too; the name seems to favor it, anyhow; and such lots of them do in
this country. His mother was English, and bore the worthy name of Brown.
He was at school in England; that's why he speaks English so well--and
behaves so badly, perhaps! He's got a very beautiful sister, married to
a man in the 60th Rifles--Jack Reeve, a son of Lord Reevely's; a selfish
sort of chap. I don't suppose he gets on very well with his
brother-in-law. Poor Dodor! His sister's about the only living thing he
cares for--except Zouzou."
* * * * *
I wonder if the bland and genial Monsieur Théodore--"notre Sieur
Théodore"--now junior partner in the great haberdashery firm of
"Passefil et Rigolot," on the Boulevard des Capucines, and a pillar of
the English chapel in the Rue Marboeuf, is very hard on his employés
and employées if they are a little late at their counters on a Monday
morning?
I wonder if that stuck-up, stingy, stodgy, communard-shooting,
church-going, time-serving, place-hunting, pious-eyed, pompous old prig,
martinet, and philistine, Monsieur le Maréchal-Duc de la
Rochemartel-Boisségur, ever tells Madame la Maréchale-Duchesse (_née_
Hunks, of Chicago) how once upon a time Dodor and he--
We will tell no tales out of school.
The present scribe is no snob. He is a respectably brought-up old Briton
of the higher middle-class--at least, he flatters himself so. And he
writes for just such old philistines as himself, who date from a time
when titles were not thought so cheap as to-day. Alas! all reverence for
all that is high and time-honored and beautiful seems at a discount.
So he has kept his blackguard ducal Zouave for the bouquet of this
little show--the final _bonne bouche_ in his bohemian _menu_--that he
may make it palatable to those who only look upon the good old quartier
latin (now no more to speak of) as a very low, common, vulgar quarter
indeed, deservedly swept away, where misters the students (shocking
bounders and cads) had nothing better to do, day and night, than mount
up to a horrid place called the thatched house--_la chaumière_--
"Pour y danser le cancan
Ou le Robert Macaire--
Toujours--toujours--toujours--
La nuit comme le jour ...
Et youp! youp! youp!
Tra la la la la ... la la la!"
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
Christmas was drawing near.
There were days when the whole quartier latin would veil its iniquities
under fogs almost worthy of the Thames Valley between London Bridge and
Westminster, and out of the studio window the prospect was a dreary
blank. No morgue! no towers of Notre Dame! not even the chimney-pots
over the way--not even the little mediæval toy turret at the corner of
the Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres, Little Billee's delight!
The stove had to be crammed till its sides grew a dull deep red before
one's fingers could hold a brush or squeeze a bladder; one had to box or
fence at nine in the morning, that one might recover from the cold bath,
and get warm for the rest of the day!
Taffy and the Laird grew pensive and dreamy, childlike and bland; and
when they talked it was generally about Christmas at home in merry
England and the distant land of cakes, and how good it was to be there
at such a time--hunting, shooting, curling, and endless carouse!
It was Ho! for the jolly West Riding, and Hey! for the bonnets of Bonnie
Dundee, till they grew quite homesick, and wanted to start by the very
next train.
They didn't do anything so foolish. They wrote over to friends in London
for the biggest turkey, the biggest plum-pudding, that could be got for
love or money, with mince-pies, and holly and mistletoe, and sturdy,
short, thick English sausages, half a Stilton cheese, and a sirloin of
beef--two sirloins, in case one should not be enough.
For they meant to have a Homeric feast in the studio on Christmas
Day--Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee--and invite all the delightful
chums I have been trying to describe; and that is just why I tried to
describe them--Durien, Vincent, Antony, Lorrimer, Carnegie,
Petrolicoconose, l'Zouzou, and Dodor!
The cooking and waiting should be done by Trilby, her friend Angèle
Boisse, M. et Mme. Vinard, and such little Vinards as could be trusted
with glass and crockery and mince-pies; and if that was not enough, they
would also cook themselves and wait upon each other.
When dinner should be over, supper was to follow with scarcely any
interval to speak of; and to partake of this other guests should be
bidden--Svengali and Gecko, and perhaps one or two more. No ladies!
For, as the unsusceptible Laird expressed it, in the language of a
gillie he had once met at a servants' dance in a Highland country-house,
"Them wimmen spiles the ball!"
Elaborate cards of invitation were sent out, in the designing and
ornamentation of which the Laird and Taffy exhausted all their fancy
(Little Billee had no time).
