Part 26 (1/2)
Then Mr. Vice asks, ”What shall we 'ave the pleasure of saying, sir, after that very nice 'armony?”
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CHAIRMAN]
And the blus.h.i.+ng vocalist, if he knows the ropes, replies, ”A roast leg o' mutton in Newgate, and n.o.body to eat it!” Or else, ”May 'im as is going up the 'ill o' prosperity never meet a friend coming down!” Or else, ”'Ere's to 'er as shares our sorrers and doubles our joys!” Or else, ”'Ere's to 'er as shares our joys and doubles our expenses!” and so forth.
More drink, more applause, and many 'ear, 'ears. And Mr. Vice says to the singer: ”You call, sir. Will you be so good as to call on some other gen'l'man for a 'armony?” And so the evening goes on.
And n.o.body was more quickly popular at such gatherings, or sang better songs, or proposed more touching sentiments, or filled either chair or vice-chair with more grace and dignity than Little Billee. Not even Dodor or l'Zouzou could have beaten him at that.
And he was as happy, as genial, and polite, as much at his ease, in these humble gatherings as in the gilded saloons of the great, where grand-pianos are, and hired accompanists, and highly-paid singers, and a good deal of talk while they sing.
So his powers of quick, wide, universal sympathy grew and grew, and made up to him a little for his lost power of being specially fond of special individuals. For he made no close friends among men, and ruthlessly snubbed all attempts at intimacy--all advances towards an affection which he felt he could not return; and more than one enthusiastic admirer of his talent and his charm was forced to acknowledge that, with all his gifts, he seemed heartless and capricious; as ready to drop you as he had been to take you up.
He loved to be wherever he could meet his kind, high or low; and felt as happy on a penny steamer as on the yacht of a millionaire--on the crowded knife-board of an omnibus as on the box-seat of a n.o.bleman's drag--happier; he liked to feel the warm contact of his fellow-man at either shoulder and at his back, and didn't object to a little honest grime! And I think all this genial caressing love of his kind, this depth and breath of human sympathy, are patent in all his work.
On the whole, however, he came to prefer for society that of the best and cleverest of his own cla.s.s--those who live and prevail by the professional exercise of their own specially trained and highly educated wits, the skilled workmen of the brain--from the Lord Chief-Justice of England downward--the salt of the earth, in his opinion: and stuck to them.
There is no cla.s.s so genial and sympathetic as _our own_, in the long-run--even if it be but the criminal cla.s.s! none where the welcome is likely to be so genuine and sincere, so easy to win, so difficult to outstay, if we be but decently pleasant and successful; none where the memory of us will be kept so green (if we leave any memory at all!).
So Little Billee found it expedient, when he wanted rest and play, to seek them at the houses of those whose rest and play were like his own--little halts in a seeming happy life-journey, full of toil and strain and endeavor; oases of sweet water and cooling shade, where the food was good and plentiful, though the tents might not be of cloth of gold; where the talk was of something more to his taste than court or sport or narrow party politics; the new beauty; the coming match of the season; the coming ducal conversion to Rome; the last elopement in high life--the next! and where the music was that of the greatest music-makers that can be, who found rest and play in making better music for love than they ever made for hire--and were listened to as they should be, with understanding and religious silence, and all the fervent grat.i.tude they deserved.
There were several such houses in London then--and are still--thank Heaven! And Little Billee had his little billet there--and there he was wont to drown himself in waves of lovely sound, or streams of clever talk, or rivers of sweet feminine adulation, seas! oceans!--a somewhat relaxing bath!--and forget for a while his everlasting chronic plague of heart-insensibility, which no doctor could explain or cure, and to which he was becoming gradually resigned--as one does to deafness or blindness or locomotor ataxia--for it had lasted nearly five years! But now and again, during sleep, and in a blissful dream, the lost power of loving--of loving mother, sister, friend--would be restored to him; just as with a blind man who sometimes dreams he has recovered his sight; and the joy of it would wake him to the sad reality: till he got to know, even in his dream, that he was only dreaming, after all, whenever that priceless boon seemed to be his own once more--and did his utmost not to wake. And these were nights to be marked with a white stone, and remembered!
And nowhere was he happier than at the houses of the great surgeons and physicians who interested themselves in his strange disease. When the Little Billees of this world fall ill, the great surgeons and physicians (like the great singers and musicians) do better for them, out of mere love and kindness, than for the princes of the earth, who pay them thousand-guinea fees and load them with honors.
And of all these notable London houses none was pleasanter than that of Cornelys the great sculptor, and Little Billee was such a favorite in that house that he was able to take his friends Taffy and the Laird there the very day they came to London.
First of all they dined together at a delightful little Franco-Italian pothouse near Leicester Square, where they had bouillabaisse (imagine the Laird's delight), and spaghetti, and a poulet roti, which is _such_ a different affair from a roast fowl! and salad, which Taffy was allowed to make and mix himself; and they all smoked just where they sat, the moment they had swallowed their food--as had been their way in the good old Paris days.
That dinner was a happy one for Taffy and the Laird, with their Little Billee apparently unchanged--as demonstrative, as genial, and caressing as ever, and with no swagger to speak of; and with so many things to talk about that were new to them, and of such delightful interest! They also had much to say--but they didn't say very much about Paris, for fear of waking up Heaven knows what sleeping dogs!
And every now and again, in the midst of all this pleasant foregathering and communion of long-parted friends, the pangs of Little Billee's miserable mind-malady would shoot through him like poisoned arrows.
He would catch himself thinking how fat and fussy and serious about trifles Taffy had become; and what a s.h.i.+ftless, f.e.c.kless, futile duffer was the Laird; and how greedy they both were, and how red and coa.r.s.e their ears and gills and cheeks grew as they fed, and how s.h.i.+ny their faces; and how little he would care, try as he might, if they both fell down dead under the table! And this would make him behave more caressingly to them, more genially and demonstratively than ever--for he knew it was all a grewsome physical ailment of his own, which he could no more help than a cataract in his eye!
Then, catching sight of his own face and form in a mirror, he would curse himself for a puny, misbegotten shrimp, an imp--an abortion--no bigger, by the side of the herculean Taffy or the burly Laird of c.o.c.kpen, than six-pennorth o' half-pence: a wretched little overrated follower of a poor trivial craft--a mere light amuser! For what did pictures matter, or whether they were good or bad, except to the triflers who painted them, the dealers who sold them, the idle, uneducated, purse-proud fools who bought them and stuck them up on their walls because they were told!
And he felt that if a dynamite sh.e.l.l were beneath the table where they sat, and its fuse were smoking under their very noses, he would neither wish to warn his friends nor move himself. He didn't care a d----!
And all this made him so lively and brilliant in his talk, so fascinating and droll and witty, that Taffy and the Laird wondered at the improvement success and the experience of life had wrought in him, and marvelled at the happiness of his lot, and almost found it in their warm, affectionate hearts to feel a touch of envy!
[Ill.u.s.tration: A HAPPY DINNER]
Oddly enough, in a brief flash of silence, ”entre la poire et le fromage,” they heard a foreigner at an adjoining table (one of a very noisy group) exclaim: ”Mais quand je vous dis que j'l'ai entendue, moi, la Svengali! et meme qu'elle a chante l'Impromptu de Chopin absolument comme si c'etait un piano qu'on jouait! voyons!...”
”Farceur! la bonne blague!” said another--and then the conversation became so noisily general it was no good listening any more.
”Svengali! how funny that name should turn up! I wonder what's become of _our_ Svengali, by-the-way?” observed Taffy.
”I remember _his_ playing Chopin's Impromptu,” said Little Billee; ”what a singular coincidence!”