Trilby Part 24

And if he no longer found the simple country pleasures, the junketings and picnics, the garden-parties and innocent little musical evenings, quite so exciting as of old, he never showed it.

Indeed, there was much that he did not show, and that his mother and sister tried in vain to guess--many things.

And among them one thing that constantly preoccupied and distressed him--the numbness of his affections. He could be as easily demonstrative to his mother and sister as though nothing had ever happened to him--from the mere force of a sweet old habit--even more so, out of sheer grat.i.tude and compunction.

But, alas! he felt that in his heart he could no longer care for them in the least!--nor for Taffy, nor the Laird, nor for himself; not even for Trilby, of whom he constantly thought, but without emotion; and of whose strange disappearance he had been told, and the story had been confirmed in all its details by Angele Boisse, to whom he had written.

It was as though some part of his brain where his affections were seated had been paralyzed, while all the rest of it was as keen and as active as ever. He felt like some poor live bird or beast or reptile, a part of whose cerebrum (or cerebellum, or whatever it is) had been dug out by the vivisector for experimental purposes; and the strongest emotional feeling he seemed capable of was his anxiety and alarm about this curious symptom, and his concern as to whether he ought to mention it or not.

He did not do so, for fear of causing distress, hoping that it would pa.s.s away in time, and redoubled his caresses to his mother and sister, and clung to them more than ever; and became more considerate of others in manner, word, and deed than he had ever been before, as though by constantly a.s.suming the virtue he had no longer he would gradually coax it back again. There was no trouble he would not take to give pleasure to the humblest.

Also, his vanity about himself had become as nothing, and he missed it almost as much as his affection.

Yet he told himself over and over again that he was a great artist, and that he would spare no pains to make himself a greater. But that was no merit of his own.

2+2=4, also 22=4; that peculiarity was no reason why 4 should be conceited; for what was 4 but a result, either way?

Well, he was like 4--just an inevitable result of circ.u.mstances over which he had no control--a mere product or sum; and though he meant to make himself as big a 4 as he could (to cultivate his peculiar _fourness_), he could no longer feel the old conceit and self-complacency; and they had been a joy, and it was hard to do without them.

At the bottom of it all was a vague, disquieting unhappiness, a constant fidget.

And it seemed to him, and much to his distress, that such mild unhappiness would be the greatest he could ever feel henceforward--but that, such as it was, it would never leave him, and that his moral existence would be for evermore one long, gray, gloomy blank--the glimmer of twilight--never glad, confident morning again!

So much for Little Billee's convalescence.

Then one day in the late autumn he spread his wings and flew away to London, which was very ready with open arms to welcome William Bagot, the already famous painter, _alias_ Little Billee!

Part Fifth

LITTLE BILLEE

_An Interlude_

"Then the mortal coldness of the Soul like death itself comes down; It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own; That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears, And, though the eye may sparkle yet, 'tis where the ice appears.

"Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast, Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest: 'Tis but as ivy leaves around a ruined turret wreathe, All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and gray beneath."

When Taffy and the Laird went back to the studio in the Place St.

Anatole des Arts, and resumed their ordinary life there, it was with a sense of desolation and dull bereavement beyond anything they could have imagined; and this did not seem to lessen as the time wore on.

They realized for the first time how keen and penetrating and unintermittent had been the charm of those two central figures--Trilby and Little Billee--and how hard it was to live without them, after such intimacy as had been theirs.

"Oh, it _has_ been a jolly time, though it didn't last long!" So Trilby had written in her farewell letter to Taffy; and these words were true for Taffy and the Laird as well as for her.

And that is the worst of those dear people who have charm: they are so terrible to do without, when once you have got accustomed to them and all their ways.

And when, besides being charming, they are simple, clever, affectionate, constant, and sincere, like Trilby and Little Billee! Then the lamentable hole their disappearance makes is not to be filled up! And when they are full of genius, like Little Billee--and like Trilby, funny without being vulgar! For so she always seemed to the Laird and Taffy, even in French (in spite of her Gallic audacities of thought, speech, and gesture).

All seemed to have suffered change. The very boxing and fencing were gone through perfunctorily, for mere health's sake; and a thin layer of adipose deposit began to soften the outlines of the hills and dales on Taffy's mighty forearm.

Dodor and l'Zouzou no longer came so often, now that the charming Little Billee and his charming mother and still more charming sister had gone away--nor Carnegie, nor Antony, nor Lorrimer, nor Vincent, nor the Greek. Gecko never came at all. Even Svengali was missed, little as he had been liked. It is a dismal and sulky looking piece of furniture, a grand-piano that n.o.body ever plays--with all its sound and its souvenirs locked up inside--a kind of mausoleum! a lop-sided coffin--trestles and all!

