Part 16
It must be remembered, in extenuation, that he was very young, and not very wise: no philosopher, no scholar--just a painter of lovely pictures; only that and nothing more. Also, that he was reading Mr. Darwin's immortal book for the third time, and it was a little too strong for him; also, that all this happened in the early sixties, long ere Religion had made up her mind to meet Science half-way, and hobnob and kiss and be friends. Alas! before such a lying down of the lion and the lamb can ever come to pass, Religion will have to perform a larger share of the journey than half, I fear!
Then, still carried away by the flood of his own eloquence (for he had never had such an innings as this, no such a listener), he again apostrophized the dog Tray, who had been growing somewhat inattentive (like the reader, perhaps), in language more beautiful than ever:
"Oh, to be like you, Tray--and secrete love and good-will from morn till night, from night till morning--like saliva, without effort! with never a moment's cessation of flow, even in disgrace and humiliation! How much better to love than to be loved--to love as you do, my Tray--so warmly, so easily, so unremittingly--to forgive all wrongs and neglect and injustice so quickly and so well--and forget a kindness never! Lucky dog that you are!
"'Oh! could I feel as I have felt, or be as I have been, Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished scene, As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish tho' they be, So 'midst this withered waste of life those tears would flow to me!'
"What do you think of those lines, Tray? I _love_ them, because my mother taught them to me when I was about your age--six years old, or seven! and before the bard who wrote them had fallen; like Lucifer, son of the morning! Have you ever heard of Lord Byron, Tray? He too, like Ulysses, loved a dog, and many people think that's about the best there is to be said of him nowadays! Poor Humpty Dumpty! Such a swell as he once was! 'Not all the king's horses, nor all the--'"
Here Tray jumped up suddenly and bolted--he saw some one else he was fond of, and ran to meet him. It was the vicar, coming out of his vicarage.
A very nice-looking vicar--fresh, clean, alert, well tanned by sun and wind and weather--a youngish vicar still; tall, stout, gentlemanlike, shrewd, kindly, wordly, a trifle pompous, and authoritative more than a trifle; not much given to abstract speculation, and thinking fifty times more of any sporting and orthodox young country squire, well-inched and well-acred (and well-whiskered), than of all the painters in Christendom.
"'When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war,'" thought Little Billee; and he felt a little uncomfortable. Alice's father had never loomed so big and impressive before, or so distressingly nice to look at.
"Welcome, my Apelles, to your ain countree, which is growing quite proud of you, I declare! Young Lord Archie Waring was saying only last night that he wished he had half your talent! He's _crazed_ about painting, you know, and actually wants to be a painter himself! The poor dear old marquis is quite sore about it!"
With this happy exordium the parson stopped and shook hands; and they both stood for a while, looking seaward. The parson said the usual things about the sea--its blueness; its grayness; its greenness; its beauty; its sadness; its treachery.
"'Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable sea!'"
"Who indeed!" answered Little Billee, quite agreeing. "I vote _we_ don't, at all events." So they turned inland.
The parson said the usual things about the land (from the country-gentleman's point of view), and the talk began to flow quite pleasantly, with quoting of the usual poets, and capping of quotations in the usual way--for they had known each other many years, both here and in London. Indeed, the vicar had once been Little Billee's tutor.
And thus, amicably, they entered a small wooded hollow. Then the vicar, turning of a sudden his full blue gaze on the painter, asked, sternly:
"What book's that you've got in your hand, Willie?"
"A--a--it's the _Origin of Species_, by Charles Darwin. I'm very f-f-fond of it. I'm reading it for the third time.... It's very g-g-good. It _accounts_ for things, you know."
Then, after a pause, and still more sternly:
"What place of worship do you most attend in London--especially of an evening, William?"
Then stammered Little Billee, all self-control forsaking him:
"I d-d-don't attend any place of worship at all, morning, afternoon, or evening. I've long given up going to church altogether. I can only be frank with you; I'll tell you why...."
And as they walked along the talk drifted on to very momentous subjects indeed, and led, unfortunately, to a serious falling out--for which probably both were to blame--and closed in a distressful way at the other end of the little wooded hollow--a way most sudden and unexpected, and quite grievous to relate. When they emerged into the open the parson was quite white, and the painter crimson.
