Trilby Part 25

Their pinnacles are twin, I venture to believe--of just an equal height and width and thickness, like their bodies in this life; but unlike their frail bodies in one respect: no taller pinnacles are to be seen, methinks, in all the garden of the deathless dead painters of our time, and none more built to last!

But it is not with the art of Little Billee, nor with his fame as a painter, that we are chiefly concerned in this unpretending little tale, except in so far as they have some bearing on his character and his fate.

"I should like to know the detailed history of the Englishman's first love, and how he lost his innocence!"

"Ask him!"

"Ask him yourself!"

Thus Papelard and Bouchardy, on the morning of Little Billee's first appearance at Carrel's studio, in the Rue des Potirons St. Michel.

And that is the question the present scribe is doing his little best to answer.

A good-looking, famous, well-bred, and well-dressed youth finds that London Society opens its doors very readily; he hasn't long to knock; and it would be difficult to find a youth more fortunately situated, handsomer, more famous, better dressed or better bred, more seemingly happy and successful, with more attractive qualities and more condonable faults, than Little Billee, as Taffy and the Laird found him when they came to London after their four or five years in foreign parts--their Wanderjahr.

He had a fine studio and a handsome suite of rooms in Fitzroy Square.

Beautiful specimens of his unfinished work, endless studies, hung on his studio walls. Everything else was as nice as it could be--the furniture, the bibelots, and bric-a-brac, the artistic foreign and Eastern knick-knacks and draperies and hangings and curtains and rugs--the semi-grand piano by Collard & Collard.

That immortal canvas, the "Moon-Dial" (just begun, and already commissioned by Moses Lyon, the famous picture-dealer), lay on his easel.

No man worked harder and with teeth more clinched than Little Billee when he was at work--none rested or played more discreetly when it was time to rest or play.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATONIC LOVE]

The gla.s.s on his mantel-piece was full of cards of invitation, reminders, pretty mauve and pink and lilac-scented notes; nor were coronets wanting on many of these hospitable little missives. He had quite overcome his fancied aversion for bloated dukes and lords and the rest (we all do sooner or later, if things go well with us); especially for their wives and sisters and daughters and female cousins; even their mothers and aunts. In point of fact, and in spite of his tender years, he was in some danger (for his art) of developing into that type adored by sympathetic women who haven't got much to do: the friend, the tame cat, the platonic lover (with many loves)--the squire of dames, the trusty one, of whom husbands and brothers have no fear!--the delicate, harmless dilettante of Eros--the dainty shepherd who dwells "dans le pays du tendre!"--and stops there!

The woman flatters and the man confides--and there is no danger whatever, I'm told--and I am glad!

One man loves his fiddle (or, alas! his neighbor's sometimes) for all the melodies he can wake from it--it is but a selfish love!

Another, who is no fiddler, may love a fiddle too; for its symmetry, its neatness, its color--its delicate grainings, the lovely lines and curves of its back and front--for its own sake, so to speak. He may have a whole galleryful of fiddles to love in this innocent way--a harem!--and yet not know a single note of music, or even care to hear one. He will dust them and stroke them, and take them down and try to put them in tune--pizzicato!--and put them back again, and call them ever such sweet little pet names: viol, viola, viola d'amore, viol di gamba, violino mio! and breathe his little troubles into them, and they will give back inaudible little murmurs in sympathetic response, like a damp aeolian harp; but he will never draw a bow across the strings, nor wake a single chord--or discord!

And who shall say he is not wise in his generation? It is but an old-fashioned philistine notion that fiddles were only made to be played on--the fiddles themselves are beginning to resent it; and rightly, I wot!

In this harmless fashion Little Billee was friends with more than one fine lady _de par le monde_.

Indeed, he had been reproached by his more bohemian brothers of the brush for being something of a tuft-hunter--most unjustly. But nothing gives such keen offence to our unsuccessful brother, bohemian or bourgeois, as our sudden intimacy with the so-called great, the little lords and ladies of this little world! Not even our fame and success, and all the joy and pride they bring us, are so hard to condone--so imbittering, so humiliating, to the jealous fraternal heart.

Alas! poor humanity--that the mere countenance of our betters (if they _are_ our betters!) should be thought so priceless a boon, so consummate an achievement, so crowning a glory, as all that!

"A dirty bit of orange-peel, The stump of a cigar-- Once trod on by a princely heel, How beautiful they are!"

Little Billee was no tuft-hunter--he was the tuft-hunted, or had been.

No one of his kind was ever more persistently, resolutely, hospitably harried than this young "hare with many friends" by people of rank and fashion.

And at first he thought them most charming; as they so often are, these graceful, gracious, gay, good-natured stoics and barbarians, whose manners are as easy and simple as their morals--but how much better!--and who, at least, have this charm, that they can wallow in untold gold (when they happen to possess it) without ever seeming to stink of the same: yes, they bear wealth gracefully--and the want of it more gracefully still! and these are pretty accomplishments that have yet to be learned by our new aristocracy of the shop and counting-house, Jew or gentile, which is everywhere elbowing its irresistible way to the top and front of everything, both here and abroad.

Then he discovered that, much as you might be with them, you could never be _of_ them, unless perchance you managed to hook on by marrying one of their ugly ducklings--their failures--their remnants! and even then life isn't all beer and skittles for a rank outsider, I'm told! Then he discovered that he didn't want to be of them in the least; especially at such a cost as that! and that to be very much with them was apt to pall, like everything else.

