Trilby Part 15

And if by a happy fluke you should some day hit upon a really good thing of your own--good enough to be quoted--be sure it will come back to you after many days prefaced "as Antony once said."

And these jokes are so good-natured that you almost resent their being made at anybody's expense but your own--never from Antony

"The aimless jest that striking has caused pain, The idle word that he'd wish back again!"

Indeed, in spite of his success, I don't suppose he ever made an enemy in his life.

And here, let me add (lest there be any doubt as to his ident.i.ty), that he is now tall and stout and strikingly handsome, though rather bald--and such an aristocrat in bearing, aspect, and manner that you would take him for a blue-blooded descendant of the crusaders instead of the son of a respectable burgher in Lausanne.

Then there was Lorrimer, the industrious apprentice, who is now also well-pinnacled on high; himself a pillar of the Royal Academy--probably, if he lives long enough, its future president--the duly knighted or baroneted Lord Mayor of "all the plastic arts" (except one or two perhaps, here and there, that are not altogether without some importance).

May this not be for many, many years! Lorrimer himself would be the first to say so!

Tall, thin, red-haired, and well-favored, he was a most eager, earnest, and painstaking young enthusiast, of precocious culture, who read improving books, and did not share in the amus.e.m.e.nts of the quartier latin, but spent his evenings at home with Handel, Michael Angelo, and Dante, on the respectable side of the river. Also, he went into good society sometimes, with a dress-coat on, and a white tie, and his hair parted in the middle!

But in spite of these blemishes on his otherwise exemplary record as an art student, he was the most delightful companion--the most affectionate, helpful, and sympathetic of friends. May he live long and prosper!

Enthusiast as he was, he could only worship one G.o.d at a time. It was either Michael Angelo, Phidias, Paul Veronese, Tintoret, Raphael, or t.i.tian--never a modern--moderns didn't exist! And so thoroughgoing was he in his worship, and so persistent in voicing it, that he made those immortals quite unpopular in the Place St. Anatole des Arts. We grew to dread their very names. Each of them would last him a couple of months or so; then he would give us a month's holiday, and take up another.

Antony did not think much of Lorrimer in those days, nor Lorrimer of him, for all they were such good friends. And neither of them thought much of Little Billee, whose pinnacle (of pure unadulterated fame) is now the highest of all--the highest probably that can be for a mere painter of pictures!

And what is so nice about Lorrimer, now that he is a graybeard, an academician, an accomplished man of the world and society, is that he admires Antony's genius more than he can say--and reads Mr. Rudyard Kipling's delightful stories as well as Dante's "Inferno"--and can listen with delight to the lovely songs of Signor Tosti, who has not precisely founded himself on Handel--can even scream with laughter at a comic song--even a n.i.g.g.e.r melody--so, at least, that it but be sung in well-bred and distinguished company--for Lorrimer is no bohemian.

"Shoo, fly! don'tcher bother me!

For I belong to the Comp'ny G!"

Both these famous men are happily (and most beautifully) married--grandfathers, for all I know--and "move in the very best society" (Lorrimer always, I'm told; Antony now and then); "la haute,"

as it used to be called in French bohemia--meaning dukes and lords and even royalties, I suppose, and those who love them and whom they love.

That _is_ the best society, isn't it? At all events, we are a.s.sured it used to be; but that must have been before the present scribe (a meek and somewhat innocent outsider) had been privileged to see it with his own little eye.

And when they happen to meet there (Antony and Lorrimer, I mean), I don't expect they rush very wildly into each other's arms, or talk very fluently about old times. Nor do I suppose their wives are very intimate. None of our wives are. Not even Taffy's and the Laird's.

Oh, Orestes! Oh, Pylades!

Oh, ye impecunious, unpinnacled young inseparables of eighteen, nineteen, twenty, even twenty-five, who share each other's thoughts and purses, and wear each other's clothes, and swear each other's oaths, and smoke each other's pipes, and respect each other's lights o' love, and keep each other's secrets, and tell each other's jokes, and p.a.w.n each other's watches and merrymake together on the proceeds, and sit all night by each other's bedsides in sickness, and comfort each other in sorrow and disappointment with silent, manly sympathy--"wait till you get to forty year!"

Wait even till each or either of you gets himself a little pinnacle of his own--be it ever so humble!

Nay, wait till either or each of you gets himself a wife!

History goes on repeating itself, and so do novels, and this is a plat.i.tude, and there's nothing new under the sun.

May too cecee (as the idiomatic Laird would say, in the language he adores)--may too cecee ay nee eecee nee lah!

Then there was Dodor, the handsome young dragon de la garde--a full private, if you please, with a beardless face, and damask-rosy cheeks, and a small waist, and narrow feet like a lady's, and who, strange to say, spoke English just like an Englishman.

And his friend Gontran, _alias_ l'Zouzou--a corporal in the Zouaves.