"Sir," said the parson, squaring himself up to more than his full height and breadth and dignity, his face big with righteous wrath, his voice full of strong menace--"sir, you're--you're a--you're a _thief_, sir, a _thief_! You're trying to _rob me of my Saviour_! Never you dare to darken _my_ door-step again!"
"Sir," said Little Billee, with a bow, "if it comes to calling names, you're--you're a--no; you're Alice's father; and whatever else you are besides, I'm another for trying to be honest with a parson; so good-morning to you."
And each walked off in an opposite direction, stiff as pokers; and Tray stood between, looking first at one receding figure, then at the other, disconsolate.
And thus Little Billee found out that he could no more lie than he could fly. And so he did not marry sweet Alice after all, and no doubt it was ordered for her good and his. But there was tribulation for many days in the house of Bagot, and for many months in one tender, pure, and pious bosom.
And the best and the worst of it all is that, not very many years after, the good vicar--more fortunate than most clergymen who dabble in stocks and shares--grew suddenly very rich through a lucky speculation in Irish beer, and suddenly, also, took to thinking seriously about things (as a man of business should)--more seriously than he had ever thought before. So at least the story goes in North Devon, and it is not so new as to be incredible. Little doubts grew into big ones--big doubts resolved themselves into downright negations. He quarrelled with his bishop; he quarrelled with his dean; he even quarrelled with his "poor dear old marquis," who died before there was time to make it up again. And finally he felt it his duty, in conscience, to secede from a Church which had become too narrow to hold him, and took himself and his belongings to London, where at least he could breathe. But there he fell into a great disquiet, for the long habit of feeling himself always _en évidence_--of being looked up to and listened to without contradiction; of exercising influence and authority in spiritual matters (and even temporal); of impressing women, especially, with his commanding presence, his fine sonorous voice, his lofty brow, so serious and smooth, his soft, big, waving hands, which soon lost their country tan--all this had grown as a second nature to him, the breath of his nostrils, a necessity of his life. So he rose to be the most popular Unitarian preacher of his day, and pretty broad at that.
But his dear daughter Alice, she stuck to the old faith, and married a venerable High-Church archdeacon, who very cleverly clutched at and caught her and saved her for himself just as she stood shivering on the very brink of Rome; and they were neither happy nor unhappy together--_un ménage bourgeois, ni beau ni laid, ni bon ni mauvais_. And thus, alas! the bond of religious sympathy, that counts for so much in united families, no longer existed between father and daughter, and the heart's division divided them. _Ce que c'est que de nous!_ ... The pity of it!
And so no more of sweet Alice with hair so brown.
Part Sixth
'"Vraiment, la reine auprès d'elle était laide Quand, vers le soir, Elle passait sur le pont de Tolède En corset noir! Un chapelet du temps de Charlemagne Ornait son cou.... _La vent qui vient à travers la montagne Me rendra fou!_
"'Dansez, chantez, villageois! la nuit tombe.... Sabine, un jour, A tout donné--sa beauté de colombe, Et son amour-- Pour l'anneau d'or du Comte de Soldagne, Pour un bijou.... _La vent qui vient à travers la montagne M'a rendu fou!_'"
Behold our three musketeers of the brush once more reunited in Paris, famous, after long years.
In emulation of the good Dumas, we will call it "cinq ans après." It was a little more.
Taffy stands for Porthos and Athos rolled into one, since he is big and good-natured, and strong enough to "assommer un homme d'un coup de poing," and also stately and solemn, of aristocratic and romantic appearance, and not too fat--not too much ongbong-pwang, as the Laird called it--and also he does not dislike a bottle of wine, or even two, and looks as if he had a history.
The Laird, of course, is d'Artagnan, since he sells his pictures well, and by the time we are writing of has already become an Associate of the Royal Academy; like Quentin Durward, this d'Artagnan was a Scotsman:
"Ah, was na he a Roguy, this piper of Dundee!"