Wines and spirits and English beers were procured at great cost from M.
E. Delevingne's, in the Rue St. Honoré, and liqueurs of every
description--chartreuse, curaçoa, ratafia de cassis, and anisette; no
expense was spared.
Also, truffled galantines of turkey, tongues, hams, rillettes de Tours,
pâtés de foie gras, "fromage d'Italie" (which has nothing to do with
cheese), saucissons d'Arles et de Lyon, with and without garlic, cold
jellies peppery and salt--everything that French charcutiers and their
wives can make out of French pigs, or any other animal whatever, beast,
bird, or fowl (even cats and rats), for the supper; and sweet jellies,
and cakes, and sweetmeats, and confections of all kinds, from the famous
pastry-cook at the corner of the Rue Castiglione.
Mouths went watering all day long in joyful anticipation. They water
somewhat sadly now at the mere remembrance of these delicious
things--the mere immediate sight or scent of which in these degenerate
latter days would no longer avail to promote any such delectable
secretion. Hélas! ahimè! ach weh! ay de mi! eheu! [Greek: oimoi]--in
point of fact, _alas_!
That is the very exclamation I wanted.
[Illustration: CHRISTMAS EVE]
Christmas Eve came round. The pieces of resistance and plum-pudding
and mince-pies had not yet arrived from London--but there was plenty of
time.
Les trois Angliches dined at le père Trin's, as usual, and played
billiards and dominos at the Café du Luxembourg, and possessed their
souls in patience till it was time to go and hear the midnight mass at
the Madeleine, where Roucouly, the great barytone of the Opéra Comique,
was retained to sing Adam's famous Noël.
The whole quartier seemed alive with the réveillon. It was a clear,
frosty night, with a splendid moon just past the full, and most
exhilarating was the walk along the quays on the Rive Gauche, over the
Pont de la Concorde and across the Place thereof, and up the thronged
Rue de la Madeleine to the massive Parthenaic place of worship that
always has such a pagan, worldly look of smug and prosperous modernity.
They struggled manfully, and found standing and kneeling room among that
fervent crowd, and heard the impressive service with mixed feelings, as
became true Britons of very advanced liberal and religious opinions; not
with the unmixed contempt of the proper British Orthodox (who were there
in full force, one may be sure).
But their susceptible hearts soon melted at the beautiful music, and in
mere sensuous _attendrissement_ they were quickly in unison with all the
rest.
For as the clock struck twelve out pealed the organ, and up rose the
finest voice in France:
"Minuit, Chrétiens! c'est l'heure solennelle
Où l'Homme-Dieu descendit parmi nous!"
And a wave of religious emotion rolled over Little Billee and submerged
him; swept him off his little legs, swept him out of his little self,
drowned him in a great seething surge of love--love of his kind, love of
love, love of life, love of death, love of all that is and ever was and
ever will be--a very large order indeed, even for Little Billee.
[Illustration: "'ALLONS GLYCÈRE! ROUGIS MON VERRE....'"]
And it seemed to him that he stretched out his arms for love to one
figure especially beloved beyond all the rest--one figure erect on high
with arms outstretched to him, in more than common fellowship of need;
not the sorrowful figure crowned with thorns, for it was in the likeness
of a woman; but never that of the Virgin Mother of Our Lord.
It was Trilby, Trilby, Trilby! a poor fallen sinner and waif all but
lost amid the scum of the most corrupt city on earth. Trilby weak and
mortal like himself, and in woful want of pardon! and in her gray
dovelike eyes he saw the shining of so great a love that he was abashed;
for well he knew that all that love was his, and would be his forever,
come what would or could.
"Peuple, debout! Chante ta délivrance!
_Noël! Noël! Voici le Rédempteur!_"
So sang and rang and pealed and echoed the big, deep, metallic barytone
bass--above the organ, above the incense, above everything else in the
world--till the very universe seemed to shake with the rolling thunder
of that great message of love and forgiveness!
Thus at least felt Little Billee, whose way it was to magnify and
exaggerate all things under the subtle stimulus of sound, and the
singing human voice had especially strange power to penetrate into his
inmost depths--even the voice of man!
And what voice but the deepest and gravest and grandest there is can
give worthy utterance to such a message as that, the epitome, the
abstract, the very essence of all collective humanity's wisdom at its
best!
Little Billee reached the Hôtel Corneille that night in a very exalted
frame of mind indeed, the loftiest, lowliest mood of all.
Now see what sport we are of trivial, base, ignoble earthly things!
