Poor Gecko treated the two English ladies de bas en haut as if they had been goddesses, even when they accompanied him on the piano! He begged their pardon for every wrong note they struck, and adopted their “tempi”—that is the proper technical term, I believe—and turned scherzos and allegrettos into funeral dirges to please them; and agreed with them, poor little traitor, that it all sounded much better like that!
O Beethoven! O Mozart! did you turn in your graves?
Then, on fine afternoons, Little Billee was taken for drives to the Bois de Boulogne with his mother and sister in an open fly, and generally Taffy as a fourth; to Passy, Auteuil, Boulogne, St. Cloud, Meudon—there are many charming places within an easy drive of Paris.
And sometimes Taffy or the Laird would escort Mrs. and Miss Bagot to the Luxembourg Gallery, the Louvre, the Palais Royal—to the Comédie Française once or twice; and on Sundays, now and then, to the English chapel in the Rue Marbœuf. It was all very pleasant; and Miss Bagot looks back on the days of her brother’s convalescence as among the happiest in her life.
And they would all five dine together in the studio, with Madame Vinard to wait, and her mother (a cordon bleu) for cook; and the whole aspect of the place was changed and made fragrant, sweet, and charming by all this new feminine invasion and occupation.
And what is sweeter to watch than the dawn and growth of love’s young dream, when strength and beauty meet together by the couch of a beloved invalid?
Of course the sympathetic reader will foresee how readily the stalwart Taffy fell a victim to the charms of his friend’s sweet sister, and how she grew to return his more than brotherly regard! and how, one lovely evening, just as March was going out like a lamb (to make room for the first of April), little Billee joined their hands together, and gave them his brotherly blessing!
As a matter of fact, however, nothing of this kind happened. Nothing ever happens but the unforeseen. Pazienza!
Then at length one day—it was a fine, sunny, showery day in April, by the by, and the big studio window was open at the top and let in a pleasant breeze from the northwest, just as when our little story began—a railway omnibus drew up at the porte-cochère in the Place St. Anatole des Arts, and carried away to the station of the Chemin de Fer du Nord Little Billee and his mother and sister, and all their belongings (the famous picture had gone before); and Taffy and the Laird rode with them, their faces very long, to see the last of the dear people, and of the train that was to bear them away from Paris; and Little Billee, with his quick, prehensile, aesthetic eye, took many a long and wistful parting gaze at many a French thing he loved, from the gray towers of Notre Dame downward—Heaven only knew when he might see them again!—so he tried to get their aspect well by heart, that he might have the better store of beloved shape and color memories to chew the cud of when his lost powers of loving and remembering clearly should come back, and he lay awake at night and listened to the wash of the Atlantic along the beautiful red sandstone coast at home.
He had a faint hope that he should feel sorry at parting with Taffy and the Laird.
But when the time came for saying goodbye he couldn’t feel sorry in the least, for all he tried and strained so hard!
So he thanked them so earnestly and profusely for all their kindness and patience and sympathy (as did also his mother and sister) that their hearts were too full to speak, and their manner was quite gruff—it was a way they had when they were deeply moved and didn’t want to show it.
And as he gazed out of the carriage window at their two forlorn figures looking after him when the train steamed out of the station, his sorrow at not feeling sorry made him look so haggard and so woebegone that they could scarcely bear the sight of him departing without them, and almost felt as if they must follow by the next train, and go and cheer him up in Devonshire, and themselves too.
They did not yield to this amiable weakness. Sorrowfully, arm in arm, with trailing umbrellas, they recrossed the river, and found their way to the Café de l’Odéon, where they ate many omelets in silence, and dejectedly drank of the best they could get, and were very sad indeed.
Nearly five years have elapsed since we bade farewell and au revoir to Taffy and the Laird at the Paris station of the Chemin de Fer du Nord, and wished Little Billee and his mother and sister Godspeed on their way to Devonshire, where the poor sufferer was to rest and lie fallow for a few months, and recruit his lost strength and energy, that he might follow up his first and well-deserved success, which perhaps contributed just a little to his recovery.
Many of my readers will remember his splendid début at the Royal Academy in Trafalgar Square with that now so famous canvas The Pitcher Goes to the Well, and how it was sold three times over on the morning of the private view, the third time for a thousand pounds—just five times what he got for it himself. And that was thought a large sum in those days for a beginner’s picture, two feet by four.
I am well aware that such a vulgar test is no criterion whatever of a picture’s real merit. But this picture is well known to all the world by this time, and sold only
