Part Three
I had no friends but the Lintots and their friends. "Les amis de nosamis sont nos amis!"
My cousin Alfred had gone into the army, like his father before him. Mycousin Charlie had gone into the Church, and we had drifted completelyapart. My grandmother was dead. My Aunt Plunket, a great invalid, livedin Florence. Her daughter, Madge, was in India, happily married to ayoung soldier who is now a most distinguished general.
The Lintots held their heads high as representatives of a liberalprofession, and an old Pentonville family. People were generallyexclusive in those days--an exclusiveness that was chiefly kept up bythe ladies. There were charmed circles even in Pentonville.
Among the most exclusive were the Lintots. Let us hope, in commonjustice, that those they excluded were at least able to exclude others.
I have eaten their bread and salt, and it would ill become me to denythat their circle was charming as well as charmed. But I had no gift formaking friends, although I was often attracted by people the veryopposite of myself; especially by little, clever, quick, but not toofamiliar men; but even if they were disposed to make advances, amiserable shyness and stiffness of manner on my part, that I could nothelp, would raise a barrier of ice between us.
They were most hospitable people, these good Lintots, and had manyfriends, and gave many parties, which my miserable shyness prevented mefrom enjoying to the full. They were both too stiff and too free.
In the drawing-room, Mrs. Lintot and one or two other ladies, severelydressed, would play the severest music in a manner that did not mitigateits severity. They were merciless! It was nearly always Bach, or Hummel,or Scarlatti, each of whom, they would say, could write both like anartist and a gentleman--a very rare but indispensable combination,it seemed.
Other ladies, young and middle-aged, and a few dumb-struck youths likemyself, would be suffered to listen, but never to retaliate--never toplay or sing back again.
If one ventured to ask for a song without words by Mendelssohn--or asong with words, even by Schubert, even with German words--one wasrebuked and made to blush for the crime of musical frivolity.
Meanwhile, in Lintot's office (built by himself in the back garden),grave men and true, pending the supper hour, would smoke and sipspirits-and-water, and talk shop; formally at first, and with muchpoliteness. But gradually, feeling their way, as it were, they wouldrelax into social unbuttonment, and drop the "Mister" before eachother's names (to be resumed next morning), and indulge in livelyprofessional chaff, which would soon become personal and free andboisterous--a good-humored kind of warfare in which I did not shine, forlack of quickness and repartee. For instance, they would ask one whetherone would rather be a bigger fool than one looked, or look a bigger foolthan one was; and whichever way one answered the question, the retortwould be that "that was impossible!" amid roars of laughter from allbut one.
So that I would take a middle course, and spend most of the evening onthe stairs and in the hall, and study (with an absorbing interest muchtoo well feigned to look natural) the photographs of famous cathedralsand public buildings till supper came; when, by assiduously attending onthe ladies, I would cause my miserable existence to be remembered, andforgiven; and soon forgotten again, I fear.
I hope I shall not be considered an overweening coxcomb for saying that,on the whole, I found more favor with the ladies than with thegentlemen; especially at supper-time.
After supper there would be a change--for the better, some thought.Lintot, emboldened by good-cheer and good-fellowship, would becomeunduly, immensely, uproariously funny, in spite of his wife. He had agenuine gift of buffoonery. His friends would whisper to each otherthat Lintot was "on," and encourage him. Bach and Hummel and Scarlattiwere put on the shelf, and the young people would have a good time.There were comic songs and negro melodies, with a chorus all round.Lintot would sing "Vilikins and his Dinah," in the manner of Mr. Robson,so well that even Mrs. Lintot's stern mask would relax into indulgentsmiles. It was irresistible. And when the party broke up, we could all(thanks to our host) honestly thank our hostess "for a very pleasantevening," and cheerfully, yet almost regretfully, wish her good-night.
It is good to laugh sometimes--wisely if one can; if not, _quocumquemodo_! There are seasons when even "the crackling of thorns under a pot"has its uses. It seems to warm the pot--all the pots--and all theemptiness thereof, if they be empty.
* * * * *
Once, indeed, I actually made a friend, but he did not last me verylong.
It happened thus: Mrs. Lintot gave a grander party than usual. One ofthe invited was Mr. Moses Lyon, the great picture-dealer--a client ofLintot's; and he brought with him young Raphael Merridew, the alreadyfamous painter, the most attractive youth I had ever seen. Small andslight, but beautifully made, and dressed in the extreme of fashion,with a handsome face, bright and polite manners, and an irresistiblevoice, he became his laurels well; he would have been sufficientlydazzling without them. Never had those hospitable doors in MyddeltonSquare been opened to so brilliant a guest.
I was introduced to him, and he discovered that the bridge of my nosewas just suited for the face of the sun-god in his picture of "TheSun-god and the Dawn-maiden," and begged I would favor him with asitting or two.
Proud indeed was I to accede to such a request, and I gave him manysittings. I used to rise at dawn to sit, before my work at Lintot'sbegan; and to sit again as soon as I could be spared.
It seems I not only had the nose and brow of a sun-god (who is notsupposed to be a very intellectual person), but also his arms and historso; and sat for these, too. I have been vain of myself ever since.
During these sittings, which he made delightful, I grew to love him asDavid loved Jonathan.
We settled that we would go to the Derby together in a hansom. I engagedthe smartest hansom in London days beforehand. On the great Wednesdaymorning I was punctual with it at his door in Charlotte Street. Therewas another hansom there already--a smarter hansom still than mine, forit was a private one--and he came down and told me he had altered hismind, and was going with Lyon, who had asked him the evening before.
"One of the first picture-dealers in London, my dear fellow. Hang itall, you know, I couldn't refuse--awfully sorry!"
So I drove to the Derby in solitary splendor, but the bright weather,the humors of the road, all the gay scenes were thrown away upon me,such was the bitterness of my heart.
In the early afternoon I saw Merridew lunching on the top of a drag,among some men of smart and aristocratic appearance. He seemed to be thelife of the party, and gave me a good-humored nod as I passed. I soonfound Lyon sitting disconsolate in his hansom, scowling and solitary; heinvited me to lunch with him, and disembosomed himself of a load ofbitterness as intense as mine (which I kept to myself). The shrewdHebrew tradesman was sunk in the warm-hearted, injured friend. Merridewhad left Lyon for the Earl of Chiselhurst, just as he had left mefor Lyon.
That was a dull Derby for us both!
A few days later I met Merridew, radiant as ever. All he said was:
"Awful shame of me to drop old Lyon for Chiselhurst, eh? But an earl, mydear fellow! Hang it all, you know! Poor old Mo had to get back in hishansom all by himself, but he's bought the 'Sun-god' all the same."
Merridew soon dropped me altogether, to my great sorrow, for I forgavehim his Derby desertion as quickly as Lyon did, and would have forgivenhim anything. He was one of those for whom allowances are always beingmade, and with a good grace.
He died before he was thirty, poor boy! but his fame will never die. The"Sun-god" (even with the bridge of that nose which had been so wofullyput out of joint) is enough by itself to place him among the immortals.Lyon sold it to Lord Chiselhurst for three thousand pounds--it had costhim five hundred. It is now in the National Gallery.
Poetical justice was satisfied!
* * * * *
Nor was I more fortunate in love than in friendship.<
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All the exclusiveness in the world cannot exclude good and beautifulmaidens, and these were not lacking, even in Pentonville.
