Trilby · Part 6 (1/5)

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 courtyard 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 banknotes 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 pastrycook’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 courtyard 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!”

Taffy drew a long breath into his manly bosom, and kept it there as he read this characteristic French doggerel (for so he chose to call this touching little symphony in ère and ra). His huge frame thrilled with tenderness and pity and fond remembrance, and he said to himself (letting out his breath): “Dear, dear Trilby! Ah! if you had only cared for me, I wouldn’t have let you give me up⁠—not for anyone on earth. You were the mate for me!”

And that, as the reader has guessed long ago, was big Taffy’s “history.”

The Laird was also deeply touched, and could not speak. Had he been in love with Trilby, too? Had he ever been in love with anyone?

He couldn’t say. But he thought of Trilby’s sweetness and unselfishness, her gayety, her innocent kissings and caressings, her drollery and frolicsome grace, her way of filling whatever place she was in with her presence, the charming sight and the genial sound of her; and felt that no girl, no woman, no lady he had ever seen yet was a match for this poor waif and stray, this long-legged, cancan-dancing, quartier-latin grisette, blanchisseuse de fin, “and Heaven knows what besides!”

“Hang it all!” he mentally ejaculated, “I wish to goodness I’d married her myself!”