I can only sink of ze zinger. Any koot zinger can zing a peautiful zong
and kif bleasure, I zubboce! But I voot zooner hear la Sfencali zing a
scale zan anypotty else zing ze most peautiful zong in ze vorldt--efen
vun of my own! Zat is berhaps how zung ze crate Italian zingers of ze
last century. It vas a lost art, and she has found it; and she must haf
pecun to zing pefore she pecan to schpeak--or else she voot not haf hat
ze time to learn all zat she knows, for she is not yet zirty! She zings
in Paris in Ogdoper, Gott sei dank! and gums here after Christmas to
zing at Trury Lane. Chullien kifs her ten sousand bounts!"
"I wonder, now! Why, that must be the woman I heard at Warsaw two years
ago--or three," said young Lord Witlow. "It was at Count Siloszech's.
He'd heard her sing in the streets, with a tall, black-bearded ruffian,
who accompanied her on a guitar, and a little fiddling gypsy fellow. She
was a handsome woman, with hair down to her knees, but stupid as an owl.
She sang at Siloszech's, and all the fellows went mad and gave her their
watches and diamond studs and gold scarf-pins. By gad! I never heard or
saw anything like it. I don't know much about music myself--couldn't
tell 'God Save the Queen' from 'Pop Goes the Weasel,' if the people
didn't get up and stand and take their hats off; but I was as mad as the
rest--why, I gave her a little German silver vinaigrette I'd just bought
for my wife; hanged if I didn't--and I was only just married, you know!
It's the peculiar twang of her voice, I suppose!"
And hearing all this, Little Billee made up his mind that life had still
something in store for him, since he would some day hear la Svengali.
Anyhow, he wouldn't shoot himself till then!
* * * * *
Thus the night wore itself away. The Prinzessen, Comtessen, and Serene
English Altessen (and other ladies of less exalted rank) departed home
in cabs and carriages; and hostess and daughters went to bed. Late
sitters of the ruder sex supped again, and smoked and chatted and
listened to comic songs and recitations by celebrated actors. Noble
dukes hobnobbed with low comedians; world-famous painters and sculptors
sat at the feet of Hebrew capitalists and aitchless millionaires.
Judges, cabinet ministers, eminent physicians, and warriors and
philosophers saw Sunday morning steal over Campden Hill and through the
many windows of Mechelen Lodge, and listened to the pipe of
half-awakened birds, and smelled the freshness of the dark summer dawn.
And as Taffy and the Laird walked home to the Old Hummums by daylight,
they felt that last night was ages ago, and that since then they had
foregathered with "much there was of the best in London." And then they
reflected that "much there was of the best in London" were still
strangers to them--except by reputation--for there had not been time for
many introductions: and this had made them feel a little out of it; and
they found they hadn't had such a very good time after all. And there
were no cabs. And they were tired, and their boots were tight.
And the last they had seen of Little Billee before leaving was a glimpse
of their old friend in a corner of Lady Cornelys's boudoir, gravely
playing cup-and-ball with Fred Walker for sixpences--both so rapt in the
game that they were unconscious of anything else, and both playing so
well (with either hand) that they might have been professional
champions!
And that saturnine young sawbones, Jakes Talboys (now Sir Jakes, and one
of the most genial of Her Majesty's physicians), who sometimes after
supper and champagne was given to thoughtful, sympathetic, and acute
observation of his fellow-men, remarked to the Laird in a whisper that
was almost convivial: "Rather an enviable pair! Their united ages amount
to forty-eight or so, their united weights to about fifteen stone, and
they couldn't carry you or me between them. But if you were to roll all
the other brains that have been under this roof to-night into one, you
wouldn't reach the sum of their united genius.... I wonder which of the
two is the most unhappy!"
* * * * *
* * * * *
The season over, the song-birds flown, summer on the wane, his picture,
the "Moon-Dial," sent to Moses Lyon's (the picture-dealer in Conduit
Street), Little Billee felt the time had come to go and see his mother
and sister in Devonshire, and make the sun shine twice as brightly for
them during a month or so, and the dew fall softer!
So one fine August morning found him at the Great Western Station--the
nicest station in all London, I think--except the stations that book you
to France and far away.
