Trilby Part 14

[Ill.u.s.tration: "TWIN GRAY STARS"]

Even Svengali perceived the strange metamorphosis. "Ach, Drilpy," he would say, on a Sunday afternoon, "how beautiful you are! It drives me mad! I adore you. I like you thinner; you have such beautiful bones! Why do you not answer my letters? What! you do not _read_ them? You _burn_ them? And yet I--Donnerwetter! I forgot! The grisettes of the quartier latin have not learned how to read or write; they have only learned how to dance the cancan with the dirty little pig-dog monkeys they call men.

Sacrement! We will teach the little pig-dog monkeys to dance something else some day, we Germans. We will make music for them to dance to!

Boum! boum! Better than the waiter at the Cafe de la Rotonde, hein? And the grisettes of the quartier latin shall pour us out your little white wine--'fotre bet.i.t fin planc,' as your pig-dog monkey of a poet says, your rotten verfluchter De Musset, 'who has got such a splendid future behind him'! Bah! What do _you_ know of Monsieur Alfred de Musset? We have got a poet too, my Drilpy. His name is Heinrich Heine. If he's still alive, he lives in Paris, in a little street off the Champs elysees. He lies in bed all day long, and only sees out of one eye, like the Countess Hahn-Hahn, ha! ha! He adores French grisettes. He married one. Her name is Mathilde, and she has got sussen fussen, like you. He would adore you too, for your beautiful bones; he would like to count them one by one, for he is very playful, like me. And, ach! what a beautiful skeleton you will make! And very soon, too, because you do not smile on your madly-loving Svengali. You burn his letters without reading them! You shall have a nice little mahogany gla.s.s case all to yourself in the museum of the ecole de Medecine, and Svengali shall come in his new fur-lined coat, smoking his big cigar of the Havana, and push the dirty carabins out of the way, and look through the holes of your eyes into your stupid empty skull, and up the nostrils of your high bony sounding-board of a nose without either a tip or a lip to it, and into the roof of your big mouth, with your thirty-two big English teeth, and between your big ribs into your big chest, where the big leather lungs used to be, and say, 'Ach! what a pity she had no more music in her than a big tomcat!' And then he will look all down your bones to your poor crumbling feet, and say, 'Ach! what a fool she was not to answer Svengali's letters!' and the dirty carabins shall--"

"Shut up, you sacred fool, or I'll precious soon spoil _your_ skeleton for you."

Thus the short-tempered Taffy, who had been listening.

Then Svengali, scowling, would play Chopin's funeral march more divinely than ever; and where the pretty, soft part comes in, he would whisper to Trilby, "That is Svengali coming to look at you in your little mahogany gla.s.s case!"

And here let me say that these vicious imaginations of Svengali's, which look so tame in English print, sounded much more ghastly in French, p.r.o.nounced with a Hebrew-German accent, and uttered in his hoa.r.s.e, rasping, nasal, throaty rook's caw, his big yellow teeth baring themselves in a mongrel canine snarl, his heavy upper eyelids drooping over his insolent black eyes.

Besides which, as he played the lovely melody he would go through a ghoulish pantomime, as though he were taking stock of the different bones in her skeleton with greedy but discriminating approval. And when he came down to the feet, he was almost droll in the intensity of his terrible realism. But Trilby did not appreciate this exquisite fooling, and felt cold all over.

He seemed to her a dread, powerful demon, who, but for Taffy (who alone could hold him in check), oppressed and weighed on her like an incubus--and she dreamed of him oftener than she dreamed of Taffy, the Laird, or even Little Billee!

Thus pleasantly and smoothly, and without much change or adventure, things went on till Christmastime.

Little Billee seldom spoke of Trilby, or Trilby of him. Work went on every morning at the studio in the Place St. Anatole des Arts, and pictures were begun and finished--little pictures that didn't take long to paint--the Laird's Spanish bull-fighting scenes, in which the bull never appeared, and which he sent to his native Dundee and sold there; Taffy's tragic little dramas of life in the slums of Paris--starvings, drownings--suicides by charcoal and poison--which he sent everywhere, but did not sell.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "AN INCUBUS"]

Little Billee was painting all this time at Carrel's studio--his private one--and seemed preoccupied and happy when they all met at mealtime, and less talkative even than usual.