There is always one maiden much more beautiful and good than all theothers--like Esmeralda among the ladies of the Hotel de Gondelaurier.There was such a maiden in Pentonville, or rather Clerkenwell, close by.But her station was so humble (like Esmeralda's) that even the leastexclusive would have drawn the line at _her!_ She was one of a largefamily, and they sold tripe and pig's feet, and food for cats and dogs,in a very small shop opposite the western wall of the Middlesex House ofDetention. She was the eldest, and the busy, responsible one at thispoor counter. She was one of Nature's ladies, one of Nature'sgoddesses--a queen! Of that I felt sure every time I passed her shop,and shyly met her kind, frank, uncoquettish gaze. A time was approachingwhen I should have to overcome my shyness, and tell her that she of allwomen was the woman for me, and that it was indispensable, absolutelyindispensable, that we two should be made one--immediately! atonce! forever!
But before I could bring myself to this she married somebody else, andwe had never exchanged a single word!
If she is alive now she is an old woman--a good and beautiful old woman,I feel sure, wherever she is, and whatever her rank in life. If sheshould read this book, which is not very likely, may she accept thissmall tribute from an unknown admirer; for whom, so many years ago, shebeautified and made poetical the hideous street that still bounds theMiddlesex House of Detention on its western side; and may she try tothink not the less of it because since then its writer has been on thewrong side of that long, blank wall, of that dreary portal where theagonized stone face looks down on the desolate slum:
"_Per me si va tra la perduta gente_ ...!"
After this disappointment I got myself a big dog (like Byron, Bismarck,and Wagner), but not in the spirit of emulation. Indeed, I had neverheard of either Bismarck or Wagner in those days, or their dogs, and Ihad lost my passion for Byron and any wish to emulate him in any way; itwas simply for the want of something to be fond of, and that would besure to love me back again.
He was not a big dog when I bought him, but just a little ball oforange-tawny fluff that I could carry with one arm. He cost me all themoney I had saved up for a holiday trip to Passy. I had seen his father,a champion St. Bernard, at a dog-show, and felt that life would be wellworth living with such a companion; but _his_ price was five hundredguineas. When I saw the irresistible son, just six weeks old, and heardthat he was only one-fiftieth of his sire's value, I felt Passy mustwait, and became his possessor.
PORTHOS AND HIS ATTENDANT SQUIRE.]
I gave him of the best that money could buy--real milk at fivepence aquart, three quarts a day, I combed his fluff every morning, and washedhim three times a week, and killed all his fleas one by one--a labour oflove. I weighed him every Saturday, and found he increased at the rateof six to nine weekly; and his power of affection increased as thesquare of his weight. I christened him Porthos, because he was so bigand fat and jolly; but in his noble puppy face and his beautifulpathetic eyes I already foresaw for his middle age that distinguishedand melancholy grandeur which characterized the sublime Athos, Comtede la Fere.
He was a joy. It was good to go to sleep at night and know he would bethere in the morning. Whenever we took our walks abroad, everybodyturned round to look at him and admire, and to ask if he wasgood-tempered, and what his particular breed was, and what I fed him on.He became a monster in size--a beautiful, playful, gracefullygalumphing, and most affectionate monster, and I, his happyFrankenstein, congratulated myself on the possession of a treasure thatwould last twelve years at least, or even fourteen, with the care Imeant to take of him. But he died of distemper when he was elevenmonths old.
I do not know if little dogs cause as large griefs when they die as bigones; but I settled there should be no more dogs--big or little--for me.
* * * * *
After this I took to writing verses and sending them to magazines, wherethey never appeared. They were generally about my being reminded, by atune, of things that had happened a long time ago: my poetic, like myartistic vein, was limited.
Here are the last I made, thirty years back. My only excuse for givingthem is that they are so _singularly prophetic_.
The reminding tune (an old French chime which my father used to sing)is very simple and touching; and the old French words run thus:
_"Orleans, Beaugency! Notre Dame de Clery! Vendome! Vendome! Quel chagrin, quel ennui De compter toute la nuit Les heures--Les heures!"_
That is all. They are supposed to be sung by a mediaeval prisoner whocannot sleep; and who, to beguile the tediousness of his insomnia, setsany words that come into his head to the tune of the chime which marksthe hours from a neighboring belfry. I tried to fancy that his name wasPasquier de la Mariere, and that he was my ancestor.
THE CHIME.
_There is an old French air, A little song of loneliness and grief-- Simple as nature, sweet beyond compare-- And sad--past all belief!
Nameless is he that wrote The melody--but this I opine: Whoever made the words was some remote French ancestor of mine.
I know the dungeion deep Where long he lay--and why he lay therein; And all his anguish, that he could not sleep For conscience of a sin._
I see his cold, hard bed; I hear the chimes that jingled in his ears As he pressed nightly, with that wakeful head, A pillow wet with tears.
Oh, restless little chime! It never changed--but rang its roundelay For each dark hour of that unhappy time That sighed itself away.
And ever, more and more, Its burden grew of his lost self a part-- And mingled with his memories, and wore Its way into his heart.
And there it wove the name Of many a town he loved, for one dear sake, Into its web of music; thus he came His little song to make.
Of all that ever heard And loved it for its sweetness, none but I Divined the clew that, as a hidden word, The notes doth underlie.
That wail from lips long dead Has found its echo in this breast alone! Only to me, by blood-remembrance led, Is that wild story known!
And though 'tis mine, by right Of treasure-trove, to rifle and lay bare-- A heritage of sorrow and delight The world would gladly share--
Yet must I not unfold For evermore, nor whisper late or soon, The secret that a few slight bars thus hold Imprisoned in a tune.
For when that little song Goes ringing in my head, I know that he, My luckless lone forefather, dust so long, Relives his life in me!
I sent them to ----'s Magazine, with the six French lines on at thewhich they were founded at the top. ----'s _Magazine_ published only thesix French lines--the only lines in my handwriting that ever got intoprint. And they date from the fifteenth century!
Thus was my little song lost to the world, and for a time to me. Butlong, long afterwards, I found it again, where Mr. Longfellow once founda song of _his_: "in the heart of a friend"--surely the sweetest bournethat can ever be for any song!
Little did I foresee that a day was not far off when real bloodremembrance would carry me--but that is to come.
* * * * *
Poetry, friendship and love having failed, I sought for consolation inart, and frequented the National Gallery, Marlborough House (where theVernon collection was), the British Museum, the Royal Academy, and otherexhibitions.
I prostrated myself before Titian, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Veronese, DaVinci, Botticelli, Signorelli--the older the better; and tried my bestto honestly feel the greatness I knew and know to be there; but forwant of proper training I was unable to reach those heights, and, likemost outsiders, admired them for the wrong things, for the very beautiesthey lack--such trans
cendent, ineffable beauties of feature, form, andexpression as an outsider always looks for in an old master, and oftenpersuades himself he finds there--and oftener still, _pretends_ he does!
I was far more sincerely moved (although I did not dare to say so) bysome works of our own time--for instance, by the "Vale of Rest," the"Autumn Leaves," "The Huguenot" of young Mr. Millais--just as I foundsuch poems as _Maud_ and _In Memoriam_, by Mr. Alfred Tennyson,infinitely more precious and dear to me than Milton's _Paradise Lost_and Spenser's _Faerie Queene_.
Indeed, I was hopelessly modern in those days--quite an every-day youngman; the names I held in the warmest and deepest regard were those ofthen living men and women. Darwin, Browning, and George Eliot did not,it is true, exist for me as yet; but Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens,Millais, John Leech, George Sand, Balzac, the old Dumas, Victor Hugo,and Alfred de Musset!