It always seems so pleasant to be going west! Little Billee loved that
station, and often went there for a mere stroll, to watch the people
starting on their westward way, following the sun towards Heaven knows
what joys or sorrows, and envy them their sorrows or their joys--any
sorrows or joys that were not merely physical, like a chocolate drop or
a pretty tune, a bad smell or a toothache.
And as he took a seat in a second-class carriage (it would be third in
these democratic days), south corner, back to the engine, with _Silas
Marner_, and Darwin's _Origin of Species_ (which he was reading for the
third time), and _Punch_, and other literature of a lighter kind, to
beguile him on his journey, he felt rather bitterly how happy he could
be if the little spot, or knot, or blot, or clot which paralyzed that
convolution of his brain where he kept his affections could but be
conjured away!
The dearest mother, the dearest sister in the world, in the dearest
little sea-side village (or town) that ever was! and other dear
people--especially Alice, sweet Alice with hair so brown, his sister's
friend, the simple, pure, and pious maiden of his boyish dreams: and
himself, but for that wretched little kill-joy cerebral occlusion, as
sound, as healthy, as full of life and energy as he had ever been!
[Illustration: CUP-AND-BALL]
And when he wasn't reading _Silas Marner_, or looking out of window at
the flying landscape, and watching it revolve round its middle distance
(as it always seems to do), he was sympathetically taking stock of his
fellow-passengers, and mildly envying them, one after another,
indiscriminately!
A fat, old, wheezy philistine, with a bulbous nose and only one eye, who
had a plain, sickly daughter, to whom he seemed devoted, body and soul;
an old lady, who still wept furtively at recollections of the parting
with her grandchildren, which had taken place at the station (they had
borne up wonderfully, as grandchildren do); a consumptive curate, on the
opposite corner seat by the window, whose tender, anxious wife (sitting
by his side) seemed to have no thoughts in the whole world but for him;
and her patient eyes were his stars of consolation, since he turned to
look into them almost every minute, and always seemed a little the
happier for doing so. There is no better star-gazing than that!
So Little Billee gave her up _his_ corner seat, that the poor sufferer
might have those stars where he could look into them comfortably without
turning his head.
Indeed (as was his wont with everybody), Little Billee made himself
useful and pleasant to his fellow-travellers in many ways--so many that
long before they had reached their respective journeys' ends they had
almost grown to love him as an old friend, and longed to know who this
singularly attractive and brilliant youth, this genial, dainty,
benevolent little princekin could possibly be, who was dressed so
fashionably, and yet went second class, and took such kind thought of
others; and they wondered at the happiness that must be his at merely
being alive, and told him more of their troubles in six hours than they
told many an old friend in a year.
But he told them nothing about himself--that self he was so sick of--and
left them to wonder.
And at his own journey's end, the farthest end of all, he found his
mother and sister waiting for him, in a beautiful little
pony-carriage--his last gift--and with them sweet Alice, and in her
eyes, for one brief moment, that unconscious look of love surprised
which is not to be forgotten for years and years and years--which can
only be seen by the eyes that meet it, and which, for the time it lasts
(just a flash), makes all women's eyes look exactly the same (I'm told):
and it seemed to Little Billee that, for the twentieth part of a second,
Alice had looked at him with Trilby's eyes--or his mother's, when that
he was a little tiny boy.
It all but gave him the thrill he thirsted for! Another twentieth part
of a second, perhaps, and his brain-trouble would have melted away; and
Little Billee would have come into his own again--the kingdom of love!
A beautiful human eye! _Any_ beautiful eye--a dog's, a deer's, a
donkey's, an owl's even! To think of all that it can look, and all that
it can see! all that it can even _seem_, sometimes! What a prince among
gems! what a star!
But a beautiful eye that lets the broad white light of infinite space
(so bewildering and garish and diffused) into one pure virgin heart, to
be filtered there! and lets it out again, duly warmed, softened,
concentrated, sublimated, focussed to a point as in a precious stone,
that it may shed itself (a love-laden effulgence) into some stray
fellow-heart close by--through pupil and iris, entre quatre-z-yeux--the
very elixir of life!
Alas! that such a crown-jewel should ever lose its lustre and go blind!
Not so blind or dim, however, but it can still see well enough to look
before and after, and inward and upward, and drown itself in tears, and
yet not die! And that's the dreadful pity of it. And this is a quite
uncalled-for digression; and I can't think why I should have gone out of
my way (at considerable pains) to invent it! In fact--
"Of this here 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._" ...
