Part 6 (1/2)

And so, no more of ”la bet.i.te Honorine!”

The morning after this adventure Svengali woke up in his garret with a tremendous longing to spend a happy day; for it was a Sunday, and a very fine one.

He made a long arm and reached his waistcoat and trousers off the floor, and emptied the contents of their pockets on to his tattered blanket; no silver, no gold, only a few sous and two-sou pieces, just enough to pay for a meagre _premier dejeuner_!

He had cleared out Gecko the day before, and spent the proceeds (ten francs, at least) in one night's riotous living--pleasures in which Gecko had had no share; and he could think of no one to borrow money from but Little Billee, Taffy, and the Laird, whom he had neglected and left untapped for days.

So he slipped into his clothes, and looked at himself in what remained of a little zinc mirror, and found that his forehead left little to be desired, but that his eyes and temples were decidedly grimy. Wherefore, he poured a little water out of a little jug into a little basin, and, twisting the corner of his pocket-handkerchief round his dirty forefinger, he delicately dipped it, and removed the offending stains.

His fingers, he thought, would do very well for another day or two as they were; he ran them through his matted black mane, pushed it behind his ears, and gave it the twist he liked (and that was so much disliked by his English friends). Then he put on his beret and his velveteen cloak, and went forth into the sunny streets, with a sense of the fragrance and freedom and pleasantness of Sunday morning in Paris in the month of May.

He found Little Billee sitting in a zinc hip-bath, busy with soap and sponge; and was so tickled and interested by the sight that he quite forgot for the moment what he had come for.

”Himmel! Why the devil are you doing that?” he asked, in his German-Hebrew-French.

”Doing _what_?” asked Little Billee, in his French of Stratford-atte-Bowe.

”Sitting in water and playing with a cake of soap and a sponge!”

”Why, to try and get myself _clean_, I suppose!”

”Ach! And how the devil did you get yourself _dirty_, then?”

To this Little Billee found no immediate answer, and went on with his ablution after the hissing, splas.h.i.+ng, energetic fas.h.i.+on of Englishmen; and Svengali laughed loud and long at the spectacle of a little Englishman trying to get himself clean--”tachant de se nettoyer!”

When such cleanliness had been attained as was possible under the circ.u.mstances, Svengali begged for the loan of two hundred francs, and Little Billee gave him a five-franc piece.

Content with this, _faute de mieux_, the German asked him when he would be trying to get himself clean again, as he would much like to come and see him do it.

”Demang mattang, a votre sairveece!” said Little Billee, with a courteous bow.

”_What!! Monday too!!_ Gott in Himmel! you try to get yourself clean _every day_?”

And he laughed himself out of the room, out of the house, out of the Place de l'Odeon--all the way to the Rue de Seine, where dwelt the ”Man of Blood,” whom he meant to propitiate with the story of that original, Little Billee, trying to get himself clean--that he might borrow another five-franc piece, or perhaps two.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ”AND SO, NO MORE.”]

As the reader will no doubt antic.i.p.ate, he found Taffy in his bath too, and fell to laughing with such convulsive laughter, such twistings, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.gs, and doublings of himself up, such pointings of his dirty forefinger at the huge naked Briton, that Taffy was offended, and all but lost his temper.

”What the devil are you cackling at, sacred head of pig that you are?

Do you want to be pitched out of that window into the Rue de Seine? You filthy black Hebrew sweep! Just you wait a bit; _I'll_ wash your head for you!”

And Taffy jumped out of his bath, such a towering figure of righteous Herculean wrath that Svengali was appalled, and fled.

”Donnerwetter!” he exclaimed, as he tumbled down the narrow staircase of the Hotel de Seine; ”what for a thick head! what for a pig-dog! what for a rotten, brutal, verfluchter kerl of an Englander!”

Then he paused for thought.

”Now will I go to that Scottish Englander, in the Place St. Anatole des Arts, for that other five-franc piece. But first will I wait a little while till he has perhaps finished trying to get himself clean.”