I have never beheld them in the flesh; but, like all the world, I knowtheir outer aspect well, and could stand a pretty stiff examination inmost they have ever written, drawn, or painted.
Other stars of magnitude have risen since, but of the old galaxy four atleast still shine out of the past with their ancient lustre undimmed inmy eyes--Thackeray; dear John Leech, who still has power to make melaugh as I like to laugh; and for the two others it is plain that theQueen, the world, and I are of a like mind as to their deserts, for oneof them is now an ornament to the British peerage, the other a baronetand a millionaire; only I would have made dukes of them straight off,with precedence over the Archbishop of Canterbury, if they would care tohave it so.
It is with a full but humble heart that I thus venture to record my longindebtedness, and pay this poor tribute, still fresh from the days of myunquestioning hero-worship. It will serve, at least, to show my reader(should I ever have one sufficiently interested to care) in what mentallatitudes and longitudes I dwelt, who was destined to such singularexperience--a kind of reference, so to speak--that he may be able toplace me at a glance, according to the estimation in which he holdsthese famous and perhaps deathless names.
It will be admitted, at least, that my tastes were normal, and shared bya large majority--the tastes of an every-day young man at thatparticular period of the nineteenth century--one much given to athleticsand cold tubs, and light reading and cheap tobacco, and endowed with theusual discontent; the last person for whom or from whom or by whom toexpect anything out of the common.
* * * * *
But the splendor of the Elgin Marbles! I understood that atonce--perhaps because there is not so much to understand. Merephysically beautiful people appeal to us all, whether they be in fleshor marble.
By some strange intuition, or natural instinct, I _knew_ that peopleought to be built like that, before I had ever seen a single statue inthat wondrous room. I had divined them--so completely did they realizean aesthetic ideal I had always felt.
I had often, as I walked the London streets, peopled an imaginary worldof my own with a few hundreds of such beings, made flesh and blood, andpictured them as a kind of beneficent aristocracy seven feet high, withminds and manners to match their physique, and set above the rest of theworld for its good; for I found it necessary (so that my dream shouldhave a point) to provide them with a foil in the shape of millions ofsuch people as we meet every day. I was egotistic and self-seekingenough, it is true, to enroll myself among the former, and had chosenfor my particular use and wear just such a frame as that of the Theseus,with, of course, the nose and hands and feet (of which time has berefthim) restored, and all mutilations made good.
And for my mistress and companion I had duly selected no less a personthan the Venus of Milo (no longer armless), of which Lintot possessed aplaster-cast, and whose beauties I had foreseen before I ever beheldthem with the bodily eye.
"Monsieur n'est pas degoute!" as Ibbetson would have remarked.
But most of all did I pant for the music which is divine.
Alas, that concerts and operas and oratorios should not be as free tothe impecunious as the National Gallery and the British Museum--aprivilege which is not abused!
Impecunious as I was, I sometimes had pence enough to satisfy thiscraving, and discovered in time such realms of joy as I had neverdreamed of; such monarchs as Mozart, Handel, and Beethoven, and others,of whom my father knew apparently so little; and yet they were morepotent enchanters than Gretry, Herold, and Boieldieu, whose music hesang so well.
I discovered, moreover, that they could do more than charm--they coulddrive my weary self out of my weary soul, and for a space fill thatweary soul with courage, resignation, and hope. No Titian, noShakespeare, no Phidias could ever accomplish that--not even Mr. WilliamMakepeace Thackeray or Mr. Alfred Tennyson.
My sweetest recollections of this period of my life (indeed, the onlysweet recollections) are of the music I heard, and the places where Iheard it; it was an enchantment! With what vividness I can recall itall! The eager anticipation for days; the careful selection, beforehand,from such an _embarras de richesses_ as was duly advertised; then thelong waiting in the street, at the doors reserved for those whoseportion is to be the gallery. The hard-won seat aloft is reached atlast, after a selfish but good-humored struggle up the long stonestaircase (one is sorry for the weak, but a famished ear has noconscience). The gay and splendid house is crammed; the huge chandelieris a golden blaze; the delight of expectation is in the air, and alsothe scent of gas, and peppermint, and orange-peel, and music-lovinghumanity, whom I have discovered to be of sweeter fragrance than thecommon herd.
The orchestra fills, one by one; instruments tune up--a familiarcacophony, sweet with seductive promise. The conductor takes hisseat--applause--a hush--three taps--the baton waves once, twice,thrice--the eternal fountain of magic is let loose, and at thevery first jet
"_The cares that infest the day Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away_."
Then lo! the curtain rises, and straightway we are in Seville--Seville,after Pentonville! Count Alma-viva, lordly, gallant, and gay beneath hisdisguise, twangs his guitar, and what sounds issue from it! For everyinstrument that was ever invented is in that guitar--the wholeorchestra!
"_Ecco ridente il cielo_....," so sings he (with the most beautiful malevoice of his time) under Rosina's balcony; and soon Rosina's voice (themost beautiful female voice of hers) is heard behind her curtains--sogirlish, so innocent, so young and light-hearted, that the eyes fillwith involuntary tears.
Thus encouraged, he warbles that his name is Lindoro, that he would fainespouse her; that he is not rich in the goods of this world, but giftedwith an inordinate, inexhaustible capacity for love (just like PeterIbbetson); and vows that he will always warble to her, in this wise,from dawn till when daylight sinks behind the mountain. But what matterthe words?
"Go on, my love, go on, _like this_!" warbles back Rosina--and nowonder--till the dull, despondent, commonplace heart of Peter Ibbetsonhas room for nothing else but sunny hope and love and joy! And yet it isall mere sound--impossible, unnatural, unreal nonsense!
Or else, in a square building, decent and well-lighted enough, but nototherwise remarkable--the very chapel of music--four business-likegentlemen, in modern attire and spectacles, take their places on anunpretentious platform amid refined applause; and soon the still airvibrates to the trembling of sixteen strings--only that andnothing more!
But in that is all Beethoven, or Schubert, or Schumann has got to say tous for the moment, and what a say it is! And with what consummateprecision and perfection it is said--with what a mathematical certainty,and yet with what suavity, dignity, grace, and distinction!
They are the four greatest players in the world, perhaps; but theyforget themselves, and we forget them (as it is their wish we should),in the master whose work they interpret so reverently, that we may yearnwith his mighty desire and thrill with his rapture and triumph, or achewith his heavenly pain and submit with his divine resignation.
Not all the words i
n all the tongues that ever were--dovetail them,rhyme them, alliterate them, torture them as you will--can ever pierceto the uttermost depths of the soul of man, and let in a glimpse of theInfinite, as do the inarticulate tremblings of those sixteen strings.
Ah, songs without words are the best!
Then a gypsy-like little individual, wiry and unkempt, who looks as ifhe had spent his life listening to the voices of the night in Heavenknows what Lithuanian forests, with wolves and wild-boars for hisfamiliars, and the wind in the trees for his teacher, seats himself atthe great brass-bound oaken Broadwood piano-forte. And under hisphenomenal fingers, a haunting, tender, world-sorrow, full ofquestionings--a dark mystery of moonless, starlit nature--exhales itselfin nocturnes, in impromptus, in preludes--in mere waltzes and mazourkaseven! But waltzes and mazourkas such as the most frivolous would neverdream of dancing to. A capricious, charming sorrow--not too deep fortears, if one be at all inclined to shed them--so delicate, so fresh,and yet so distinguished, so ethereally civilized and worldly andwell-bred that it has crystallized itself into a drawing-room ecstasy,to last forever. It seems as though what was death (or rathereuthanasia) to him who felt it, is play for us--surely an immortalsorrow whose recital will never, never pall--the sorrow of Chopin.