"How pretty Alice has grown, mother! quite lovely, I think! and so nice;
but she was always as nice as she could be!"
So observed Little Billee to his mother that evening as they sat in the
garden and watched the crescent moon sink to the Atlantic.
"Ah! my darling Willie! If you _could_ only guess how happy you would
make your poor old mammy by growing fond of Alice.... And Blanche, too!
what a joy for _her_!"
"Good heavens! mother.... Alice is not for the likes of _me_! She's for
some splendid young Devon squire, six foot high, and acred and
whiskered within an inch of his life!..."
"Ah, my darling Willie! you are not of those who ask for love in
vain.... If you only _knew_ how she believes in you! She almost beats
your poor old mammy at _that_!"
[Illustration: SWEET ALICE]
And that night he dreamed of Alice--that he loved her as a sweet good
woman should be loved; and knew, even in his dream, that it was but a
dream; but, oh! it was good! and he managed not to wake; and it was a
night to be marked with a white stone! And (still in his dream) she had
kissed him, and healed him of his brain-trouble forever. But when he
woke next morning, alas! his brain-trouble was with him still, and he
felt that no dream kiss would ever cure it--nothing but a real kiss from
Alice's own pure lips!
And he rose thinking of Alice, and dressed and breakfasted thinking of
her--and how fair she was, and how innocent, and how well and carefully
trained up the way she should go--the beau ideal of a wife.... Could she
possibly care for a shrimp like himself?
For in his love of outward form he could not understand that any woman
who had eyes to see should ever quite condone the signs of physical
weakness in man, in favor of any mental gifts or graces whatsoever.
Little Greek that he was, he worshipped the athlete, and opined that all
women without exception--all English women especially--must see with the
same eyes as himself.
He had once been vain and weak enough to believe in Trilby's love (with
a Taffy standing by--a careless, unsusceptible Taffy, who was like unto
the gods of Olympus!)--and Trilby had given him up at a word, a
hint--for all his frantic clinging.
She would not have given up Taffy, _pour si peu_, had Taffy but lifted a
little finger! It is always "just whistle, and I'll come to you, my
lad!" with the likes of Taffy ... but Taffy hadn't even whistled! Yet
still he kept thinking of Alice--and he felt he couldn't think of her
well enough till he went out for a stroll by himself on a sheep-trimmed
down. So he took his pipe and his Darwin, and out he strolled into the
early sunshine--up the green Red Lane, past the pretty church, Alice's
father's church--and there, at the gate, patiently waiting for his
mistress, sat Alice's dog--an old friend of his, whose welcome was a
very warm one.
Little Billee thought of Thackeray's lovely poem in _Pendennis_:
"She comes--she's here--she's past!
May heaven go with her!..."
Then he and the dog went on together to a little bench on the edge of
the cliff--within sight of Alice's bedroom window. It was called "the
Honeymooners' Bench."
"That look--that look--that look! Ah--but Trilby had looked like that,
too! And there are many Taffys in Devon!"
He sat himself down and smoked and gazed at the sea below, which the sun
(still in the east) had not yet filled with glare and robbed of the
lovely sapphire-blue, shot with purple and dark green, that comes over
it now and again of a morning on that most beautiful coast.
There was a fresh breeze from the west, and the long, slow billows broke
into creamier foam than ever, which reflected itself as a tender white
gleam in the blue concavities of their shining shoreward curves as they
came rolling in. The sky was all of turquoise but for the smoke of a
distant steamer--a long thin horizontal streak of dun--and there were
little brown or white sails here and there, dotting; and the stately
ships went on....
Little Billee tried hard to feel all this beauty with his heart as well
as his brain--as he had so often done when a boy--and cursed his
insensibility out loud for at least the thousand and first time.
Why couldn't these waves of air and water be turned into equivalent
waves of sound, that he might feel them through the only channel that
reached his emotions! That one joy was still left to him--but, alas!
alas! he was only a painter of pictures--and not a maker of music!
He recited "Break, break, break," to Alice's dog, who loved him, and
looked up into his face with sapient, affectionate eyes--and whose
name, like that of so many dogs in fiction and so few in fact, was
simply Tray. For Little Billee was much given to monologues out loud,
and profuse quotations from his favorite bards.