He had always been the least talkative of the three; more p.r.o.ne to listen, and no doubt to think the more.

In the afternoon people came and went as usual, and boxed and fenced and did gymnastic feats, and felt Taffy's biceps, which by this time equalled Mr. Sandow's!

Some of these people were very pleasant and remarkable, and have become famous since then in England, France, America--or have died, or married, and come to grief or glory in other ways. It is the Ballad of the Bouillabaisse all over again!

It might be worth while my trying to sketch some of the more noteworthy, now that my story is slowing for a while--like a French train when the engine-driver sees a long curved tunnel in front of him, as I do--and no light at the other end!

My humble attempts at characterization might be useful as "memoires pour servir" to future biographers. Besides, there are other reasons, as the reader will soon discover.

There was Durien, for instance--Trilby's especial French adorer, "pour le bon motif!" a son of the people, a splendid sculptor, a very fine character in every way--so perfect, indeed, that there is less to say about him than any of the others--modest, earnest, simple, frugal, chaste, and of untiring industry; living for his art, and perhaps also a little for Trilby, whom he would have been only too glad to marry. He was Pygmalion; she was his Galatea--a Galatea whose marble heart would never beat for _him_!

Durien's house is now the finest in the Parc Monceau; his wife and daughters are the best-dressed women in Paris, and he one of the happiest of men; but he will never quite forget poor Galatea:

"La belle aux pieds d'albatre--aux deux talons de rose!"

Then there was Vincent, a Yankee medical student, who could both work and play.

He is now one of the greatest oculists in the world, and Europeans cross the Atlantic to consult him. He can still play, and when he crosses the Atlantic himself for that purpose he has to travel incognito like a royalty, lest his play should be marred by work. And his daughters are so beautiful and accomplished that British dukes have sighed after them in vain. Indeed, these fair young ladies spend their autumn holiday in refusing the British aristocracy. We are told so in the society papers, and I can quite believe it. Love is not always blind; and if he is, Vincent is the man to cure him.

In those days he prescribed for us all round, and punched and stethoscoped us, and looked at our tongues for love, and told us what to eat, drink, and avoid, and even where to go for it.

For instance: late one night Little Billee woke up in a cold sweat, and thought himself a dying man--he had felt seedy all day and taken no food; so he dressed and dragged himself to Vincent's hotel, and woke him up, and said, "Oh, Vincent, Vincent! I'm a dying man!" and all but fainted on his bed. Vincent felt him all over with the greatest care, and asked him many questions. Then, looking at his watch, he delivered himself thus: "Humph! 3.30! rather late--but still--look here, Little Billee--do you know the Halle, on the other side of the water, where they sell vegetables?"

"Oh yes! yes! What vegetable shall I--"

"Listen! On the north side are two restaurants, Bordier and Baratte.

They remain open all night. Now go straight off to one of those tuck shops, and tuck in as big a supper as you possibly can. Some people prefer Baratte. I prefer Bordier myself. Perhaps you'd better try Bordier first and Baratte after. At all events, lose no time; so off you go!"

Thus he saved Little Billee from an early grave.

Then there was the Greek, a boy of only sixteen, but six feet high, and looking ten years older than he was, and able to smoke even stronger tobacco than Taffy himself, and color pipes divinely; he was a great favorite in the Place St. Anatole, for his _bonhomie_, his niceness, his warm geniality. He was the capitalist of this select circle (and n.o.bly lavish of his capital). He went by the name of Poluphloisboiospaleapologos Petrilopetrolicoconose--for so he was christened by the Laird--because his real name was thought much too long and much too lovely for the quartier latin, and reminded one of the Isles of Greece--where burning Sappho loved and sang.

What was he learning in the Latin quarter? French? He spoke French like a native! n.o.body knows. But when his Paris friends transferred their bohemia to London, where were they ever made happier and more at home than in his lordly parental abode--or fed with nicer things?