And Little Billee, the dainty friend of duchesses, must stand for Aramis, I fear! It will not do to push the simile too far; besides, unlike the good Dumas, one has a conscience. One does not play ducks and drakes with historical facts, or tamper with historical personages. And if Athos, Porthos & Co. are not historical by this time, I should like to know who are!
Well, so are Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee--_tout ce qu'il y a de plus historiques_!
Our three friends, well groomed, frock-coated, shirt-collared within an inch of their lives, duly scarfed and scarf-pinned, chimney-pot-hatted, and most beautifully trousered, and balmorally booted, or neatly spatted (or whatever was most correct at the time), are breakfasting together on coffee, rolls, and butter at a little round table in the huge court-yard of an immense caravanserai, paved with asphalt, and covered in at the top with a glazed roof that admits the sun and keeps out the rain--and the air.
A magnificent old man as big as Taffy, in black velvet coat and breeches and black silk stockings, and a large gold chain round his neck and chest, looks down like Jove from a broad flight of marble steps--as though to welcome the coming guests, who arrive in cabs and railway omnibuses through a huge archway on the boulevard, or to speed those who part through a lesser archway opening on to a side street.
"Bon voyage, messieurs et dames!"
At countless other little tables other voyagers are breakfasting or ordering breakfast; or, having breakfasted, are smoking and chatting and looking about. It is a babel of tongues--the cheerfulest, busiest, merriest scene in the world, apparently the costly place of rendezvous for all wealthy Europe and America; an atmosphere of bank-notes and gold.
Already Taffy has recognized (and been recognized by) half a dozen old fellow-Crimeans, of unmistakable military aspect like himself; and three canny Scotsmen have discreetly greeted the Laird; and as for Little Billee, he is constantly jumping up from his breakfast and running to this table or that, drawn by some irresistible British smile of surprised and delighted female recognition: "What, _you_ here? How nice! Come over to hear la Svengali, I suppose."
At the top of the marble steps is a long terrace, with seats and people sitting, from which tall glazed doors, elaborately carved and gilded, give access to luxurious drawing-rooms, dining-rooms, reading-rooms, lavatories, postal and telegraph offices; and all round and about are huge square green boxes, out of which grow tropical and exotic evergreens all the year round--with beautiful names that I have forgotten. And leaning against these boxes are placards announcing what theatrical or musical entertainments will take place in Paris that day or night; and the biggest of these placards (and the most fantastically decorated) informs the cosmopolite world that Madame Svengali intends to make her first appearance in Paris that very evening, at nine punctually, in the Cirque des Bashibazoucks, Rue St. Honoré!
Our friends had only arrived the previous night, but they had managed to secure stalls a week beforehand. No places were any longer to be got for love or money. Many people had come to Paris on purpose to hear la Svengali--many famous musicians from England and everywhere else--but they would have to wait many days.
The fame of her was like a rolling snowball that had been rolling all over Europe for the last two years--wherever there was snow to be picked up in the shape of golden ducats.
Their breakfast over, Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee, cigar in mouth, arm in arm, the huge Taffy in the middle (_comme autrefois_), crossed the sunshiny boulevard into the shade, and went down the Rue de la Paix, through the Place Vendôme and the Rue Castiglione to the Rue de Rivoli--quite leisurely, and with a tender midriff-warming sensation of freedom and delight at almost every step.
Arrived at the corner pastry-cook's, they finished the stumps of their cigars as they looked at the well-remembered show in the window; then they went in and had, Taffy a Madeleine, the Laird a baba, and Little Billee a Savarin--and each, I regret to say, a liqueur-glass of _rhum de la Jamaïque_.
After this they sauntered through the Tuileries Gardens, and by the quay to their favorite Pont des Arts, and looked up and down the river--_comme autrefois_!
It is an enchanting prospect at any time and under any circumstances; but on a beautiful morning in mid-October, when you haven't seen it for five years, and are still young! and almost every stock and stone that meets your eye, every sound, every scent, has some sweet and subtle reminder for you--
Let the reader have no fear. I will not attempt to describe it. I shouldn't know where to begin (nor when to leave off!).
Not but what many changes had been wrought; many old landmarks were missing. And among them, as they found out a few minutes later, and much to their chagrin, the good old Morgue!