Everybody quoted that particular poem either mentally or aloud when they
sat on that particular bench--except a few old-fashioned people, who
still said,
"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!"
or people of the very highest culture, who only quoted the nascent (and
crescent) Robert Browning; or people of no culture at all, who simply
held their tongues--and only felt the more!
Tray listened silently.
"Ah, Tray, the best thing but one to do with the sea is to paint it. The
next best thing to that is to bathe in it. The best of all is to lie
asleep at the bottom. How would _you_ like that?
"'And on thy ribs the limpet sticks,
And in thy heart the scrawl shall play....'"
Tray's tail became as a wagging point of interrogation, and he turned
his head first on one side and then on the other--his eyes fixed on
Little Billee's, his face irresistible in its genial doggy wistfulness.
"Tray, what a singularly good listener you are--and therefore what
singularly good manners you've got! I suppose all dogs have!" said
Little Billee; and then, in a very tender voice, he exclaimed,
"Alice, Alice, Alice!"
And Tray uttered a soft, cooing, nasal croon in his head register,
though he was a barytone dog by nature, with portentous, warlike
chest-notes of the jingo order.
"Tray, your mistress is a parson's daughter, and therefore twice as much
of a mystery as any other woman in this puzzling world!
"Tray, if my heart weren't stopped with wax, like the ears of the
companions of Ulysses when they rowed past the sirens--you've heard of
Ulysses, Tray? he loved a dog--if my heart weren't stopped with wax, I
should be deeply in love with your mistress; perhaps she would marry me
if I asked her--there's no accounting for tastes!--and I know enough of
myself to know that I should make her a good husband--that I should make
her happy--and I should make two other women happy besides.
"As for myself personally, Tray, it doesn't very much matter. One good
woman would do as well as another, if she's equally good-looking. You
doubt it? Wait till you get a pimple inside your bump of--your bump
of--wherever you keep your fondnesses, Tray.
"For that's what's the matter with me--a pimple--just a little clot of
blood at the root of a nerve, and no bigger than a pin's point!
"That's a small thing to cause such a lot of wretchedness, and wreck a
fellow's life, isn't it? Oh, curse it, curse it, curse it--every day and
all day long!
"And just as small a thing will take it away, I'm told!
"Ah! grains of sand are small things--and so are diamonds! But diamond
or grain of sand, only Alice has got that small thing! Alice alone, in
all the world, has got the healing touch for me now; the hands, the
lips, the eyes! I know it--I feel it! I dreamed it last night! She
looked me well in the face, and took my hand--both hands--and kissed me,
eyes and mouth, and told me how she loved me. Ah! what a dream it was!
And my little clot melted away like a snow-flake on the lips, and I was
my old self again, after many years--and all through that kiss of a pure
woman.
"I've never been kissed by a pure woman in my life--never! except by my
dear mother and sister; and mothers and sisters don't count, when it
comes to kissing.
"Ah! sweet physician that she is, and better than all! It will all come
back again with a rush, just as I dreamed, and we will have a good time
together, we three!...
[Illustration: "MAY HEAVEN GO WITH HER!"]
"But your mistress is a parson's daughter, and believes everything she's
been taught from a child, just as you do--at least, I hope so. And I
like her for it--and you too.
"She has believed her father--will she ever believe me, who think so
differently? And if she does, will it be good for her?--and then, where
will her father come in?
"Oh! it's a bad thing to live, and no longer believe and trust in your
father, Tray! to doubt either his honesty or his intelligence. For he
(with your mother to help) has taught you all the best he knows, if he
has been a good father--till some one else comes and teaches you
better--or worse!
"And, then, what are you to believe of what good still remains of all
that early teaching--and how are you to sift the wheat from the
chaff?...
"Kneel undisturbed, fair saint! I, for one, will never seek to undermine
thy faith in any father, on earth or above it!
"Yes, there she kneels in her father's church, her pretty head bowed
over her clasped hands, her cloak and skirts falling in happy folds
about her: I see it all!
"And underneath, that poor, sweet, soft, pathetic thing of flesh and
blood, the eternal woman--great heart and slender brain--forever
enslaved or enslaving, never self-sufficing, never free ... that dear,
weak, delicate shape, so cherishable, so perishable, that I've had to
paint so often, and know so well by heart! and love ... ah, how I love
it! Only painter-fellows and sculptor-fellows can ever quite know the
fulness of that pure love.
"There she kneels and pours forth her praise or plaint, meekly and duly.
Perhaps it's for me she's praying!
"'Leave thou thy sister when she prays.'
"She believes her poor little prayer will be heard and answered
somewhere up aloft. The impossible will be done. She wants what she
wants so badly, and prays for it so hard.
"She believes--she believes--what _doesn't_ she believe, Tray?
"The world was made in six days. It is just six thousand years old. Once
it all lay smothered under rain-water for many weeks, miles deep,
because there were so many wicked people about somewhere down in
Jude_e_, where they didn't know everything! A costly kind of clearance!
And then there was Noah, who _wasn't_ wicked, and his most respectable
family, and his ark--and Jonah and his whale--and Joshua and the sun,
and what not. I remember it all, you see, and, oh! such wonderful things
that have happened since! And there's everlasting agony for those who
don't believe as she does; and yet she is happy, and good, and very
kind; for the mere thought of any live creature in pain makes her
wretched!
"After all, if she believes in me, she'll believe in anything; let her!
"Indeed, I'm not sure that it's not rather ungainly for a pretty woman
_not_ to believe in all these good old cosmic taradiddles, as it is for
a pretty child not to believe in Little Red Riding-hood, and Jack and
the Beanstalk, and Morgiana and the Forty Thieves; we learn them at our
mother's knee, and how nice they are! Let us go on believing them as
long as we can, till the child grows up and the woman dies and it's all
found out.
"Yes, Tray, I will be dishonest for her dear sake. I will kneel by her
side, if ever I have the happy chance, and ever after, night and
morning, and all day long on Sundays if she wants me to! What will I
_not_ do for that one pretty woman who believes in _me_? I will respect
even _that_ belief, and do my little best to keep it alive forever. It
is much too precious an earthly boon for _me_ to play ducks and drakes
with....
"So much for Alice, Tray--your sweet mistress and mine.
"But, then, there's Alice's papa--and that's another pair of sleeves, as
we say in France.
"Ought one ever to play at make-believe with a full-grown man for any
consideration whatever--even though he be a parson, and a possible
father-in-law? _There's_ a case of conscience for you!
"When I ask him for his daughter, as I must, and he asks me for my
profession of faith, as he will, what can I tell him? The truth?
"But, then, what will _he_ say? What allowances will _he_ make for a
poor little weak-kneed, well-meaning waif of a painter-fellow like me,
whose only choice lay between Mr. Darwin and the Pope of Rome, and who
has chosen once and forever--and that long ago--before he'd ever even
heard of Mr. Darwin's name.
"Besides, why should he make allowances for me? I don't for him. I think
no more of a parson than he does of a painter-fellow--and that's
precious little, I'm afraid.
"What will he think of a man who says:
"'Look here! the God of your belief isn't mine and never will be--but I
love your daughter, and she loves me, and I'm the only man to make her
happy!'
"He's no Jephthah; he's made of flesh and blood, although he's a
parson--and loves his daughter as much as Shylock loved his.
"Tell me, Tray--thou that livest among parsons--what man, not being a
parson himself, can guess how a parson would think, an average parson,
confronted by such a poser as that?
"Does he, dare he, _can_ he ever think straight or simply on any subject
as any other man thinks, hedged in as he is by so many limitations?
"He is as shrewd, vain, worldly, self-seeking, ambitious, jealous,
censorious, and all the rest, as you or I, Tray--for all his Christian
profession--and just as fond of his kith and kin!
"He is considered a gentleman--which perhaps you and I are not--unless
we happen to behave as such; it is a condition of his noble calling.
Perhaps it's in order to become a gentleman that he's become a parson!
It's about as short a royal road as any to that enviable distinction--as
short almost as her Majesty's commission, and much safer, and much less
expensive--within reach of the sons of most fairly successful butchers
and bakers and candlestick-makers.
"While still a boy he has bound himself irrevocably to certain beliefs,
which he will be paid to preserve and preach and enforce through life,
and act up to through thick and thin--at all events, in the eyes of
others--even his nearest and dearest--even the wife of his bosom.
"They are his bread and butter, these beliefs--and a man mustn't quarrel
with his bread and butter. But a parson must quarrel with those who
don't believe as he tells them!
[Illustration: "'SO MUCH FOR ALICE, TRAY'"]