Though why Chopin should have been so sorry we cannot even guess; formere sorrow's sake, perhaps; the very luxury of woe--the real sorrowwhich has no real cause (like mine in those days); and that is the bestand cheapest kind of sorrow to make music of, after all!
And this great little gypsy pianist, who plays his Chopin so well;evidently he has not spent his life in Lithuanian forests, but hard atthe key-board, night and day; and he has had a better master than thewind in the trees--namely, Chopin himself (for it is printed in theprogramme). It was his father and mother before him, and theirs, whoheard the voices of the night; but he remembers it all, and puts it allinto his master's music, and makes us remember it, too.
Or else behold the chorus, rising tier upon tier, and culminating in thegiant organ. But their thunder is just hushed.
Some Liliputian figure, male or female, as the case may be, rises on itslittle legs amid the great Liliputian throng, and through the sacredstillness there peals forth a perfect voice (by no means Liliputian). Itbids us "Rest in the Lord," or else it tells us that "He was despisedand rejected of men"; but, again, what matter the words? They are almosta hinderance, beautiful though they be.
The hardened soul melts at the tones of the singer, at the unspeakablepathos of the sounds that cannot lie; one almost believes--one believesat least in the belief of others. At last one understands, and is purgedof intolerance and cynical contempt, and would kneel with the rest, insheer human sympathy!
Oh, wretched outsider that one is (if it all be true)--one whoseheart, so hopelessly impervious to the written word, so helplesslycallous to the spoken message, can be reached only by the organizedvibrations of a trained larynx, a metal pipe, a reed, afiddle-string--by invisible, impalpable, incomprehensible littleair-waves in mathematical combination, that beat against a tiny drum atthe back of one's ear. And these mathematical combinations and the lawsthat govern them have existed forever, before Moses, before Pan, longbefore either a larynx or a tympanum had been evolved. Theyare absolute!
Oh, mystery of mysteries!
Euterpe, Muse of Muses, what a personage hast thou become since firstthou sattest for thy likeness (with that ridiculous lyre in thy untaughthands) to some Greek who could carve so much better than thoucouldst play!
Four strings; but not the fingerable strings of Stradivarius. Nay, I begthy pardon--five; for thy scale was pentatonic, I believe. Orpheushimself had no better, it is true. It was with just such an instrumentthat he all but charmed his Eurydice out of Hades. But, alas, she wentback; on second thoughts, she liked Hades best!
Couldst thou fire and madden and wring the heart, and then melt andconsole and charm it into the peace that passeth all understanding, withthose poor five rudimentary notes, and naught between?
Couldst thou, out of those five sounds of fixed, unalterable pitch,make, not a sixth sound, but a star?
What were they, those five sounds? "Do, re, mi, fa, sol?" What must thysongs without words have been, if thou didst ever make any?
Thou wast in very deed a bread-and-butter miss in those days, Euterpe,for all that thy eight twin sisters were already grown up, and out; andnow thou toppest them all by half a head, at least. "Tu leur mangeraisdes petits pates sur la tete--comme Madame Seraskier!"
And oh, how thou beatest them all for beauty! In _my_ estimation, atleast--like--like Madame Seraskier again!
And hast thou done growing at last?
Nay, indeed; thou art not even yet a bread-and-butter miss--thou art buta sweet baby, one year old, and seven feet high, tottering midwaybetween some blessed heaven thou hast only just left and the dull homeof us poor mortals.
The sweet one-year-old baby of our kin puts its hands upon our knees andlooks up into our eyes with eyes full of unutterable meaning. It has somuch to say! It can only say "ga-ga" and "ba-ba"; but with oh! howsearching a voice, how touching a look--that is, if one is fond ofbabies! We are moved to the very core; we want to understand, for itconcerns us all; we were once like that ourselves--the individual andthe race--but for the life of us we cannot _remember_.
And what canst _thou_ say to us yet, Euterpe, but thy "ga-ga" and thy"ba-ba," the inarticulate sweetness whereof we feel and cannotcomprehend? But how beautiful it is--and what a look thou hast, andwhat a voice--that is, if one is fond of music!
"Je suis las des mois--je suis d'entendre Ce qui peut mentir; J'aime mieux les sons, qu'au lieu de comprendre je n'ai qu'a sentir."
Next day I would buy or beg or borrow the music that had filled me withsuch emotion and delight, and take it home to my little square piano,and try to finger it all out for myself. But I had begun too latein life.
To sit, longing and helpless, before an instrument one cannot play, witha lovely score one cannot read! Even Tantalus was spared such anordeal as that.
It seemed hard that my dear father and mother, so accomplished in musicthemselves, should not even have taught me the musical notes, at an agewhen it was so easy to learn them; and thus have made me free of thatwonder-world of sound in which I took such an extraordinary delight, andmight have achieved distinction--perhaps.
But no, my father had dedicated me to the Goddess of Science from beforemy very birth; that I might some day be better equipped than he for thepursuit, capture, and utilization of Nature's sterner secrets. Theremust be no dallying with light Muses. Alas! I have fallen betweentwo stools!
And thus, Euterpe absent, her enchantment would pass away; herhandwriting was before me, but I had not learned how to decipher it, andmy weary self would creep back into its old prison--my soul.
(no caption)]
Self-sickness-_selbstschmerz, le mal do soi!_ What a disease! It is notto be found in any dictionary, medical or otherwise.
I ought to have been whipped for it, I know; but nobody was big enough,or kind enough, to whip me!
* * * * *
At length there came a day when that weary, weak, and most ridiculousself of mine was driven out--and exorcised for good--by a still morepotent enchanter than even Handel or Beethoven or Schubert!
There was a certain Lord Cray, for whom Lintot had built some laborers'cottages in Hertfordshire, and I sometimes went there to superintend theworkmen. When the cottages were finished, Lord Cray and his wife (a verycharming, middle-aged lady) came to see them, and were much pleased withall that had been done, and also seemed to be much interested in _me_,of all people in the world! and a few days later I received a card ofinvitation to their house in town for a concert.
At first I felt much too shy to go; but Mr. Lintot insisted that it wasmy duty to do so, as it might lead to business; so that when the nightcame, I screwed up my courage to the sticking-place, and went.
&nbs
p; That evening was all enchantment, or would have been but for thesomewhat painful feeling that I was such an outsider.
But I was always well content to be the least observed of all observers,and felt happy in the security that here I should at least be leftalone; that no perfect stranger would attempt to put me at my ease bymaking me the butt of his friendly and familiar banter; that no garteredduke, or belted earl (I have no doubt they were as plentiful there asblackberries, though they did not wear their insignia) would pat me onthe back and ask me if I would sooner look a bigger fool than I was, orbe a bigger fool than I looked. (I have not found a repartee for thatinsidious question yet; that is why it rankles so.)
I had always heard that the English were a stiff people. There seemed tobe no stiffness at Lady Cray's; nor was there any facetiousness; it putone at one's ease merely to look at them. They were mostly big, andstrong, and healthy, and quiet, and good-humored, with soft andpleasantly-modulated voices. The large, well-lighted rooms were neitherhot nor cold; there were beautiful pictures on the walls, and anexquisite scent of flowers came from an immense conservatory. I hadnever been to such a gathering before; all was new and a surprise, andvery much to my taste, I confess. It was my first glimpse of "Society;"and last--but one!