They inquired of a _gardien de la paix_, who told them that a new Morgue--"une bien jolie Morgue, ma foi!"--and much more commodious and comfortable than the old one, had been built beyond Notre Dame, a little to the right.
"Messieurs devraient voir ça--on y est très bien!"
But Notre Dame herself was still there, and la Sainte Chapelle, and Le Pont Neuf, and the equestrian statue of Henri IV. _C'est toujours ça!_
And as they gazed and gazed, each framed unto himself, mentally, a little picture of the Thames they had just left--and thought of Waterloo Bridge, and St. Paul's, and London--but felt no homesickness whatever, no desire to go back!
And looking down the river westward there was but little change.
On the left-hand side the terraces and garden of the Hôtel de la Rochemartel (the sculptured entrance of which was in the Rue de Lille) still overtopped the neighboring houses and shaded the quay with tall trees, whose lightly falling leaves yellowed the pavement for at least a hundred yards of frontage--or backage, rather; for this was but the rear of that stately palace.
"I wonder if l'Zouzou has come into his dukedom yet?" said Taffy.
And Taffy the realist, Taffy the modern of moderns, also said many beautiful things about old historical French dukedoms; which, in spite of their plentifulness, were so much more picturesque than English ones, and constituted a far more poetical and romantic link with the past; partly on account of their beautiful, high-sounding names!
"Amaury de Brissac de Roncesvaulx de la Rochemartel-Boisségur was a generous mouthful! Why, the very sound of it is redolent of the twelfth century! Not even Howard of Norfolk can beat that!"
For Taffy was getting sick of "this ghastly thin-faced time of ours," as he sadly called it (quoting from a strange and very beautiful poem called "Faustine," which had just appeared in the _Spectator_--and which our three enthusiasts already knew by heart), and beginning to love all things that were old and regal and rotten and forgotten and of bad repute, and to long to paint them just as they really were.
"Ah! they managed these things better in France, especially in the twelfth century, and even the thirteenth!" said the Laird. "Still, Howard of Norfolk isn't bad at a pinch--_fote de myoo_!" he continued, winking at Little Billee. And they promised themselves that they would leave cards on Zouzou, and, if he wasn't a duke, invite him to dinner; and also Dodor, if they could manage to find him.
Then along the quay and up the Rue de Seine, and by well-remembered little mystic ways to the old studio in the Place St. Anatole des Arts.
Here they found many changes: A row of new houses on the north side, by Baron Haussmann--the well-named; a boulevard was being constructed right through the place; but the old house had been respected, and, looking up, they saw the big north window of their good old abode blindless and blank and black but for a white placard in the middle of it with the words: "À louer. Un atelier, et une chambre à coucher."
They entered the court-yard through the little door in the porte cochère, and beheld Madame Vinard standing on the step of her loge, her arms akimbo, giving orders to her husband--who was sawing logs for firewood, as usual at that time of the year--and telling him he was the most helpless log of the lot.
She gave them one look, threw up her arms, and rushed at them, saying, "Ah, mon Dieu! les trois Angliches!"
And they could not have complained of any lack of warmth in her greeting, or in Monsieur Vinard's.
"Ah! mais quel bonheur de vous revoir! Et comme vous avez bonne mine, tous! Et Monsieur Litrebili, donc! il a grandi!" etc., etc. "Mais vous allez boire la goutte avant tout--vite, Vinard! Le ratafia de cassis que Monsieur Durien nous a envoyé la semaine dernière!"
And they were taken into the loge and made free of it--welcomed like prodigal sons; a fresh bottle of black-currant brandy was tapped, and did duty for the fatted calf. It was an ovation, and made quite a stir in the quartier.
_Le Retour des trois Angliches--cinq ans après!_
She told them all the news: about Bouchardy; Papelard; Jules Guinot, who was now in the Ministère de la Guerre; Barizel, who had given up the arts and gone into his father's business (umbrellas); Durien, who had married six months ago, and had a superb atelier in the Rue Taitbout, and was coining money; about her own family--Aglaë, who was going to be married to the son of the charbonnier at the corner of the Rue de la Canicule--"un bon mariage; bien solide!" Niniche, who was studying the piano at the Conservatoire, and had won the silver medal; Isidore, who, alas! had gone to the bad--"perdu par les femmes! un si joli garçon, vous concevez! ça ne lui a pas porté bonheur, par exemple!" And yet she was proud! and said his father would never have had the pluck!
