bolted.

Barty went in and selected his menu; and waiting for his hors-d'oeuvre, he just peeped out of the door and looked up and down the arcade, which was always festive and lively at that hour.

To his great surprise he saw Bonzig leisurely flaning about with his cigarette in his mouth, his hands in his pockets, his long spectacled nose in the air--gazing at the shop windows. Suddenly the good man dived into a baker's shop, and came out again in half a minute with a large brown roll, and began to munch it--still gazing at the shop windows, and apparently quite content.

Barty rushed after and caught hold of him, and breathlessly heaped bitter reproaches on him for his base and unfriendly want of confidence--snatched his roll and threw it away, dragged him by main force into Carmagnol's, and made him order the dinner he preferred and sit opposite.

"Ma foi, mon cher!" said Bonzig--"I own to you that I am almost at the end of my resources for the moment--and also that the prospect of a good dinner in your amiable company is the reverse of disagreeable to me. I thank you in advance, with all my heart!"

"My dear M'sieur Bonzig," says Barty, "you will wound me deeply if you don't look on me like a brother, as I do you; I can't tell you how deeply you _have_ wounded me already! Give me your word of honor that you will share ma mangeaille with me till I haven't a sou left!"

And so they made it up, and had a capital dinner and a capital evening, and Barty insisted that in future they should always mess together at his expense till better days--and they did.

But Barty found that his own money was just giving out, and wrote to his bankers in London for more. Somehow it didn't arrive for nearly a week; and they knew at last what it was to dine for five sous each (2-1/2_d._)--with loss of appetite just before the meal instead of after.

Of course Barty might very well have pawned his watch or his scarf-pin; but whatever trinkets he possessed had been given him by his beloved Lady Archibald--everything pawnable he had in the world, even his guitar! And he could not bear the idea of taking them to the "Mont de Piete."

So he was well pleased one Sunday morning when his remittance arrived, and he went in search of his friend, that they might compensate themselves for a week's abstinence by a famous dejeuner. But Bonzig was not to be found; and Barty spent that day alone, and Gorged in solitude and guzzled in silence--moult tristement, a l'anglaise.

He was aroused from his first sleep that night by the irruption of Bonzig in a tremendous state of excitement. It seems that a certain Baron (whose name I've forgotten), and whose little son the ex-usher had once coached in early Latin and Greek, had written, begging him to call and see him at his chateau near Melun; that Bonzig had walked there that very day--thirty miles; and found the Baron was leaving next morning for a villa he possessed near Etretat, and wished him to join him there the day after, and stay with him for a couple of months--to coach his son in more classics for a couple of hours in the forenoon.

Bonzig was to dispose of the rest of his time as he liked, except that he was commissioned to paint six "marines" for the baronial dining-room; and the Baron had most considerately given him four hundred francs in advance!

"So, then, to-morrow afternoon at six, my dear Josselin, you dine with _me_, for once--not in the Passage Choiseul this time, good as it is there! But at Babet's, en plein Palais Royal! un jour de separation, vous comprenez! the dinner will be good, I promise you: a calf's head a la vinaigrette--they are famous for that, at Babet's--and for their Pauillac and their St.-Estephe; at least, I'm told so! nous en ferons l'experience.... And now I bid you good-night, as I have to be up before the day--so many things to buy and settle and arrange--first of all to procure myself a 'maillot' and a 'peignoir,' and shoes for the beach! I know where to get these things much cheaper than at the seaside. Oh! la mer, la mer! Enfin je vais piquer ma tete [take my header] la dedans--_et pas plus tard qu'apres-demain soir_.... A demain, tres-cher camarade--six heures--chez Babet!"

And, delirious with joyful anticipations, the good Bonzig ran away--all but "piquant sa tete" down the narrow staircase, and whistling "Mon Aldegonde" at the very top of his whistle; and even outside he shouted:

"Ouile--me--sekile ro, sekile ro, sekile ro ... Ouile--me--sekile ro Tat brinn my ladde ome!"

He had to be silenced by a sergent de ville.

And next day they dined at Babet's, and Bonzig was so happy he had to beg pardon for his want of feeling at seeming so exuberant "un jour de separation! mais venez aussi, Josselin--nous piquerons nos tetes ensemble, et nagerons de conserve...."

But Barty could not afford this little outing, and he was very sad--with a sadness that not all the Pauillac and St.-Estephe in M. Babet's cellars could have dispelled.

He made his friend a present of a beautiful pair of razors--English razors, which he no longer needed, since he no longer meant to shave--"en signe de mon deuil!" as he said. They had been the gift of Lord Archibald in happier days. Alas! he had forgotten to give his uncle Archie the traditional halfpenny, but he took good care to extract a sou from le Grand Bonzig!

So ended this little episode in Barty's life. He never saw Bonzig again, nor heard from him, and _of_ him only once more. That sou was wasted.

It was at Blankenberghe, on the coast of Belgium, that he at last had news of him--a year later--at the cafe on the plage, and in such an odd and unexpected manner that I can't help telling how it happened.

One afternoon a corner of the big coffee-room was being arranged for private theatricals, in which Barty was to perform the part of a waiter. He had just borrowed the real waiter's jacket and apron, and was dusting the little tables for the amusement of Mlle. Solange, the dame de comptoir, and of the waiter, Prosper, who had on Barty's own shooting-jacket.

Suddenly an old gentleman came in and beckoned to Barty and ordered a demi-tasse and petit-verre. There were no other customers at that hour.

Mlle. Solange was horrified; but Barty insisted on waiting on the Old gentleman in person, and helped him to his coffee and pousse-cafe with all the humorous grace I can so well imagine, and handed him the _Independance Belge_, and went back to superintend the arrangements for the coming play.

Presently the old gentleman looked up from his paper and became interested, and soon he grew uneasy, and finally he rose and went up to Barty and bowed, and said (in French, of course):

"Monsieur, I have made a very stupid mistake. I am near-sighted, and that must be my apology. Besides, you have revenged yourself 'avec tant d'esprit,' that you will not bear me _rancune_! May I ask you to accept my card, with my sincere excuses?..."

And lo! it was Bonzig's famous Baron! Barty immediately inquired after his lost friend.

"Bonzig? Ah, monsieur--what a terrible tragedy! Poor Bonzig, the Best of men--he came to me at Etretat. I invited him there from Sheer friendship! He was drowned the very evening he arrived.

"He went and bathed after sunset--on his own responsibility and without mentioning it to any one. How it happened I don't know--nobody knows. He was a good swimmer, I believe, but very blind without his glasses. He undressed behind a rock on the shore, which is against the regulations. His body was not found till two days after, three leagues down the coast.

"He had an aged mother, who came to Etretat. It was harrowing! They were people who had seen better days," etc., etc., etc.

And so no more of le Grand Bonzig.