So it went back to London by the "little quickness," just as it had come!

Thus Taffy and the Laird grew quite sad and mopy, and lunched at the Cafe de l'Odeon every day--till the goodness of the omelets palled, and the redness of the wine there got on their nerves and into their heads and faces, and made them sleepy till dinner-time. And then, waking up, they dressed respectably, and dined expensively, "like gentlemen," in the Palais Royal, or the Pa.s.sage Choiseul, or the Pa.s.sage des Panoramas--for three francs, three francs fifty, even five francs a head, and half a franc to the waiter!--and went to the theatre almost every night, on that side of the water--and more often than not they took a cab home, each smoking a Panatella, which costs twenty-five centimes--five sous--2-1/2_d._

Then they feebly drifted into quite decent society--like Lorrimer and Carnegie--with dress-coats and white ties on, and their hair parted in the middle and down the back of the head, and brought over the ears in a bunch at each side, as was the English fashion in those days; and subscribed to _Galignani's Messenger_; and had themselves proposed and seconded for the Cercle Anglais in the Rue Sainte-n'y touche, a circle of British philistines of the very deepest dye; and went to hear divine service on Sunday mornings in the Rue Marbuf!

Indeed, by the end of the summer they had sunk into such depths of demoralization that they felt they must really have a change; and decided on giving up the studio in the Place St. Anatole des Arts, and leaving Paris for good; and going to settle for the winter in Dusseldorf, which is a very pleasant place for English painters who do not wish to overwork themselves--as the Laird well knew, having spent a year there.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DEMORALIZATION]

It ended in Taffy's going to Antwerp for the Kermesse, to paint the Flemish drunkard of our time just as he really is; and the Laird's going to Spain, so that he might study toreadors from the life.

I may as well state here that the Laird's toreador pictures, which had had quite a vogue in Scotland as long as he had been content to paint them in the Place St. Anatole des Arts, quite ceased to please (or sell) after he had been to Seville and Madrid; so he took to painting Roman cardinals and Neapolitan pifferari from the depths of his consciousness--and was so successful that he made up his mind he would never spoil his market by going to Italy!

So he went and painted his cardinals and his pifferari in Algiers; and Taffy joined him there, and painted Algerian Jews--just as they really are (and didn't sell them); and then they spent a year in Munich, and then a year in Dusseldorf, and a winter in Cairo, and so on.

And all this time Taffy, who took everything _au grand serieux_--especially the claims and obligations of friendship--corresponded regularly with Little Billee, who wrote him long and amusing letters back again, and had plenty to say about his life in London--which was a series of triumphs, artistic and social--and you would have thought from his letters, modest though they were, that no happier young man, or more elate, was to be found anywhere in the world.

It was a good time in England, just then, for young artists of promise; a time of evolution, revolution, change, and development--of the founding of new schools and the crumbling away of old ones--a keen struggle for existence--a surviving of the fit--a preparation, let us hope, for the ultimate survival of the fittest.

And among the many glories of this particular period two names stand out very conspicuously--for the immediate and (so far) lasting fame their bearers achieved, and the wide influence they exerted, and continue to exert still.

The world will not easily forget Frederic Walker and William Bagot, those two singularly gifted boys, whom it soon became the fashion to bracket together, to compare and to contrast, as one compares and contrasts Thackeray and d.i.c.kens, Carlyle and Macaulay, Tennyson and Browning--a futile though pleasant practice, of which the temptations seem irresistible!

Yet why compare the lily and the rose?

These two young masters had the genius and the luck to be the progenitors of much of the best art-work that has been done in England during the last thirty years, in oils, in water-color, in black and white.

They were both essentially English and of their own time; both absolutely original, receiving their impressions straight from nature itself; uninfluenced by any school, ancient or modern, they founded schools instead of following any, and each was a law unto himself, and a law-giver unto many others.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRED WALKER]

Both were equally great in whatever they attempted--landscape, figures, birds, beasts, or fishes. Who does not remember the fish-monger's shop by F. Walker, or W. Bagot's little piebald piglings, and their venerable black mother, and their immense, fat, wallowing pink papa? An ineffable charm of poetry and refinement, of pathos and sympathy and delicate humor combined, an incomparable ease and grace and felicity of workmanship belong to each; and yet in their work are they not as wide apart as the poles; each complete in himself and yet a complement to the other?

And, oddly enough, they were both singularly alike in aspect--both small and slight, though beautifully made, with tiny hands and feet; always arrayed as the lilies of the field, for all they toiled and spun so arduously; both had regularly featured faces of a n.o.ble cast and most winning character; both had the best and simplest manners in the world, and a way of getting themselves much and quickly and permanently liked....

_Que la terre leur soit legere!_

And who can say that the fame of one is greater than the other's!