There were crowds of people--but no crowd; everybody seemed to knoweverybody else quite intimately, and to resume conversations begun anhour ago somewhere else.
Presently these conversations were hushed, and Grisi and Mario sang! Itwas as much as I could do to restrain my enthusiasm and delight. I couldhave shouted out loud--I could almost have sung myself!
In the midst of the applause that followed that heavenly duet, a ladyand gentleman came into the room, and at the sight of that lady a newinterest came into my life; and all the old half-forgotten sensations ofmute pain and rapture that the beauty of Madame Seraskier used to makeme feel as a child were revived once more; but with a depth andintensity, in comparison, that were as a strong man's barytone to asmall boy's treble.
It was the quick, sharp, cruel blow, the _coup de poignard_, that beautyof the most obvious, yet subtle, consummate, and highly-organized ordercan deal to a thoroughly prepared victim.
And what a thoroughly prepared victim was I! A poor, shy,over-susceptible, virginal savage--Uncas, the son of Chingachgook,astray for the first time in a fashionable London drawing-room.
A chaste mediaeval knight, born out of his due time, ascetic both fromreverence and disgust, to whom woman in the abstract was the onereligion; in the concrete, the cause of fifty disenchantments a day!
A lusty, love-famished, warm-blooded pagan, stranded in the middle ofthe nineteenth century; in whom some strange inherited instinct hadplanted a definite, complete, and elaborately-finished conception ofwhat the ever-beloved shape of woman should be--from the way the hairshould grow on her brow and her temples and the nape of her neck, downto the very rhythm that should regulate the length and curve andposition of every single individual toe! and who had found, to his prideand delight, that his preconceived ideal was as near to that of Phidiasas if he had lived in the time of Pericles and Aspasia.
For such was this poor scribe, and such he had been from a child, untilthis beautiful lady first swam into his ken.
She was so tall that her eyes seemed almost on a level with mine, butshe moved with the alert lightness and grace of a small person. Herthick, heavy hair was of a dark coppery brown, her complexion clear andpale, her eyebrows and eyelashes black, her eyes a light bluish gray.Her nose was short and sharp, and rather tilted at the tip, and her redmouth large and very mobile; and here, deviating from my preconceivedideal, she showed me how tame a preconceived ideal can be. Her perfecthead was small, and round her long, thick throat two slight creases wentparallel, to make what French sculptors call _le collier de Venus;_ theskin of her neck was like a white camellia, and slender andsquare-shouldered as she was, she did not show a bone. She was thatbeautiful type the French define as _la fausse maigre_, which does notmean a "false, thin woman."
She seemed both thoughtful and mirthful at once, and genial as I hadnever seen any one genial before--a person to confide in, to tell allone's troubles to, without even an introduction! When she laughed sheshowed both top and bottom teeth, which were perfect, and her eyesnearly closed, so that they could no longer be seen for the thick lashesthat fringed both upper and under eyelids; at which time the expressionof her face was so keenly, cruelly sweet that it went through one like aknife. And then the laugh would suddenly cease, her full lips wouldmeet, and her eyes beam out again like two mild gray suns, benevolentlyhumorous and kindly inquisitive, and full of interest in everything andeverybody around her. But there--I cannot describe her any more than onecan describe a beautiful tune.
Out of those magnificent orbs kindness, kindness, kindness was shed likea balm; and after a while, by chance, that balm was shed for a fewmoments on me, to my sweet but terrible confusion. Then I saw that sheasked my hostess who I was, and received the answer; on which she shedher balm on me for one moment more, and dismissed me from her thoughts.
Madame Grisi sang again--Desdemona's song from _Othello_--and thebeautiful lady thanked the divine singer, whom she seemed to know quiteintimately; and I thought her thanks--Italian thanks--even diviner thanthe song--not that I could quite understand them or even hear themwell--I was too far; but she thanked with eyes and hands and shoulders--slight, happy movements--as well as words; surely the sweetest andsincerest words ever spoken.
She was much surrounded and made up to--evidently a person of greatimportance; and I ventured to ask another shy man standing in my cornerwho she was, and he answered--
"The Duchess of Towers."
She did not stay long, and when she departed all turned dull andcommonplace that had seemed so bright before she came; and seeing thatit was not necessary to bid my hostess good-night and thank her for apleasant evening, as we did in Pentonville, I got myself out of thehouse and walked back to my lodgings an altered man.
I should probably never meet that lovely young duchess again, andcertainly never know her; but her shaft had gone straight and true intomy very heart, and I felt how well barbed it was, beyond all possibilityof its ever being torn out of that blessed wound; might this never heal;might it bleed on forever!
She would be an ideal in my lonely life, to live up to in thought andword and deed. An instinct which I felt to be infallible told me she wasas good as she was fair--
_"Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love."_
THE DUCHESS OP TOWERS.]
And just as Madame Seraskier's image was fading away, this new star hadarisen to guide me by its light, though seen but for a moment; breakingonce, through a parted cloud, I knew in which portion of the heavens itdwelt and shone apart, among the fairest constellations; and ever afterturned my face that way. Nevermore in my life would I do or say or thinka mean thing, or an impure, or an unkind one, if I could help it.
* * * * *
Next day, as we walked to the Foundling Hospital for divine service,Mrs. Lintot severely deigned--under protest, as it were--tocross-examine me on the adventures of the evening.
I did not mention the Duchess of Towers, nor was I able to describe thedifferent ladies' dresses; but I described everything else in a manner Ithought calculated to interest her deeply--the flowers, the splendidpictures and curtains and cabinets, the beautiful music, the many lordsand ladies gay.
She disapproved of them all.
Existence on such an opulent scale was unconducive to any qualities ofreal sterling value, either moral or intellectual. Give _her_, for one,plain living and high thinking!
"By-the-way," she asked, "what kind of supper did they give you?Something extremely _recherche_, I have no doubt. Ortolans,nightingales' tongues, pearls dissolved in wine?"
Candor obliged me to confess there had been no supper, or that if therehad I had managed to miss it. I suggested that perhaps everybody haddined
late; and all the pearls, I told her, were on the ladies' necksand in their hair; and not feeling hungry, I could not wish themanywhere else; and the nightingales' tongues were in their throats tosing heavenly Italian duets with.
"And they call that hospitality!" exclaimed Lintot, who loved hissupper; and then, as he was fond of summing up and laying down the lawwhen once his wife had given him the lead, he did so to the effect thatthough the great were all very well in their superficial way, and mightpossess many external charms for each other, and for all who were sodeplorably weak as to fall within the sphere of their attraction, therewas a gulf between the likes of them and the likes of us, which it wouldbe better not to try and bridge if one wished to preserve one'sindependence and one's self-respect; unless, of course, it led tobusiness; and this, he feared, it would never do with me.
"They take you up one day and they drop you like a 'ot potato the next;and, moreover, my dear Peter," he concluded, affectionately linking hisarm in mine, as was often his way when we walked together (although hewas twelve good inches shorter than myself), "inequality of socialcondition is a bar to any real intimacy. It is something like disparityof physical stature. One can walk arm in arm only with a man of aboutone's own size."
This summing up seemed so judicious, so incontrovertible, that feelingquite deplorably weak enough to fall within the sphere of Lady Cray'sattraction if I saw much of her, and thereby losing my self-respect, Iwas deplorably weak enough not to leave a card on her after the happyevening I had spent at her house.
