“Oh, Mr. Wynne! my son cuffing and kicking a man whose wife he’s in love with! Good heavens!”
“Oh, it was all right—the man had grossly insulted him—and Willy behaved like a brick, and got the best of it in the end, and nothing came of it. I saw it all.”
“Oh, Mr. Wynne—and you didn’t interfere?”
“Oh yes, I interfered—everybody interfered. It was all right, I assure you. No bones were broken on either side, and there was no nonsense about calling out, or swords or pistols, and all that.”
“Thank Heaven!”
In a week or two Little Billee grew more like himself again, and painted endless studies of rocks and cliffs and sea—and Taffy painted with him, and was very content. The vicar and Little Billee patched up their feud. The vicar also took an immense fancy to Taffy, whose cousin, Sir Oscar Wynne, he had known at college, and lost no opportunity of being hospitable and civil to him. And his daughter was away in Algiers.
And all “the nobility and gentry” of the neighborhood, including “the poor dear marquis” (one of whose sons was in Taffy’s old regiment), were civil and hospitable also to the two painters—and Taffy got as much sport as he wanted, and became immensely popular. And they had, on the whole, a very good time till Christmas, and a very pleasant Christmas, if not an exuberantly merry one.
After Christmas Little Billee insisted on going back to London—to paint a picture for the Royal Academy; and Taffy went with him; and there was dullness in the house of Bagot—and many misgivings in the maternal heart of its mistress.
And people of all kinds, high and low, from the family at the Court to the fishermen on the little pier and their wives and children, missed the two genial painters, who were the friends of everybody, and made such beautiful sketches of their beautiful coast.
La Svengali has arrived in London. Her name is in every mouth. Her photograph is in the shopwindows. She is to sing at J⸺’s monster concerts next week. She was to have sung sooner, but it seems some hitch has occurred—a quarrel between Monsieur Svengali and his first violin, who is a very important person.
A crowd of people as usual, only bigger, is assembled in front of the windows of the Stereoscopic Company in Regent Street, gazing at presentments of Madame Svengali in all sizes and costumes. She is very beautiful—there is no doubt of that; and the expression of her face is sweet and kind and sad, and of such a distinction that one feels an imperial crown would become her even better than her modest little coronet of golden stars. One of the photographs represents her in classical dress, with her left foot on a little stool, in something of the attitude of the Venus of Milo, except that her hands are clasped behind her back; and the foot is bare but for a Greek sandal, and so smooth and delicate and charming, and with so rhythmical a set and curl of the five slender toes (the big one slightly tip-tilted and well apart from its longer and slighter and more aquiline neighbor), that this presentment of her sells quicker than all the rest.
And a little man who, with two bigger men, has just forced his way in front says to one of his friends: “Look, Sandy, look—the foot! Now have you got any doubts?”
“Oh yes—those are Trilby’s toes, sure enough!” says Sandy. And they all go in and purchase largely.
As far as I have been able to discover, the row between Svengali and his first violin had occurred at a rehearsal in Drury Lane Theatre.
Svengali, it seems, had never been quite the same since the 15th of October previous, and that was the day he had got his face slapped and his nose tweaked by Taffy in Paris. He had become short-tempered and irritable, especially with his wife (if she was his wife). Svengali, it seems, had reasons for passionately hating Little Billee.
He had not seen him for five years—not since the Christmas festivity in the Place St. Anatole, when they had sparred together after supper, and Svengali’s nose had got in the way on this occasion, and had been made to bleed; but that was not why he hated Little Billee.
When he caught sight of him standing on the curb in the Place de la Concorde and watching the procession of tout Paris, he knew him directly, and all his hate flared up; he cut him dead, and made his wife do the same.
Next morning he saw him again in the hotel post-office, looking small and weak and flurried, and apparently alone; and being an Oriental Israelite Hebrew Jew, he had not been able to resist the temptation of spitting in his face, since he must not throttle him to death.
The minute he had done this he had regretted the folly of it. Little Billee had run after him, and kicked and struck him, and he had returned the blow and drawn blood; and then, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, had come upon the scene that apparition so loathed and dreaded of old—the pigheaded Yorkshireman—the huge British philistine, the irresponsible bull, the junker, the ex-Crimean, Front-de-Bœuf, who had always reminded him of the brutal and contemptuous sword-clanking, spur-jingling aristocrats of his own country—ruffians that treated Jews like dogs. Callous as he was to the woes of others, the self-indulgent and highly-strung musician was extra sensitive about himself—a very bundle of nerves—and especially sensitive to pain and rough usage, and by no means physically brave. The stern, choleric, invincible blue eye of the hated Northern gentile had cowed him at once. And that violent tweaking of his nose, that heavy openhanded blow on his face, had so shaken and demoralized him that he had never recovered from it.
He