Both of these worthies had met Taffy in the Crimea, and frequented the studios in the quartier latin, where they adored (and were adored by) the grisettes and models, especially Trilby.

Both of them were distinguished for being the worst subjects (_les plus mauvais sujets_) of their respective regiments; yet both were special favorites not only with their fellow-rankers, but with those in command, from their colonels downward.

Both were in the habit of being promoted to the rank of corporal or brigadier, and degraded to the rank of private next day for general misconduct, the result of a too exuberant delight in their promotion.

Neither of them knew fear, envy, malice, temper, or low spirits; ever said or did an ill-natured thing; ever even thought one; ever had an enemy but himself. Both had the best or the worst manners going, according to their company, whose manners they reflected; they were true chameleons!

Both were always ready to share their last ten-sou piece (not that they ever seemed to have one) with each other or anybody else, or anybody else's last ten-sou piece with you; to offer you a friend's cigar; to invite you to dine with any friend they had; to fight with you, or for you, at a moment's notice. And they made up for all the anxiety, tribulation, shame, and sorrow they caused at home by the endless fun and amus.e.m.e.nt they gave to all outside.

It was a pretty dance they led; but our three friends of the Place St.

Anatole (who hadn't got to pay the pipers) loved them both, especially Dodor.

One fine Sunday afternoon Little Billee found himself studying life and character in that most delightful and festive scene la Fete de St.

Cloud, and met Dodor and l'Zouzou there, who hailed him with delight, saying:

"Nous allons joliment jubiler, nom d'une pipe!" and insisted on his joining in their amus.e.m.e.nts and paying for them--roundabouts, swings, the giant, the dwarf, the strong man, the fat woman--to whom they made love and were taken too seriously, and turned out--the menagerie of wild beasts, whom they teased and aggravated till the police had to interfere. Also _al fresco_ dances, where their cancan step was of the wildest and most unbridled character, till a sous-officier or a gendarme came in sight, and then they danced quite mincingly and demurely, _en maitre d'ecole_, as they called it, to the huge delight of an immense and ever-increasing crowd, and the disgust of all truly respectable men.

They also insisted on Little Billee's walking between them, arm in arm, and talking to them in English whenever they saw coming towards them a respectable English family with daughters. It was the dragoon's delight to get himself stared at by fair daughters of Albion for speaking as good English as themselves--a rare accomplishment in a French trooper--and Zouzou's happiness to be thought English too, though the only English he knew was the phrase "I will not! I will not!" which he had picked up in the Crimea, and repeated over and over again when he came within ear-shot of a pretty English girl.

Little Billee was not happy in these circ.u.mstances. He was no sn.o.b. But he was a respectably brought-up young Briton of the higher middle cla.s.s, and it was not quite pleasant for him to be seen (by fair countrywomen of his own) walking arm in arm on a Sunday afternoon with a couple of French private soldiers, and uncommonly rowdy ones at that.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'I WILL NOT! I WILL NOT!'"]

Later, they came back to Paris together on the top of an omnibus, among a very proletarian crowd, and there the two facetious warriors immediately made themselves pleasant all round and became very popular, especially with the women and children; but not, I regret to say, through the propriety, refinement, and discretion of their behavior.

Little Billee resolved that he would not go a-pleasuring with them any more.

However, they stuck to him through thick and thin, and insisted on escorting him all the way back to the quartier latin, by the Pont de la Concorde and the Rue de Lille in the Faubourg St. Germain.

Little Billee loved the Faubourg St. Germain, especially the Rue de Lille. He was fond of gazing at the magnificent old mansions, the "hotels" of the old French n.o.blesse, or rather the outside walls thereof, the grand sculptured portals with the armorial bearings and the splendid old historic names above them--Hotel de This, Hotel de That, Rohan-Chabot, Montmorency, La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, La Tour d'Auvergne.

He would forget himself in romantic dreams of past and forgotten French chivalry which these glorious names called up; for he knew a little of French history, loving to read Froissart and Saint-Simon and the genial Brantome.

Halting opposite one of the finest and oldest of all these gateways, his especial favorite, labelled "Hotel de la Rochemartel" in letters of faded gold over a ducal coronet and a huge escutcheon of stone, he began to descant upon its architectural beauties and n.o.ble proportions to l'Zouzou.

"_Parbleu!_" said l'Zouzou, "_connu_, _farceur!_ why, I was _born_ there, on the 6th of March, 1834, at 5.30 in the morning. Lucky day for France--_hein_?"

"Born there? what do you mean--in the porter's lodge?"

At this juncture the two great gates rolled back, a liveried Suisse appeared, and an open carriage and pair came out, and in it were two elderly ladies and a younger one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DODOR IN HIS GLORY]

To Little Billee's indignation, the two incorrigible warriors made the military salute, and the three ladies bowed stiffly and gravely.