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CAPITALIST AND THE SWELL]

That abode is now his, and lordlier than ever, as becomes the dwelling of a millionaire and city magnate; and its gray-bearded owner is as genial, as jolly, and as hospitable as in the old Paris days, but he no longer colors pipes.

Then there was Carnegie, fresh from Balliol, redolent of the 'varsity.

He intended himself then for the diplomatic service, and came to Paris to learn French as it is spoke; and spent most of his time with his fashionable English friends on the right side of the river, and the rest with Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee on the left. Perhaps that is why he has not become an amba.s.sador. He is now only a rural dean, and speaks the worst French I know, and speaks it wherever and whenever he can.

It serves him right, I think.

He was fond of lords, and knew some (at least, he gave one that impression), and often talked of them, and dressed so beautifully that even Little Billee was abashed in his presence. Only Taffy, in his threadbare out-at-elbow shooting-jacket and cricket cap, and the Laird, in his tattered straw hat and Taffy's old overcoat down to his heels, dared to walk arm in arm with him--nay, insisted on doing so--as they listened to the band in the Luxembourg Gardens.

And his whiskers were even longer and thicker and more golden than Taffy's own. But the mere sight of a boxing-glove made him sick.

Then there was the yellow-haired Antony, a Swiss--the idle apprentice, le "roi des truands," as we called him--to whom everything was forgiven, as to Francois Villon, _a cause de ses gentillesses_ surely, for all his reprehensible pranks, the gentlest and most lovable creature that ever lived in bohemia, or out of it.

Always in debt, like Svengali--for he had no more notion of the value of money than a humming-bird, and gave away in reckless generosity to friends what in strictness belonged to his endless creditors--like Svengali, humorous, witty, and a most exquisite and original artist, and also somewhat eccentric in his attire (though scrupulously clean), so that people would stare at him as he walked along--a thing that always gave him dire offence! But unlike Svengali, full of delicacy, refinement, and distinction of mind and manner--void of any self-conceit--and, in spite of the irregularities of his life, the very soul of truth and honor, as gentle as he was chivalrous and brave--the warmest, stanchest, sincerest, most unselfish friend in the world; and, as long as his purse was full, the best and drollest boon companion in the world--but that was not forever!

When the money was gone, then would Antony hie him to some beggarly attic in some lost Parisian slum, and write his own epitaph in lovely French or German verse--or even English (for he was an astounding linguist); and, telling himself that he was forsaken by family, friends, and mistress alike, look out of his cas.e.m.e.nt over the Paris chimney-pots for the last time, and listen once more to "the harmonies of nature," as he called it--and "aspire towards the infinite," and bewail "the cruel deceptions of his life"--and finally lay himself down to die of sheer starvation.

And as he lay and waited for his release that was so long in coming, he would beguile the weary hours by mumbling a crust "watered with his own salt tears," and decorating his epitaph with fanciful designs of the most exquisite humor, pathos, and beauty--these ill.u.s.trated epitaphs of the young Antony, of which there exists a goodly number, are now priceless, as all collectors know all over the world.

Fainter and fainter would he grow--and finally, on the third day or thereabouts, a remittance would reach him from some long-suffering sister or aunt in far Lausanne--or else the fickle mistress or faithless friend (who had been looking for him all over Paris) would discover his hiding-place, the beautiful epitaph would be walked off in triumph to le pere Marcas in the Rue du Ghette and sold for twenty, fifty, a hundred francs--and then _Vogue la galere!_ And back again to bohemia, dear bohemia and all its joys, as long as the money lasted ... _e poi, da capo!_

And now that his name is a household word in two hemispheres, and he himself an honor and a glory to the land he has adopted as his own, he loves to remember all this and look back from the lofty pinnacle on which he sits perched up aloft to the impecunious days of his idle apprenticeship--_le bon temps ou l'on etait si malheureux!_

And with all that Quixotic dignity of his, so famous is he as a wit that when he jokes (and he is always joking) people laugh first, and then ask what he was joking about. And you can even make your own mild funniments raise a roar by merely prefacing them "as Antony once said!"

The present scribe has often done so.