Snob that I was, I dropped her--"like a 'ot potato" for fear of herdropping me.
Besides which I had on my conscience a guilty, snobby feeling that inmerely external charms at least these fine people were more to my tastethan the charmed circle of my kind old friends the Lintots, howeverinferior they might be to these (for all that I knew) in sterlingqualities of the heart and head--just as I found the outer aspect ofPark Lane and Piccadilly more attractive than that of Pentonville,though possibly the latter may have been the more wholesome for such asI to live in.
But people who can get Mario and Grisi to come and sing for them (andthe Duchess of Towers to come and listen); people whose walls arecovered with beautiful pictures; people for whom the smooth andharmonious ordering of all the little external things of social life hasbecome a habit and a profession--such people are not to be droppedwithout a pang.
So with a pang I went back to my usual round as though nothing hadhappened; but night and day the face of the Duchess of Towers was everpresent to me, like a fixed idea that dominates a life.
* * * * *
On reading and rereading these past pages, I find that I have beenunpardonably egotistic, unconscionably prolix and diffuse; and with suchsmall beer to chronicle!
And yet I feel that if I strike out this, I must also strike out that;which would lead to my striking out all, in sheer discouragement; and Ihave a tale to tell which is more than worth the telling!
Once having got into the way of it, I suppose, I must have found thetemptation to talk about myself irresistible.
It is evidently a habit easy to acquire, even in old age--perhapsespecially in old age, for it has never been my habit through life. Iwould sooner have talked to you about yourself, reader, or about you tosomebody else--your friend, or even your enemy; or about them to you.
But, indeed, at present, and until I die, I am without a soul to talk toabout anybody or anything worth speaking of, so that most of my talkingis done in pen and ink--a one-sided conversation, O patient reader, withyourself. I am the most lonely old man in the world, although perhapsthe happiest.
Still, it is not always amusing where I live, cheerfully awaiting mytranslation to another sphere.
There is the good chaplain, it is true, and the good priest; who talk tome about myself a little too much, methinks; and the doctor, who talksto me about the priest and the chaplain, which is better. He does notseem to like them. He is a very witty man.
But, my brother maniacs!
They are lamentably _comme tout le monde_, after all. They are onlyinteresting when the mad fit seizes them. When free from their awfulcomplaint they are for the most part very common mortals: conventionalPhilistines, dull dogs like myself, and dull dogs do not likeeach other.
Two of the most sensible (one a forger, the other a kleptomaniac on animportant scale) are friends of mine. They are fairly well educated,respectable city men, clean, solemn, stodgy, punctilious, and resigned,but they are both unhappy; not because they are cursed with the doublebrand of madness and crime, and have forfeited their freedom inconsequence; but because they find there are so few "ladies andgentlemen" in a criminal lunatic asylum, and they have always been usedto "the society of ladies and gentlemen." Were it not for this, theywould be well content to live here. And each is in the habit ofconfiding to me that he considers the other a very high-minded,trustworthy fellow, and all that, but not altogether "quite agentleman." I do not know what they consider me; they probably confidethat to each other.
Can anything be less odd, less eccentric or interesting?
Another, when quite sane, speaks English with a French accent anddemonstrative French gestures, and laments the lost glories of the oldFrench regime, and affects to forget the simplest English words. Hedoesn't know a word of French, however. But when his madness comes on,and he is put into a strait-waistcoat, all his English comes back, andvery strong, fluent, idiomatic English it is, of the cockneyest kind,with all its "h's" duly transposed.
Another (the most unpleasant and ugliest person here) has chosen me forthe confidant of his past amours; he gives me the names and dates andall. The less I listen the more he confides. He makes me sick. What canI do to prevent his believing that I believe him? I am tired of killingpeople for lying about women. If I call him a liar and a cad, it maywake in him Heaven knows what dormant frenzy--for I am quite in the darkas to the nature of his mental infirmity.
Another, a weak but amiable and well-intentioned youth, tries to thinkthat he is passionately fond of music; but he is so exclusive, if youplease, that he can only endure Bach and Beethoven, and when he hearsMendelssohn or Chopin, is obliged to leave the room. If I want to pleasehim I whistle "Le Bon Roi Dagobert," and tell him it is the _motif_ ofone of Bach's fugues; and to get rid of him I whistle it again and tellhim it is one of Chopin's impromptus. What his madness is I can never bequite sure, for he is very close, but have heard that he is fond ofroasting cats alive; and that the mere sight of a cat is enough to rousehis terrible propensity, and drive all wholesome, innocent, harmless,natural affectation out of his head.
There is a painter here who (like others one has met outside) believeshimself the one living painter worthy of the name. Indeed, he hasforgotten the names of all the others, and can only despise and abusethem in the lump. He triumphantly shows you his own work, which consistsof just the kind of crude, half-clever, irresponsible, impressionistdaubs you would expect from an amateur who talks in that way; and youwonder why on earth he should be in a lunatic asylum, of all places inthe world. And (just as would happen outside, again) some of hisfellow-sufferers take him at his own valuation and believe him a greatgenius; some of them want to kick him for an impudent impostor (but thathe is so small); and the majority do not care.
His mania is arson, poor fellow; and when the terrible wish comes overhim to set the place on fire he forgets his artistic conceit, and hismean, weak, silly face becomes almost grand.
And with the female inmates it is just the same. There is a lady who hasspent twenty years of her life here. Her father was a small countrydoctor, called Snogget; her husband an obscure, hard-working curate; andshe is absolutely normal, common-place, and even vulgar. For her hobbyis to discourse of well-born and titled people and county families, withwhom (and with no others) it has always been her hope and desire to mix;and is still, though her hair is nearly white, and she is still here.She thinks and talks and cares about nothing else but "smart people,"and
has conceived a very warm regard for me, on account ofLieutenant-colonel Ibbetson, of Ibbetson Hall, Hopshire; not because Ikilled him and was sentenced to be hanged for it, or because he was agreater criminal than I (all of which is interesting enough); butbecause he was my relative, and that through him I must be distantlyconnected, she thinks, with the Ibbetsons of Lechmere--whoever they maybe, and whom neither she nor I have ever met (indeed, I had never heardof them), but whose family history she knows almost by heart. What canbe tamer, duller, more prosaic, more sordidly humdrum, more hopelesslysane, more characteristic of common, under-bred, provincialfeminine cackle?
And yet this woman, in a fit of conjugal jealousy, murdered her ownchildren; and her father went mad in consequence, and her husband cuthis throat.
In fact, during their lucid intervals it would never enter one's mindthat they were mad at all, they are so absolutely like the people onemeets every day in the world--such narrow-minded idiots, such deadlybores! One might as well be back in Pentonville or Hopshire again, orlive in Passionate Brompton (as I am told it is called); or even inBelgravia, for that matter!
For we have a young lord and a middle-aged baronet--a shocking pair, whoshould not be allowed to live; but for family influence they would bedoing their twenty years' penal servitude in jail, instead of livingcomfortably sequestered here. Like Ouida's high-born heroes, they "stickto their order," and do not mingle with the rest of us. They ignore usso completely that we cannot help looking up to them in spite of theirvices--just as we should do outside.
And we, of the middle class, we stick to our order, too, and do notmingle with the small shop-keepers--who do not mingle with the laborers,artisans, and mechanics--who (alas, for them!) have nobody to look downupon but each other--but they do not; and are the best-bred people inthe place.