Also, he found that they were very mixed; good, bad, and indifferent--and not always very dainty or select in their predilections, since they took unto their bosoms such queer outsiders (just for the sake of being amused a little while) that their capricious favor ceased to be an honor and a glory--if it ever was! And, then, their fickleness!

Indeed, he found, or thought he found, that they could be just as clever, as liberal, as polite or refined--as narrow, insolent, swaggering, coa.r.s.e, and vulgar--as handsome, as ugly--as graceful, as ungainly--as modest or conceited, as any other upper cla.s.s of the community--and, indeed, some lower ones!

Beautiful young women, who had been taught how to paint pretty little landscapes (with an ivy-mantled ruin in the middle distance), talked technically of painting to him, _de pair a pair_, as though they were quite on the same artistic level, and didn't mind admitting it, in spite of the social gulf between.

Hideous old frumps (osseous or obese, yet with unduly bared neck, and shoulders that made him sick) patronized him and gave him good advice, and told him to emulate Mr. Buckner both in his genius and his manners--since Mr. Buckner was the only "gentleman" who ever painted for hire; and they promised him, in time, an equal success!

Here and there some sweet old darling specially enslaved him by her kindness, grace, knowledge of life, and tender womanly sympathy, like the dowager Lady Chiselhurst--or some sweet young one, like the lovely d.u.c.h.ess of Towers, by her beauty, wit, good-humor, and sisterly interest in all he did, and who in some vague, distant manner constantly reminded him of Trilby, although she was such a great and fashionable lady!

But just such darlings, old or young, were to be found, with still higher ideals, in less exalted spheres; and were easier of access, with no impa.s.sable gulf between--spheres where there was no patronizing, nothing but deference and warm appreciation and delicate flattery, from men and women alike--and where the aged Venuses, whose prime was of the days of Waterloo, went with their historical remains duly shrouded, like ivy-mantled ruins (and in the middle distance!).

[Ill.u.s.tration: "DARLINGS, OLD OR YOUNG"]

So he actually grew tired of the great before they had time to tire of him--incredible as it may seem, and against nature; and this saved him many a heart-burning; and he ceased to be seen at fashionable drums or gatherings of any kind, except in one or two houses where he was especially liked and made welcome for his own sake; such as Lord Chiselhurst's in Piccadilly, where the "Moon-Dial" found a home for a few years, before going to its last home and final resting-place in the National Gallery (R. I. P.); or Baron Stoppenheim's in Cavendish Square, where many lovely little water-colors signed W. B. occupied places of honor on gorgeously gilded walls; or the gorgeously gilded bachelor rooms of Mr. Moses Lyon, the picture-dealer in Upper Conduit Street--for Little Billee (I much grieve to say it of a hero of romance) was an excellent man of business. That infinitesimal dose of the good old Oriental blood kept him straight, and not only made him stick to his last through thick and thin, but also to those whose foot his last was found to match (for he couldn't or wouldn't alter his last).

He loved to make as much money as he could, that he might spend it royally in pretty gifts to his mother and sister, whom it was his pleasure to load in this way, and whose circ.u.mstances had been very much altered by his quick success. There was never a more generous son or brother than Little Billee of the clouded heart, that couldn't love any longer!

As a set-off to all these splendors, it was also his pleasure now and again to study London life at its lower end--the eastest end of all.

Whitechapel, the Minories, the Docks, Ratcliffe Highway, Rotherhithe, soon got to know him well, and he found much to interest him and much to like among their denizens, and made as many friends there among ship-carpenters, excis.e.m.e.n, longsh.o.r.emen, jack-tars, and what not, as in Bayswater and Belgravia (or Bloomsbury).

He was especially fond of frequenting sing-songs, or "free-and-easys,"

where good, hard-working fellows met of an evening to relax and smoke and drink and sing--round a table well loaded with steaming tumblers and pewter pots, at one end of which sits Mr. Chairman in all his glory, and at the other "Mr. Vice." They are open to any one who can afford a pipe, a screw of tobacco, and a pint of beer, and who is willing to do his best and sing a song.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE MOON-DIAL"]

No introduction is needed; as soon as any one has seated himself and made himself comfortable, Mr. Chairman taps the table with his long clay pipe, begs for silence, and says to his vis-a-vis: "Mr. Vice, it strikes me as the gen'l'man as is just come in 'as got a singing face. Per'aps, Mr. Vice, you'll be so very kind as juster harsk the aforesaid gen'l'man to oblige us with a 'armony."

Mr. Vice then puts it to the new-comer, who, thus appealed to, simulates a modest surprise, and finally professes his willingness, like Mr.

Barkis; then, clearing his throat a good many times, looks up to the ceiling, and after one or two unsuccessful starts in different keys, bravely sings "Kathleen Mavourneen," let us say--perhaps in a touchingly sweet tenor voice:

"Kathleen Mavourneen, the gry dawn is brykin', The 'orn of the 'unter is 'eard on the 'ill." ...

And Little Billee didn't mind the dropping of all these aitches if the voice was sympathetic and well in tune, and the sentiment simple, tender, and sincere.

Or else, with a good rolling jingo ba.s.s, it was,

"'Earts o' hoak are our ships; 'earts o' hoak are our men; And we'll fight and we'll conkwer agen and agen!"

And no imperfection of accent, in Little Billee's estimation, subtracted one jot from the manly British pluck that found expression in these n.o.ble sentiments--nor added one t.i.ttle to their swaggering, blatant, and idiotically aggressive vulgarity!

Well, the song finishes with general applause all round. Then the chairman says, "Your 'ealth and song, sir!" And drinks, and all do the same.