"À dix-huit ans, pensez donc!
"And that good Monsieur Carrel; he is dead, you know! Ah, messieurs savaient ça? Yes, he died at Dieppe, his natal town, during the winter, from the consequences of an indigestion--que voulez-vous! He always had the stomach so feeble!... Ah! the beautiful interment, messieurs! Five thousand people, in spite of the rain! Car il pleuvait averse! And M. le Maire and his adjunct walking behind the hearse, and the gendarmerie and the douaniers, and a bataillon of the douzième chasseurs-à-pied, with their music, and all the sapper-pumpers, en grande tenue with their beautiful brass helmets! All the town was there, following: so there was nobody left to see the procession go by! q'c'était beau! Mon Dieu, q'c'était beau! c'que j'ai pleuré, d'voir ça! n'est-ce-pas, Vinard?"
"Dame, oui, ma biche! j'crois ben! It might have been Monsieur le Maire himself that one was interring in person!"
"Ah, ça! voyons, Vinard; thou'rt not going to compare the Maire of Dieppe to a painter like Monsieur Carrel?"
"Certainly not, ma biche! But still, M. Carrel was a great man all the same, in his way. Besides, I wasn't there--nor thou either, as to that!"
"Mon Dieu! comme il est idiot, ce Vinard--of a stupidity to cut with a knife! Why, thou might'st almost be a Mayor thyself, sacred imbecile that thou art!"
And an animated discussion arose between husband and wife as to the respective merits of a country mayor on one side and a famous painter and member of the Institute on the other, during which _les trois Angliches_ were left out in the cold. When Madame Vinard had sufficiently routed her husband, which did not take very long, she turned to them again, and told them that she had started a _magasin de bric-à-brac_, "vous verres ça!"
Yes, the studio had been to let for three months. Would they like to see it? Here were the keys. They would, of course, prefer to see it by themselves, alone; "je comprends ça! et vous verrez ce que vous verrez!" Then they must come and drink once more again the drop, and inspect her _magasin de bric-à-brac_.
So they went up, all three, and let themselves into the old place where they had been so happy--and one of them for a while so miserable!
It was changed indeed.
Bare of all furniture, for one thing; shabby and unswept, with a pathetic air of dilapidation, spoliation, desecration, and a musty, shut-up smell; the window so dirty you could hardly see the new houses opposite; the floor a disgrace!
All over the walls were caricatures in charcoal and white chalk, with more or less incomprehensible legends; very vulgar and trivial and coarse, some of them, and pointless for _trois Angliches_.
But among these (touching to relate) they found, under a square of plate-glass that had been fixed on the wall by means of an oak frame, Little Billee's old black-and-white-and-red chalk sketch of Trilby's left foot, as fresh as if it had been done only yesterday! Over it was written: "Souvenir de la Grande Trilby, par W. B. (Litrebili)." And beneath, carefully engrossed on imperishable parchment, and pasted on the glass, the following stanzas:
"Pauvre Trilby--la belle et bonne et chère! Je suis son pied. Devine qui voudra Quel tendre ami, la chérissant naguère, Encadra d'elle (et d'un amour sincère) Ce souvenir charmant qu'un caprice inspira-- Qu'un souffle emportera!
"J'étais jumeau: qu'est devenu mon frère? Hélas! Hélas! L'Amour nous égara. L'Éternité nous unira, j'espère; Et nous ferons comme autrefois la paire Au fond d'un lit bien chaste où nul ne troublera Trilby--qui dormira.
"Ô tendre ami, sans nous qu'allez-vous faire? La porte est close où Trilby demeura. Le Paradis est loin ... et sur la terre (Qui nous fut douce et lui sera légère) Pour trouver nos pareils, si bien qu'on cherchera-- Beau chercher l'on aura!"