Sitting on the door-step and smoking two cigars at once he found Ribot,
one of his fellow-lodgers, whose room was just under his own. Ribot was
so tipsy that he could not ring. But he could still sing, and did so at
the top of his voice. It was not the Noël of Adam that he sang. He had
not spent his réveillon in any church.
With the help of a sleepy waiter, Little Billee got the bacchanalian
into his room and lit his candle for him, and, disengaging himself from
his maudlin embraces, left him to wallow in solitude.
As he lay awake in his bed, trying to recall the deep and high emotions
of the evening, he heard the tipsy hog below tumbling about his room and
still trying to sing his senseless ditty:
"Allons, Glycère!
Rougis mon verre
Du jus divin dont mon coeur est toujours jaloux ...
Et puis à table,
Bacchante aimable!
Enivrons-nous (hic) Les g-glougloux sont des rendezvous!"...
Then the song ceased for a while, and soon there were other sounds, as
on a Channel steamer. Glougloux indeed!
Then the fear arose in Little Billee's mind lest the drunken beast
should set fire to his bedroom curtains. All heavenly visions were
chased away for the night....
Our hero, half-crazed with fear, disgust, and irritation, lay wide
awake, his nostrils on the watch for the smell of burning chintz or
muslin, and wondered how an educated man--for Ribot was a
law-student--could ever make such a filthy beast of himself as that! It
was a scandal--a disgrace; it was not to be borne; there should be no
forgiveness for such as Ribot--not even on Christmas Day! He would
complain to Madame Paul, the patronne; he would have Ribot turned out
into the street; he would leave the hotel himself the very next morning!
At last he fell asleep, thinking of all he would do; and thus,
ridiculously and ignominiously for Little Billee, ended the réveillon.
Next morning he complained to Madame Paul; and though he did not give
her warning, nor even insist on the expulsion of Ribot (who, as he heard
with a hard heart, was "bien malade ce matin"), he expressed himself
very severely on the conduct of that gentleman, and on the dangers from
fire that might arise from a tipsy man being trusted alone in a small
bedroom with chintz curtains and a lighted candle. If it hadn't been for
himself, he told her, Ribot would have slept on the door-step, and serve
him right! He was really grand in his virtuous indignation, in spite of
his imperfect French; and Madame Paul was deeply contrite for her
peccant lodger, and profuse in her apologies; and Little Billee began
his twenty-first Christmas Day like a Pharisee, thanking his star that
he was not as Ribot!
Part Fourth
"Félicité passée
Qui ne peux revenir,
Tourment de ma pensée,
Que n'ay-je, en te perdant, perdu le souvenir!"
Mid-day had struck. The expected hamper had not turned up in the Place
St. Anatole des Arts.
All Madame Vinard's kitchen battery was in readiness; Trilby and Madame
Angèle Boisse were in the studio, their sleeves turned up, and ready to
begin.
At twelve the trois Angliches and the two fair blanchisseuses sat down
to lunch in a very anxious frame of mind, and finished a pâté de foie
gras and two bottles of Burgundy between them, such was their
disquietude.
The guests had been invited for six o'clock.
Most elaborately they laid the cloth on the table they had borrowed from
the Hôtel de Seine, and settled who was to sit next to whom, and then
unsettled it, and quarrelled over it--Trilby, as was her wont in such
matters, assuming an authority that did not rightly belong to her, and
of course getting her own way in the end.
And that, as the Laird remarked, was her confounded Trilbyness.
Two o'clock--three--four--but no hamper! Darkness had almost set in. It
was simply maddening. They knelt on the divan, with their elbows on the
window-sill, and watched the street lamps popping into life along the
quays--and looked out through the gathering dusk for the van from the
Chemin de Fer du Nord--and gloomily thought of the Morgue, which they
could still make out across the river.
[Illustration: SOUVENIR]
At length the Laird and Trilby went off in a cab to the station--a long
drive--and, lo! before they came back the long-expected hamper arrived,
at six o'clock.
And with it Durien, Vincent, Antony, Lorrimer, Carnegie,
Petrolicoconose, Dodor, and l'Zouzou--the last two in uniform, as usual.
And suddenly the studio, which had been so silent, dark, and dull, with
Taffy and Little Billee sitting hopeless and despondent round the
stove, became a scene of the noisiest, busiest, and cheerfulest
animation. The three big lamps were lit, and all the Chinese lanterns.
