Part 15 (1/2)
And if by a happy fluke you should some day hit upon a really good thing of your own--good enough to be quoted--be sure it will come back to you after many days prefaced ”as Antony once said.”
And these jokes are so good-natured that you almost resent their being made at anybody's expense but your own--never from Antony
”The aimless jest that striking has caused pain, The idle word that he'd wish back again!”
Indeed, in spite of his success, I don't suppose he ever made an enemy in his life.
And here, let me add (lest there be any doubt as to his ident.i.ty), that he is now tall and stout and strikingly handsome, though rather bald--and such an aristocrat in bearing, aspect, and manner that you would take him for a blue-blooded descendant of the crusaders instead of the son of a respectable burgher in Lausanne.
Then there was Lorrimer, the industrious apprentice, who is now also well-pinnacled on high; himself a pillar of the Royal Academy--probably, if he lives long enough, its future president--the duly knighted or baroneted Lord Mayor of ”all the plastic arts” (except one or two perhaps, here and there, that are not altogether without some importance).
May this not be for many, many years! Lorrimer himself would be the first to say so!
Tall, thin, red-haired, and well-favored, he was a most eager, earnest, and painstaking young enthusiast, of precocious culture, who read improving books, and did not share in the amus.e.m.e.nts of the quartier latin, but spent his evenings at home with Handel, Michael Angelo, and Dante, on the respectable side of the river. Also, he went into good society sometimes, with a dress-coat on, and a white tie, and his hair parted in the middle!
But in spite of these blemishes on his otherwise exemplary record as an art student, he was the most delightful companion--the most affectionate, helpful, and sympathetic of friends. May he live long and prosper!
Enthusiast as he was, he could only wors.h.i.+p one G.o.d at a time. It was either Michael Angelo, Phidias, Paul Veronese, Tintoret, Raphael, or t.i.tian--never a modern--moderns didn't exist! And so thoroughgoing was he in his wors.h.i.+p, and so persistent in voicing it, that he made those immortals quite unpopular in the Place St. Anatole des Arts. We grew to dread their very names. Each of them would last him a couple of months or so; then he would give us a month's holiday, and take up another.
Antony did not think much of Lorrimer in those days, nor Lorrimer of him, for all they were such good friends. And neither of them thought much of Little Billee, whose pinnacle (of pure unadulterated fame) is now the highest of all--the highest probably that can be for a mere painter of pictures!
And what is so nice about Lorrimer, now that he is a graybeard, an academician, an accomplished man of the world and society, is that he admires Antony's genius more than he can say--and reads Mr. Rudyard Kipling's delightful stories as well as Dante's ”Inferno”--and can listen with delight to the lovely songs of Signor Tosti, who has not precisely founded himself on Handel--can even scream with laughter at a comic song--even a n.i.g.g.e.r melody--so, at least, that it but be sung in well-bred and distinguished company--for Lorrimer is no bohemian.
”Shoo, fly! don'tcher bother me!
For I belong to the Comp'ny G!”
Both these famous men are happily (and most beautifully) married--grandfathers, for all I know--and ”move in the very best society” (Lorrimer always, I'm told; Antony now and then); ”la haute,”
as it used to be called in French bohemia--meaning dukes and lords and even royalties, I suppose, and those who love them and whom they love.
That _is_ the best society, isn't it? At all events, we are a.s.sured it used to be; but that must have been before the present scribe (a meek and somewhat innocent outsider) had been privileged to see it with his own little eye.
And when they happen to meet there (Antony and Lorrimer, I mean), I don't expect they rush very wildly into each other's arms, or talk very fluently about old times. Nor do I suppose their wives are very intimate. None of our wives are. Not even Taffy's and the Laird's.
Oh, Orestes! Oh, Pylades!
Oh, ye impecunious, unpinnacled young inseparables of eighteen, nineteen, twenty, even twenty-five, who share each other's thoughts and purses, and wear each other's clothes, and swear each other's oaths, and smoke each other's pipes, and respect each other's lights o' love, and keep each other's secrets, and tell each other's jokes, and p.a.w.n each other's watches and merrymake together on the proceeds, and sit all night by each other's bedsides in sickness, and comfort each other in sorrow and disappointment with silent, manly sympathy--”wait till you get to forty year!”
Wait even till each or either of you gets himself a little pinnacle of his own--be it ever so humble!
Nay, wait till either or each of you gets himself a wife!
History goes on repeating itself, and so do novels, and this is a plat.i.tude, and there's nothing new under the sun.
May too cecee (as the idiomatic Laird would say, in the language he adores)--may too cecee ay nee eecee nee lah!
Then there was Dodor, the handsome young dragon de la garde--a full private, if you please, with a beardless face, and damask-rosy cheeks, and a small waist, and narrow feet like a lady's, and who, strange to say, spoke English just like an Englishman.
And his friend Gontran, _alias_ l'Zouzou--a corporal in the Zouaves.