Such are we! It is only when our madness is upon us that we cease to becommonplace, and wax tragical and great, or else original and grotesqueand humorous, with that true deep humor that compels both our laughterand our tears, and leaves us older, sadder, and wiser than it found us.
"_Sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangunt_."
(So much, if little more, can I recall of the benign Virgil.)
And now to my small beer again, which will have more of a head to ithenceforward.
* * * * *
Thus did I pursue my solitary way, like Bryant's Water-fowl, only with aless definite purpose before me--till at last there dawned for me anever-memorable Saturday in June.
I had again saved up enough money to carry my long longed-for journey toParis into execution. The _Seine's_ boiler got up its steam, the_Seine's_ white awning was put up for me as well as others; and on abeautiful cloudless English morning I stood by the man at the wheel, andsaw St. Paul's and London Bridge and the Tower fade out of sight; withwhat hope and joy I cannot describe. I almost forgot that I was me!
And next morning (a beautiful French morning) how I exulted as I went upthe Champs Elysees and passed under the familiar Arc de Triomphe on myway to the Rue de la Pompe, Passy, and heard all around the familiartongue that I still knew so well, and rebreathed the long-lost andhalf-forgotten, but now keenly remembered, fragrance of the _geniusloci_; that vague, light, indescribable, almost imperceptible scent of aplace, that is so heavenly laden with the past for those who have livedthere long ago--the most subtly intoxicating ether that can be!
When I came to the meeting of the Rue de la Tour and the Rue de laPompe, and, looking in at the grocer's shop at the corner, I recognizedthe handsome mustachioed groceress, Madame Liard (whose mustache twelveprosperous years had turned gray), I was almost faint with emotion. Hadany youth been ever so moved by that face before?
There, behind the window (which was now of plate-glass), and amongsplendid Napoleonic wares of a later day, were the same old India-rubberballs in colored net-work; the same quivering lumps of fresh paste inbrown paper, that looked so cool and tempting; the same three-sou boxesof water-colors (now marked seventy-five centimes), of which I hadconsumed so many in the service of Mimsey Seraskier! I went in andbought one, and resmelt with delight the smell of all my by-gonedealings there, and received her familiar sounding--
"Merci, monsieur! faudrait-il autre chose?" as if it had been ablessing; but I was too shy to throw myself into her arms and tell herthat I was the "lone, wandering, but not lost" Gogo Pasquier. She mighthave said--
"Eh bien, et apres?"
The day had begun well.
Like an epicure, I deliberated whether I should walk to the old gate inthe Rue de la Pompe, and up the avenue and back to our old garden, ormake my way round to the gap in the park hedge that we had worn of oldby our frequent passage in and out, to and from the Bois de Boulogne.
I chose the latter as, on the whole, the more promising in exquisitegradations of delight.
The gap in the park hedge, indeed! The park hedge had disappeared, thevery park itself was gone, cut up, demolished, all parcelled out intosmall gardens, with trim white villas, except where a railway ranthrough a deep cutting in the chalk. A train actually roared and pantedby, and choked me with its filthy steam as I looked round instupefaction on the ruins of my long-cherished hope.
If that train had run over me and I had survived it, it could not havegiven me a greater shock; it all seemed too cruel and brutal an outrage.
A winding carriage-road had been pierced through the very heart of thewilderness; and on this, neatly-paled little brand-new gardens abutted,and in these I would recognize, here and there, an old friend in theshape of some well-remembered tree that I had often climbed as a boy,and which had been left standing out of so many, but so changed by theloss of its old surroundings that it had a tame, caged, transplantedlook--almost apologetic, and as if ashamed of being found out at last!
Nothing else remained. Little hills and cliffs and valleys andchalk-pits that had once seemed big had been levelled up, or away, and Ilost my bearings altogether, and felt a strange, creeping chill ofblankness and bereavement.
But how about the avenue and my old home? I hastened back to the Rue dela Pompe with the quick step of aroused anxiety. The avenue wasgone--blocked within a dozen yards of the gate by a huge brick buildingcovered with newly-painted trellis-work! My old house was no more, butin its place a much larger and smarter edifice of sculptured stone. Theold gate at least had not disappeared, nor the porter's lodge; and Ifeasted my sorrowful eyes on these poor remains, that looked snubbedand shabby and out of place in the midst of all this new splendor.
Presently a smart concierge, with a beautiful pink ribboned cap, cameout and stared at me for a while, and inquired if monsieurdesired anything.
I could not speak.
"Est-ce que monsieur est indispose? Cette chaleur! Monsieur ne parle pasle Francais, peut-etre?"
When I found my tongue I explained to her that I had once lived there ina modest house overlooking the street, but which had been replaced bythis much more palatial abode.
"O, oui, monsieur--on a balaye tout ca!" she replied.
"Balaye!" What an expression for _me_ to hear!
And she explained how the changes had taken place, and how valuable theproperty had become. She showed me a small plot of garden, a fragment ofmy old garden, that still remained, and where the old apple-tree mightstill have been, but that it had been sawed away. I saw the stump; thatdid duty for a rustic table.
Presently, looking over a new wall, I saw another small garden,and in it the ruins of the old shed where I had found the toywheelbarrow--soon to disappear, as they were building there too.
I asked after all the people I could think of, beginning with those ofleast interest--the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker.
Some were dead; some had retired and had left their "commerce" to theirchildren and children-in-law. Three different school-masters had keptthe school since I had left. Thank Heaven, there was still theschool--much altered, it is true. I had forgotten to look for it.
THE O
LD APPLE-TREE.]
She had no remembrance of my name, or the Seraskiers'--I asked, with abeating heart. We had left no trace. Twelve short years had effaced allmemory of us! But she told me that a gentleman, _decore, mais tombe enenfance_, lived at a _maison de sante_ in the Chaussee de la Muette,close by, and that his name was le Major Duquesnois; and thither Iwent, after rewarding and warmly thanking her.
I inquired for le Major Duquesnois, and I was told he was out for awalk, and I soon found him, much aged and bent, and leaning on the armof a Sister of Charity. I was so touched that I had to pass him two orthree times before I could speak. He was so small--so pathetically small!
M. LE MAJOR.]
It was a long time before I could give him an idea of who I was--GogoPasquier!
Then after a while he seemed to recall the past a little.
"Ha, ha! Gogo--gentil petit Gogo!--oui--oui--l'exercice? Portez ...arrrmes! arrmes ... bras? Et Mimse? bonne petite Mimse! toujours mala la tete?"
He could just remember Madame Seraskier; and repeated her name severaltimes and said, "Ah! elle etait bien belle, Madame Seraskier!"
In the old days of fairy-tale telling, when he used to get tired and Istill wanted him to go on, he had arranged that if, in the course of thestory, he suddenly brought in the word "Cric," and I failed toimmediately answer "Crac," the story would be put off till our next walk(to be continued in our next!) and he was so ingenious in the way hebrought in the terrible word that I often fell into the trap, and had toforego my delight for that afternoon.
I suddenly thought of saying "Cric!" and he immediately said "Crac!" andlaughed in a touching, senile way--"Cric!--Crac! c'est bien ca!" andthen he became quite serious and said--
"Et la suite au prochain numero!"
After this he began to cough, and the good Sister said--
"Je crains que monsieur ne le fatigue un peu!"
So I had to bid him good-bye; and after I had squeezed and kissed hishand, he made me a most courtly bow, as though I had been acomplete stranger.
I rushed away, tossing up my arms like a madman in my pity and sorrowfor my dear old friend, and my general regret and disenchantment. Imade for the Bois de Boulogne, there to find, instead of the oldrabbit-and-roebuck-haunted thickets and ferneries and impenetrablegrowth, a huge artificial lake, with row-boats and skiffs, and a rockerythat would have held its own in Rosherville gardens. And on the waythither, near the iron gates in the fortifications, whom should I meetbut one of my friends the couriers, on his way from St. Cloud to theTuileries! There he rode with his arms jogging up and down, and his lowglazed hat, and his immense jack-boots, just the same as ever, neverrising in his stirrups, as his horse trotted to the jingle of the sweetlittle chime round its neck.
GREEN AND GOLD]
Alas! his coat was no longer the innocent, unsophisticated blue andsilver livery of the bourgeois king, but the hateful green and gold ofanother regime.
Farther on the Mare d'Auteuil itself had suffered change and becomerespectable--imperially respectable. No more frogs or newts orwater-beetles, I felt sure; but gold and silver fish in vulgarNapoleonic profusion.
No words that I can find would give any idea of the sadness and longingthat filled me as I trod once more that sunlit grassy brink--the goal ofmy fond ambition for twelve long years.
It was Sunday, and many people were about--many children, in their bestSunday clothes and on their best behavior, discreetly throwing crumbs tothe fish. A new generation, much quieter and better dressed than mycousins and I, who had once so filled the solitude with the splashing ofour nets, and the excited din of our English voices.
As I sat down on a bench by the old willow (where the rat lived), andgazed and gazed, it almost surprised me that the very intensity of mydesire did not of itself suffice to call up the old familiar faces andforms, and conjure away these modern intruders. The power to do thisseemed almost within my reach; I willed and willed and willed with allmy might, but in vain; I could not cheat my sight or hearing for amoment. There they remained, unconscious and undisturbed, those happy,well-mannered, well-appointed little French people, and fed the gold andsilver fish; and there, with an aching heart, I left them.
Oh, surely, surely, I cried to myself, we ought to find some means ofpossessing the past more fully and completely than we do. Life is notworth living for many of us if a want so desperate and yet so naturalcan never be satisfied. Memory is but a poor, rudimentary thing that wehad better be without, if it can only lead us to the verge ofconsummation like this, and madden us with a desire it cannot slake. Thetouch of a vanished hand, the sound of a voice that is still, the tendergrace of a day that is dead, should be ours forever, at out beck andcall, by some exquisite and quite conceivable illusion of the senses.
Alas! alas! I have hardly the hope of ever meeting my beloved ones againin another life. Oh, to meet their too dimly remembered forms in _this_,just as they once were, by some trick of my own brain! To see them withthe eye, and hear them with the ear, and tread with them the oldobliterated ways as in a waking dream! It would be well worth going madto become such a self-conjurer as that.
Thus musing sadly, I reached St. Cloud, and _that_, at least, and theBoulogne that led me to it, had not been very perceptibly altered, andlooked as though I had only left them a week ago. The sweet aspect fromthe bridge, on either side and beyond, filled me with the oldenchantment. There, at least, the glory had not departed.
I hastened through the gilded gates and up the broad walk to the grandcascade. There, among the lovely wreathed urns and jars of geranium,still sat or reclined or gesticulated, the old, unalterable gods; theresquatted the grimly genial monsters in granite and marble and bronze,still spouting their endless gallons for the delectation of hot Parisianeyes. Unchanged, and to all appearance unchangeable (save that they werenot nearly so big as I had imagined), their cold, smooth, ironicalpatience shamed and braced me into better cheer. Beautiful, hideous,whatever you please, they seemed to revel in the very sense of theirinsensibility of their eternal stability--their stony scorn of time andwind and weather, and the peevish, weak-kneed, short-lived discontent ofman. It was good to fondly pat them on the back once more--when onecould reach them--and cling to them for a little while, after all thedust and drift and ruin I had been tramping through all day.
Indeed, they woke in me a healthy craving for all but forgotten earthlyjoys--even for wretched meat and drink--so I went and ordered asumptuous repast at the Tete Noire--a brand-new Tete Noire, alas! quitewhite, all in stone and stucco, and without a history!
It was a beautiful sunset. Waiting for my dinner, I gazed out of thefirst-floor window, and found balm for my disappointed and regretfulspirit in all that democratic joyousness of French Sunday life. I hadseen it over and over again just like that in the old days; _this_, atleast, was like coming back home to something I had known and loved.
The cafes on the little "Place" between the bridge and the park werefull to overflowing. People chatting over their _consommations_ satright out, almost into the middle of the square, so thickly packed thatthere was scarcely room for the busy, lively, white-aproned waiters tomove between them. The air was full of the scent of trodden grass andmacaroons and French tobacco, blown from the park; of gay Frenchlaughter and the music of _mirlitons_; of a light dusty haze, shot withpurple and gold by the setting sun. The river, alive with boats andcanoes, repeated the glory of the sky, and the well-remembered,thickly-wooded hills rose before me, culminating in the Lanternede Diogene.
I could have threaded all that maze of trees blindfolded.
Two Roman pifferari came on to the Place and began to play anextraordinary and most exciting melody that almost drew me out of thewindow; it seemed to have no particular form, no beginning or middle orend; it went soaring higher and higher, like the song of a lark, withnever a pause for breath, to the time of a maddening jig--a tarantella,perhaps--always on the strain and stress, always getting nearer andnearer to some shrill climax of ecstasy quite high up
and away, beyondthe scope of earthly music; while the persistent drone kept buzzing ofthe earth and the impossibility to escape. All so gay, so sad, there isno name for it!
Two little deformed and discarded-looking dwarfs, beggars, brother andsister, with large toothless gaps for mouths and no upper lip, began todance; and the crowd laughed and applauded. Higher and higher, nearerand nearer to the impossible, rose the quick, piercing notes of thepiffero. Heaven seemed almost within reach--the nirvana of music afterits quick madness--the region of the ultra-treble that lies beyondthe ken of ordinary human ears!
A carriage and four, with postilions and "guides," came clatteringroyally down the road from the palace, and dispersed the crowd as itbowled on its way to the bridge. In it were two ladies and twogentlemen. One of the ladies was the young Empress of the French; theother looked up at my window--for a moment, as in a soft flash of summerlightning, her face seemed ablaze with friendly recognition--with asweet glance of kindness and interest and surprise--a glance thatpierced me like a sudden shaft of light from heaven.
It was the Duchess of Towers!
I felt as though the bagpipes had been leading up to this! In a momentmore the carriage was out of sight, the sun had quite gone down, thepifferari had ceased to play and were walking round with the hat, andall was over.
I dined, and made my way back to Paris on foot through the Bois deBoulogne, and by the Mare d'Auteuil, and saw my old friend the water-ratswim across it, trailing the gleam of his wake after him like a silvercomet's tail.
"Allons-nous-en, gens de la nous!Allons-nous-en chacun chez nous!"
So sang a festive wedding-party as it went merrilyarm in arm through the long high street of Passy,with a gleeful trust that would have filled the heartwith envy but for sad experience of the vanity ofhuman wishes.
_Chacun chez nous!_ How charming it sounds!
Was each so sure that when he reached his homehe would find his heart's desire? Was the bridegroomhimself so very sure?
THE OLD WATER-RAT.]
The heart's desire--the heart's regret! I flatteredmyself that I had pretty well sounded the uttermostdepths of both on that eventful Sunday!