The pieces of resistance and the pudding were whisked off by Trilby,
Angèle, and Madame Vinard to other regions--the porter's lodge and
Durien's studio (which had been lent for the purpose); and every one was
pressed into the preparations for the banquet. There was plenty for idle
hands to do. Sausages to be fried for the turkey, stuffing made, and
sauces, salads mixed, and punch--holly hung in festoons all round and
about--a thousand things. Everybody was so clever and good-humored that
nobody got in anybody's way--not even Carnegie, who was in evening dress
(to the Laird's delight). So they made him do the scullion's
work--cleaning, rinsing, peeling, etc.
The cooking of the dinner was almost better fun than the eating of it.
And though there were so many cooks, not even the broth was spoiled
(cockaleekie, from a receipt of the Laird's).
It was ten o'clock before they sat down to that most memorable repast.
Zouzou and Dodor, who had been the most useful and energetic of all its
cooks, apparently quite forgot they were due at their respective
barracks at that very moment: they had only been able to obtain "la
permission de dix heures." If they remembered it, the certainty that
next day Zouzou would be reduced to the ranks for the fifth time, and
Dodor confined to his barracks for a month, did not trouble them in the
least.
The waiting was as good as the cooking. The handsome, quick,
authoritative Madame Vinard was in a dozen places at once, and openly
prompted, rebuked, and ballyragged her husband into a proper smartness.
The pretty little Madame Angèle moved about as deftly and as quietly as
a mouse; which of course did not prevent them both from genially joining
in the general conversation whenever it wandered into French.
Trilby, tall, graceful, and stately, and also swift of action, though
more like Juno or Diana than Hebe, devoted herself more especially to
her own particular favorites--Durien, Taffy, the Laird, Little
Billee--and Dodor and Zouzou, whom she loved, and tutoyé'd en bonne
camarade as she served them with all there was of the choicest.
The two little Vinards did their little best--they scrupulously
respected the mince-pies, and only broke two bottles of oil and one of
Harvey sauce, which made their mother furious. To console them, the
Laird took one of them on each knee and gave them of his share of
plum-pudding and many other unaccustomed good things, so bad for their
little French tumtums.
The genteel Carnegie had never been at such a queer scene in his life.
It opened his mind--and Dodor and Zouzou, between whom he sat (the Laird
thought it would do him good to sit between a private soldier and a
humble corporal), taught him more French than he had learned during the
three months he had spent in Paris. It was a specialty of theirs. It was
more colloquial than what is generally used in diplomatic circles, and
stuck longer in the memory; but it hasn't interfered with his preferment
in the Church.
He quite unbent. He was the first to volunteer a song (without being
asked) when the pipes and cigars were lit, and after the usual toasts
had been drunk--her Majesty's health, Tennyson, Thackeray, and Dickens;
and John Leech.
He sang, with a very cracked and rather hiccupy voice, his only song (it
seems)--an English one, of which the burden, he explained, was French:
"Veeverler veeverler veeverler vee
Veeverler companyee!"
And Zouzou and Dodor complimented him so profusely on his French accent
that he was with difficulty prevented from singing it all over again.
Then everybody sang in rotation.
The Laird, with a capital barytone, sang
"Hie diddle Dee for the Lowlands low,"
which was encored.
Little Billee sang "Little Billee."
Vincent sang
"Old Joe kicking up behind and afore.
And the yaller gal a-kicking up behind old Joe."
A capital song, with words of quite a masterly scansion.
Antony sang "Le Sire de Framboisy." Enthusiastic encore.
Lorrimer, inspired no doubt by the occasion, sang the "Hallelujah
Chorus," and accompanied himself on the piano, but failed to obtain an
encore.
Durien sang
"Plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'un moment;
Chagrin d'amour dure toute la vie...."
It was his favorite song, and one of the beautiful songs of the world,
and he sang it very well--and it became popular in the quartier latin
ever after.
The Greek couldn't sing, and very wisely didn't.
Zouzou sang capitally a capital song in praise of "le vin à quat' sous!"
Taffy, in a voice like a high wind (and with a very good imitation of
the Yorkshire brogue), sang a Somersetshire hunting-ditty, ending:
"Of this 'ere song should I be axed the reason for to show,
I don't exactly know, I don't exactly know!
But all my fancy dwells upon Nancy,
And I sing Tally-ho!"
It is a quite superexcellent ditty, and haunts my memory to this day;
and one felt sure that Nancy was a dear and a sweet, wherever she lived,
and when. So Taffy was encored twice--once for her sake, once for his
own.
[Illustration: "MY SISTER DEAR"]
And finally, to the surprise of all, the bold dragoon sang (in English)
"My Sister Dear," out of _Masaniello_, with such pathos, and in a voice
so sweet and high and well in tune, that his audience felt almost weepy
in the midst of their jollification, and grew quite sentimental, as
Englishmen abroad are apt to do when they are rather tipsy and hear
pretty music, and think of their dear sisters across the sea, or their
friends' dear sisters.
Madame Vinard interrupted her Christmas dinner on the model-throne to
listen, and wept and wiped her eyes quite openly, and remarked to Madame
Boisse, who stood modestly close by: "Il est gentil tout plein, ce
dragon! Mon Dieu! comme il chante bien! Il est Angliche aussi, il
paraît. Ils sont joliment bien élevés, tous ces Angliches--tous plus
gentils les uns que les autres! et quant à Monsieur Litrebili, on lui
donnerait le bon Dieu sans confession!"
And Madame Boisse agreed.
Then Svengali and Gecko came, and the table had to be laid and decorated
anew, for it was supper-time.
Supper was even jollier than dinner, which had taken off the keen edge
of the appetites, so that every one talked at once--the true test of a
successful supper--except when Antony told some of his experiences of
bohemia; for instance, how, after staying at home all day for a month to
avoid his creditors, he became reckless one Sunday morning, and went to
the Bains Deligny, and jumped into a deep part by mistake, and was saved
from a watery grave by a bold swimmer, who turned out to be his
boot-maker, Satory, to whom he owed sixty francs--of all his duns the
one he dreaded the most--and who didn't let him go in a hurry.
Whereupon Svengali remarked that he also owed sixty francs to
Satory--"Mais comme che ne me baigne chamais, che n'ai rien à
craindre!"
Whereupon there was such a laugh that Svengali felt he had scored off
Antony at last and had a prettier wit. He flattered himself that he'd
got the laugh of Antony _this_ time.
And after supper Svengali and Gecko made such lovely music that
everybody was sobered and athirst again, and the punch-bowl, wreathed
with holly and mistletoe, was placed in the middle of the table, and
clean glasses set all round it.
[Illustration: A DUCAL FRENCH FIGHTING-COCK]
Then Dodor and l'Zouzou stood up to dance with Trilby and Madame Angèle,
and executed a series of cancan steps, which, though they were so
inimitably droll that they had each and all to be encored, were such
that not one of them need have brought the blush of shame to the cheek
of modesty.
Then the Laird danced a sword-dance over two T squares and broke them
both. And Taffy, baring his mighty arms to the admiring gaze of all, did
dumb-bell exercises, with Little Billee for a dumb-bell, and all but
dropped him into the punch-bowl; and tried to cut a pewter ladle in two
with Dodor's sabre, and sent it through the window; and this made him
cross, so that he abused French sabres, and said they were made of worse
pewter than even French ladles; and the Laird sententiously opined that
they managed these things better in England, and winked at Little
Billee.
Then they played at "cock-fighting," with their wrists tied across their
shins, and a broomstick thrust in between; thus manacled, you are placed
opposite your antagonist, and try to upset him with your feet, and he
you. It is a very good game. The cuirassier and the Zouave playing at
this got so angry, and were so irresistibly funny a sight, that the
shouts of laughter could be heard on the other side of the river, so
that a sergent de ville came in and civilly requested them not to make
so much noise. They were disturbing the whole quartier, he said, and
there was quite a "rassemblement" outside. So they made him tipsy, and
also another policeman, who came to look after his comrade, and yet
another; and these guardians of the peace of Paris were trussed and made
to play at cock-fighting, and were still funnier than the two soldiers,
and laughed louder and made more noise than any one else, so that Madame
Vinard had to remonstrate with them; till they got too tipsy to speak,
and fell fast asleep, and were laid next to each other behind the
stove.
The _fin de siècle_ reader, disgusted at the thought of such an orgy as
I have been trying to describe, must remember that it happened in the
fifties, when men calling themselves gentlemen, and being called so,
still wrenched off door-knockers and came back drunk from the Derby, and
even drank too much after dinner before joining the ladies, as is all
duly chronicled and set down in John Leech's immortal pictures of life
and character out of _Punch_.
* * * * *
Then M. and Mme. Vinard and Trilby and Angèle Boisse bade the company
good-night, Trilby being the last of them to leave.
Little Billee took her to the top of the staircase, and there he said to
her: