Trilby
George du Maurier

PART FIRST

'Mimi Pinson est une blonde,'
Une blonde que l'on connait;
Elle n'a qu'une robe au monde.
Launderirette! et qu'un bonnet!'

IT WAS A FINE, SUNNY, showery day in April.

The big studio window was open at the top, and let in a pleasant
breeze from the north-west. Things were beginning to look shipshape at
last. The big piano, a semi-grand by Broadwood, had arrived from
England by 'the Little Quickness' (la Petite Vitesse, as the goods
trains are called in France), and lay, freshly tuned, alongside the
eastern wall; on the wall opposite was a panoply of foils, masks, and
boxing-gloves.

A trapeze, a knotted rope, and two parallel cords, supporting each a
ring, depended from a huge beam in the ceiling. The walls were of the
usual dull red, relieved by plaster casts of arms and legs and hands
and feet; and Dante's mask, and Michael Angelo's alto-rilievo of Leda
and the swan, and a centaur and Lapith from the Elgin Marbles--on none
of these had the dust as yet had time to settle.

There were also studies in oil from the nude; copies of Titian,
Rembrandt, Velasquez, Rubens, Tintoret, Leonardo da Vinci--none of the
school of Botticelli, Mantegna, and Co.--a firm whose merits had not
as yet been revealed to the many.

Along the walls, at a great height, ran a broad shelf, on which were
other casts in plaster, terra-cotta, imitation bronze: a little
Theseus, a little Venus of Milo, a little discobolus; a little flayed
man threatening high heaven (an act that seemed almost pardonable
under the circumstances!); a lion and a boar by Barye; an anatomical
figure of a horse, with only one leg left and no ears; a horse's head
from the pediment of the Parthenon, earless also; and the bust of
Clytie, with her beautiful low brow, her sweet wan gaze, and the
ineffable forward shrug of her dear shoulders that makes her bosom as
a nest, a rest, a pillow, a refuge--the likeness of a thing to be
loved and desired for ever, and sought for and wrought for and fought
for by generation after generation of the sons of men.

Near the stove hung a gridiron, a frying-pan, a toasting-fork, and a
pair of bellows. In an adjoining--glazed corner cupboard were plates
and glasses, black-handled knives, pewter spoons, and three-pronged
steel forks; a salad-bowl, vinegar cruets, an oil-flask, two mustard-
pots (English and French), and such like things--all scrupulously
clean. On the floor, which had been stained and waxed at considerable
cost, lay two cheetah-skins and a large Persian praying-rug. One half
of it, however (under the trapeze and at the end farthest from the
window, beyond the model-throne), was covered with coarse matting,
that one might fence or box without slipping down and splitting one's
self in two, or fall without breaking any bones.

Two other windows of the usual French size and pattern, with shutters
to them and heavy curtains of baize, opened east and west, to let in
dawn or sunset, as the case might be, or haply keep them out. And
there were alcoves, recesses, irregularities, odd little nooks and
corners, to be filled up as time wore on with endless personal nick-
nacks, bibelots, private properties and acquisitions--things that make
a place genial, homelike, and good to remember, and sweet to muse upon
(with fond regret) in after years.

And an immense divan spread itself in width and length and delightful
thickness just beneath the big north window, the business window--a
divan so immense that three well-fed, well-contented Englishmen could
all lie lazily smoking their pipes on it at once without being in each
other's way, and very often did!

At present one of these Englishmen--a Yorkshireman, by the way, called
Taffy (and also the Man of Blood, because he was supposed to be
distantly related to a baronet)--was more energetically engaged. Bare-
armed, and in his shirt and trousers, he was twirling a pair of Indian
clubs round his head. His face was flushed, and he was perspiring
freely and looked fierce. He was a very big young man, fair, with kind
but choleric blue eyes, and the muscles of his brawny arm were strong
as iron bands.

For three years he had borne Her Majesty's commission, and had been
through the Crimean campaign without a scratch. He would have been one
of the famous six hundred in the famous charge at Balaklava but for a
sprained ankle (caught playing leapfrog in the trenches), which kept
him in hospital on that momentous day. So that he lost his chance of
glory or the grave, and this humiliating misadventure had sickened him
of soldiering for life, and he never quite got over it. Then, feeling
within himself an irresistible vocation for art, he had sold out; and
here he was in Paris, hard at work, as we see.

He was good-looking, with straight features; but I regret to say that,
besides his heavy plunger's moustache, he wore an immense pair of
drooping auburn whiskers, of the kind that used to be called
Piccadilly weepers,--and were afterwards affected by Mr. Sothern in
Lord Dundreary. It was a fashion to do so then for such of our gilded
youth as could afford the time (and the hair); the bigger and fairer
the whiskers, the more beautiful was thought the youth! It seems
incredible in these days, when even Her Majesty's Household Brigade go
about with smooth cheeks and lips, like priests or play-actors.

'What's become of all the gold used to hang and brush their
bosoms...?'

Another inmate of this blissful abode--Sandy, the Laird of Cockpen, as
he was called--sat in similarly simple attire at his easel, painting
at a lifelike little picture of a Spanish toreador serenading a lady
of high degree (in broad daylight). He had never been to Spain, but he
had a complete toreador's kit--a bargain which he had picked up for a
mere song in the Boulevard du Temple--and he had hired the guitar. His
pipe was in his mouth--reversed; for it had gone out, and the ashes
were spilled all over his trousers where holes were often burned In
this way.

Quite gratuitously, and with a pleasing Scotch accent, he began to
declaim:

"A street there is in Paris famous

For which no rhyme our language yields;

Roo Nerve day Petty Shong its name is--

The New Street of the Little Fields..."

And then, in his keen appreciation of the immortal stanza, he chuckled
audibly, with a face so blithe and merry and well pleased that it did
one good to look at him.

He also had entered life by another door. His parents (good, pious
people in Dundee) had intended that he should be a solicitor, as his
father and grandfather had been before him. And here he was in Paris
famous, painting toreadors, and spouting the 'Ballad of the
Bouillabaisse,' as he would often do out of sheer lightness of heart--
much oftener, indeed, than he would say his prayers.

Kneeling on the divan, with his elbow on the window-sill, was a third
and much younger youth. The third he was 'Little Billee.' He had
pulled down the green baize blind, and was looking over the roofs and
chimney-pots of Paris and all about with all his eyes, munching the
while a roll and a savoury saveloy, in which there was evidence of
much garlic. He ate with great relish, for he was very hungry; he had
been all the morning at Carrel's studio, drawing from the life.

Little Billee was small and slender, about twenty or twenty-one, and
had a straight white forehead veined with blue, large dark blue eyes,
delicate, regular features, and coal-black hair. He was also very
graceful and well built, with very small hands and feet, and much
better dressed than his friends, who went out of their way to outdo
the denizens of the Quartier Latin in careless eccentricity of garb,
and succeeded. And in his winning and handsome face there was just a
faint suggestion of some possible very remote Jewish ancestor--just a
tinge of that strong, sturdy, irrepressible, indomitable, indelible
blood which is of such priceless value in diluted homeopathic doses,
like the dry white Spanish wine called montijo, which is not meant to
be taken pure; but without a judicious admixture of which no sherry
can go round the world and keep its flavour intact; or like the famous
bulldog strain, which is not beautiful in itself, and yet just for
lacking a little of the same no greyhound can ever hope to be a
champion. So, at least, I have been told by wine-merchants and dog-
fanciers--the most veracious persons that' can be. Fortunately for the
world, and especially for ourselves, most of us have in our veins at
least a minim of that precious fluid, whether we know it or show it or
not. Tant pis pour les autres!

As Little Billee munched he also gazed at the busy place below--the
Place St. Anatole des Arts--at the old houses opposite, some of which
were being pulled down, no doubt lest they should fall of their own
sweet will. In the gaps between he would see discoloured, old,
cracked, dingy walls, with mysterious windows and rusty iron balconies
of great antiquity--sights that set him dreaming dreams of mediaeval
French love and wickedness and crime, bygone mysteries of Paris!

One gap went right through the block, and gave him a glimpse of the
river, the 'Cite,' and the ominous old Morgue; a little to the right
rose the gray towers of Notre Dame de Paris into the checkered April
sky. Indeed, the top of nearly all Paris lay before him, with a little
stretch of the imagination on his part; and he gazed with a sense of
novelty, an interest and a pleasure for which he could not have found
any expression in mere language.

Paris! Paris!! Paris!!!

The very name had always been one to conjure with, whether he thought
of it as a mere sound on the lips and in the ear, or as a magical
written or printed word for the eye. And here was the thing itself at
last, and he, he himself ipsissimus, in the very heart of it, to live
there and learn there as long as he liked, and make himself the great
artist he longed to be.

Then, his meal finished, he lit a pipe, and flung himself on the divan
and sighed deeply, out of the over-full contentment of his heart.

He felt he had never known happiness like this, never even dreamed its
possibility. And yet his life had been a happy one. He was young and
tender, was Little Billee; he had never been to any school, and was
innocent of the world and its wicked ways; innocent of French
especially, and the ways of Paris and its Latin Quarter. He had been
brought up and educated at home, had spent his boyhood in London with
his mother and sister, who now lived in Devonshire on somewhat
straitened means. His father, who was dead, had been a clerk in the
Treasury.

He and his two friends, Taffy and the Laird, had taken this studio
together. The Laird slept there, in a small bedroom off the studio.
Taffy had a bedroom at the Hotel de Seme, in the street of that name.
Little Billee lodged at the Hotel Corneille, in the Place de l'Odeon.

He looked at his two friends, and wondered if any one, living or dead,
had ever had such a glorious pair of chums as these.

Whatever they did, whatever they said, was simply perfect in his eyes;
they were his guides and philosophers as well as his chums. On the
other hand, Taffy and the Laird were as fond of the boy as they could
be.

His absolute belief in all they said and did touched them none the
less that they were conscious of its being somewhat in excess of their
deserts. His almost girlish purity of mind amused and charmed them,
and they did all they could to preserve it, even in the Quartier
Latin, where purity is apt to go bad if it be kept too long.

They loved him for his affectionate disposition, his lively and
caressing ways; and they admired him far more than he ever knew, for
they recognised in him a quickness, a keenness, a delicacy of
perception, in matters of form and colour, a mysterious facility and
felicity of execution, a sense of all that was sweet and beautiful in
nature, and a ready power of expressing it, that had not been
vouchsafed to them in any such generous profusion, and which, as they
ungrudgingly admitted to themselves and each other, amounted to true
genius.

And when one within the immediate circle of our intimates is gifted in
this abnormal fashion, we either hate or love him for it, in
proportion to the greatness of his gift; according to the way we are
built.

So Taffy and the Laird loved Little Billee--loved him very much
indeed. Not but what Little Billee had his faults. For instance, he
didn't interest himself very warmly in other people's pictures. He
didn't seem to care for the Laird's guitar-playing toreador, nor for
his serenaded lady--at all events, he never said anything about them,
either in praise or blame. He looked at Taffy's realisms (for Taffy
was a realist) in silence, and nothing tries true friendship so much
as silence of this kind.

But, then, to make up for it, when they all three went to the Louvre,
he didn't seem to trouble much about Titian either, or Rembrandt, or
Velasquez, Rubens, Veronese, or Leonardo. He looked at the people who
looked at the pictures, instead of at the pictures themselves;
especially at the people who copied them, the sometimes charming young
lady painters--and these seemed to him even more charming than they
really were--and he looked a great deal out of the Louvre windows,
where there was much to be seen: more Paris, for instance--Paris, of
which he could never have enough.

But when, surfeited with classical beauty, they all three went and
dined together, and Taffy and the Laird said beautiful things about
the old masters, and quarrelled about them, he listened with deference
and rapt attention and reverentially agreed with all they said; and
afterwards made the most delightfully funny little pen-and-ink
sketches of them, saying all these beautiful things (which he sent to
his mother and sister at home); so lifelike, so real, that you could
almost hear the beautiful things they said; so beautifully drawn that
you felt the old masters couldn't have drawn them better themselves;
and so irresistibly droll that you felt that the old masters could not
have drawn them at all--any more than Milton could have described the
quarrel between Sairey Gamp and Betsy Prig; no one, in short, but
Little Billee.

Little Billee took up the 'Ballad of the Bouillabaisse' where the
Laird had left it off, and speculated on the future of himself and his
friends, when he should have got to forty years--an almost impossibly
remote future.

These speculations were interrupted by a loud knock at the door, and
two men came in.

First, a tall bony individual of any age between thirty and forty-
five, of Jewish aspect, well-featured but sinister. He was very shabby
and dirty, and wore a red beret and a large velveteen cloak, with a
big metal clasp at the collar. His thick, heavy, languid, lustreless
black hair fell down behind his ears on to his shoulders, in that
musician-like way that is so offensive to the normal Englishman. He
had bold, brilliant black eyes, with long heavy lids, a thin, sallow
face, and a beard of burnt-up black, which grew almost from his under
eyelids; and over it his moustache, a shade lighter, fell in two long
spiral twists. He went by the name of Svengali, and spoke fluent
French with a German accent and humorous German twists and idioms, and
his voice was very thin and mean and harsh, and often broke into a
disagreeable falsetto.

His companion was a little swarthy young man--a gypsy, possibly---much
pitted with the smallpox, and also very shabby. He had large, soft,
affectionate brown eyes, like a King Charles spaniel. He had small,
nervous, veiny hands, with nails bitten down to the quick, and carried
a fiddle and a fiddlestick under his arm, without a case, as though he
had been playing in the street.

'Ponchour, mes enfants,' said Svengali. 'Che vous amene mon ami
Checko, qui choue du fiolon comme un anche!'

Little Billee, who adored all 'sweet musicianers,' jumped up and made
Gecko as warmly welcome as he could in his early French.

'Ha! le biano!' exclaimed Svengali, flinging his red beret on it, and
his cloak on the ground. 'Ch'espere qu'il est pon, et bien t'accord!'

And sitting down on the music-stool, he ran up and down the scales
with that easy power, that smooth even crispness of touch, which
reveal the master.

Then he fell to playing Chopin's impromptu in A flat, so beautifully
that Little Billee's heart went nigh to bursting with suppressed
emotion and delight. He had never heard any music of Chopin's before,
nothing but British provincial home-made music--melodies with
variations, 'Annie Laurie,' 'The Last Rose of Summer,' 'The Blue Bells
of Scotland'; innocent little motherly and sisterly tinklings,
invented to set the company at their ease on festive evenings, and
make all-round conversation possible for shy people, who fear the
unaccompanied sound of their own voices, and whose genial chatter
always leaves off directly the music ceases.

He never forgot that impromptu, which he was destined to hear again
one day in strange circumstances.

Then Svengali and Gecko made music together, divinely. Little
fragmentary things, sometimes consisting of but a few bars, but these
bars of such beauty and meaning! Scraps, snatches, short melodies,
meant to fetch, to charm immediately, or to melt or sadden or madden
just for a moment, and that knew just when to leave off---czardas,
gypsy dances, Hungarian love-plaints, things little known out of
eastern Europe in the fifties of this century, till the Laird and
Taffy were almost as wild in their enthusiasm as Little Billee--a
silent enthusiasm too deep for speech. And when these two great
artists left off to smoke, the three Britishers were too much moved
even for that, and there was a stillness....

Suddenly there came a loud knuckle-rapping at the outer door, and a
portentous voice of great volume, and that might almost have belonged
to any sex (even an angel's), uttered the British milkman's yodel,
'Milk below!' and before any one could say 'Entrez,' a strange figure
appeared, framed by the gloom of the little antechamber.

It was the figure of a very tall and fully-developed young female,
clad in the gray overcoat of a French infantry soldier, continued
netherwards by a short striped petticoat, beneath which were visible
her bare white ankles and insteps, and slim, straight, rosy heels,
clean cut and smooth as the back of a razor; her toes lost themselves
in a huge pair of male slippers, which made her drag her feet as she
walked.

She bore herself with easy, unembarrassed grace, like a person whose
nerves and muscles are well in tune, whose spirits are high, who has
lived much in the atmosphere of French studios, and feels at home in
it.

This strange medley of garments was surmounted by a small bare head
with short, thick, wavy brown hair, and a very healthy young face,
which could scarcely be called quite beautiful at first sight, since
the eyes were too wide apart, the mouth too large, the chin too
massive, the complexion a mass of freckles. Besides, you can never
tell how beautiful (or how ugly) a face may be till you have tried to
draw it.

But a small portion of her neck, down by the collarbone, which just
showed itself between the unbuttoned lapels of her military coat
collar, was of a delicate privet-like whiteness that is never to be
found on any French neck, and very few English ones. Also, she had a
very fine brow, broad and low, with thick level eyebrows much darker
than her hair, a broad, bony, high bridge to her short nose, and her
full, broad cheeks were beautifully modelled. She would have made a
singularly handsome boy.

As the creature looked round at the assembled company and flashed her
big white teeth at them in an all-embracing smile of uncommon width
and quite irresistible sweetness, simplicity, and friendly trust, one
saw at a glance that she was out of the common clever, simple,
humorous, honest, brave, and kind, and accustomed to be genially
welcomed wherever she went. Then suddenly closing the door behind her,
dropping her smile, and looking wistful and sweet, with her head on
one side and her arms akimbo, 'Ye're all English, now, aren't ye?' she
exclaimed. 'I heard the music, and thought I'd just come in for a bit,
and pass the time of day: you don't mind? Trilby, that's my name---
Trilby O'Ferrall.'

She said this in English, with an accent half Scotch and certain
French intonations, and, in a voice so rich and deep and full as
almost to suggest an incipient tenore robusto; and one felt
instinctively that it was a real pity she wasn't a boy, she would have
made such a jolly one.

'We're delighted, on the contrary,' said Little Billee, and advanced a
chair for her.

But she said, 'Oh, don't mind me; go on with the music,' and sat
herself down cross-legged on the model-throne near the piano.

As they still looked at her, curious and half embarrassed, she pulled
a paper parcel containing food out of one of the coat-pockets, and
exclaimed:

'I'll just take a bite, if you don't object; I'm a model, you know,
and it's just rung twelve--"the rest." I'm posing for Durien the
sculptor, on the next floor. I pose to him for the altogether.'

'The altogether?' asked Little Billee.

'Yes--l'ensemble, you know--head, hands, and feet---everything--
especially feet. That's my foot,' she said, kicking off her big
slipper and stretching out the limb. 'It's the handsomest foot in all
Paris. There's only one in all Paris to match it, and here it is,' and
she laughed heartily (like a merry peal of bells), and stuck out the
other.

And in truth they were astonishingly beautiful feet, such as one only
sees in pictures and statues--a true inspiration of shape and colour,
all made up of delicate lengths and subtly-modulated curves and noble
straightnesses and happy little dimpled arrangements in innocent young
pink and white.

So that Little Billee, who had the quick, prehensile, aesthetic eye,
and knew by the grace of Heaven what the shapes and sizes and colours
of almost every bit of man, woman, or child should be (and so seldom
are), was quite bewildered to find that a real, bare, live human foot
could be such a charming object to look at, and felt that such a base
or pedestal lent quite an antique and Olympian dignity to a figure
that seemed just then rather grotesque in its mixed attire of military
overcoat and female petticoat, and nothing else!

Poor Trilby!

The shape of those lovely slender feet (that were neither large nor
small), facsimiled in dusty pale plaster of Paris, survives on the
shelves and walls of many a studio throughout the world, and many a
sculptor yet unborn has yet to marvel at their strange perfection, in
studious despair.

For when Dame Nature takes it into her head to do her very best, and
bestow her minutest attention on a mere detail, as happens now and
then--once in a blue moon, perhaps--she makes it uphill work for poor
human art to keep pace with her.

It is a wondrous thing, the human foot--like the human hand; even more
so, perhaps; but, unlike the hand, with which we are so familiar, it
is seldom a thing of beauty in civilised adults who go about in
leather boots or shoes.

So that it is hidden away in disgrace, a thing to be thrust out of
sight and forgotten. It can sometimes be very ugly indeed--the ugliest
thing there is, even in the fairest and highest and most gifted of her
sex; and then it is of an ugliness to chill and kill romance, and
scatter love's young dream, and almost break the heart.

And all for the sake of a high heel and a ridiculously-pointed toe---
mean things, at the best!

Conversely, when Mother Nature has taken extra pains in the building
of it, and proper care or happy chance has kept it free of lamentable
deformations, indurations, and discolorations--all those grewsome
boot-begotten abominations which have made it so generally
unpopular---the sudden sight of it, uncovered, conies as a very rare
and singularly pleasing surprise to the eye that has learned how to
see!

Nothing else that Mother Nature has to show, not even the human face
divine, has more subtle power to suggest high physical distinction,
happy evolution, and supreme development; the lordship of man over
beast, the lordship of man over man, the lordship of woman over all!

En voila de l'eloquence--a propos de bottes!

Trilby had respected Mother Nature's special gift to herself--had
never worn a leather boot or shoe, had always taken as much care of
her feet as many a fine lady takes of her hands. It was her one
coquetry, the only real vanity she had.

Gecko, his fiddle in one hand and his bow in the other, stared at her
in open-mouthed admiration and delight, as she ate her sandwich of
soldier's bread and fromage a la creme quite unconcerned.

When she had finished she licked the tips of her fingers clean of
cheese, and produced a small tobacco-pouch from another military
pocket, made herself a cigarette, and lit it and smoked it, inhaling
the smoke in large whiffs, filling her lungs with it, and sending it
back through her nostrils, with a look of great beatitude.

Svengali played 'Schubert's 'Rosemonde,' and flashed a pair of
languishing black eyes at her with intent to kill.

But she didn't even look his way. She looked at Little Billee, at big
Taffy, at the Laird, at the casts and studies, at the sky, the
chimney-pots over the way, the towers of Notre Dame, just visible from
where she sat.

Only when he finished she exclaimed: 'Mai'e, a'ie! c'est rudement bien
tape, c'te musique-la! Seulement, c'est pas gai, vous savez! Comment
q'ca s'appelle?'

'It is called the "Rosemonde" of Schubert, matemoiselle,' replied
Svengali. (I will translate).'

'And what's that--Rosemonde?' said she.

'Rosemonde was a princess of Cyprus, matemoiselle, and Cyprus is an
island.'

'Ah, and Schubert, then--where's that?'

'Schubert is not an island, matemoiselle. Schubert was a compatriot of
mine, and made music, and played the piano, just like me.'

'Ah, Schubert was a monsieur, then. Don't know him; never heard his
name.'

'That is a pity, matemoiselle. He had some talent. You like this
better, perhaps,' and he strummed.

'Messieurs les etudiants.

S'en vont a la chaumiere

Pour y danser le cancan,"

striking wrong notes, and banging out a key--a hideously grotesque
performance.

'Yes, I like that better. It's gayer, you know. Is that also composed
by a compatriot of yours?' asked the lady.

'Heaven forbid, matemoiselle.'

And the laugh was against Svengali.

But the real fun of it all (if there was any) lay in the fact that she
was perfectly sincere.

'Are you fond of music?' asked Little Billee.

'Oh, ain't I just!' she replied. 'My father sang like a bird. He was a
gentleman and a scholar, my father was. His name was Patrick Michael
O'Ferrall, Fellow of Trinity, Cambridge. He used to sing "Ben Bolt."
Do you know "Ben Bolt"?'

'Oh yes, I know it well,' said Little Billee. 'It's a very pretty
song.'

'I can sing it,' said Miss O'Ferrall. 'Shall I?'

'Oh, certainly, if you will be so kind.'

Miss O'Ferrall threw away the end of her cigarette, put her hands on
her knees as she sat cross-legged on the model-throne, and sticking
her elbows well out, she looked up to the ceiling with a tender,
sentimental smile, and sang the touching song.

'Oh, don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?

Sweet Alice, with hair so brown?' etc., etc.

As some things are too sad and too deep for tears, so some things are
too grotesque and too funny for laughter. Of such a kind was Miss
O'Ferrall's performance of 'Ben Bolt.'

From that capacious mouth and through that high-bridged bony nose
there rolled a volume of breathy sound, not loud, but so immense that
it seemed to come from all round, to be reverberated from every
surface in the studio. She followed more or less the shape of the
tune, going up when it rose and down when it fell, but with such
immense intervals between the notes as were never dreamed of in any.
mortal melody. It was as though she could never once have deviated
Into tune, never once have hit upon a true note, even by a fluke--in
fact, as though she were absolutely tone-deaf, and without ear,
although she stuck to the time correctly enough.

She finished her song amid an embarrassing silence. The audience
didn't quite know whether it were meant for fun or seriously. One
wondered if she were not paying out Svengali for his impertinent
performance of 'Messieurs les etudiants.' If so, it was a capital
piece of impromptu tit-for-tat admirably acted, and a very ugly gleam
yellowed the tawny black of Svengali's big eyes. He was so fond of
making fun of others that he particularly resented being made fun of
himself--couldn't endure that any one should ever have the laugh of
him..

At length Little Billee said: 'Thank you so much. It's a capital
song.'

'Yes,' said Miss O'Ferrall. 'It's the only song I know, unfortunately.
My father used to sing it, just like that, when he felt jolly after
hot rum-and-water. It used to make people cry; he used to cry over it
himself. I never do. Some people think I can't sing a bit. All I can
say is that I've often had to sing it six or seven times running in
lots of studios. I vary it, you know--not the words, but the tune. You
must remember that I've only taken to it lately. Do you know Litolff?
Well, he's a great composer, and he came to Durien's the other day,
and I sang "Ben Bolt," and what do you think he said? Why, he said
Madame Alboni couldn't go nearly so high or so low as I did, and that
her voice wasn't half so big. He gave me his word of honour. He said I
breathed as natural and straight as a baby, and all I want is to get
my voice a little more under control. That's what he said.'

'Qu'est-ce qu'elle dit?' asked Svengali. And she said it all over
again to him in French--quite French French--of the most colloquial
kind. Her accent was not that of the Comedie Francaise, nor yet that
of the Faubourg St. Germain, nor yet that of the shop, or the
pavement. It was quaint and expressive--'funny without being vulgar.'

'Barpleu! he was right, Litolff,' said Svengali. 'I assure you,
matemoiselle, that I have never heard a voice that can equal yours;
you have a talent quite exceptional.'

She blushed with pleasure, and the others thought him a 'beastly cad'
for poking fun at the poor girl in such a way. And they thought
Monsieur Litolff another.

She then got up and shook the crumbs off her coat, and slipped her
feet into Durien's slippers, saying, in English: 'Well, I've got to go
back. Life ain't all beer and skittles, and more's the pity; but
what's the odds, so long as you're happy?'

On her way out she stopped before Taffy's picture--a chiffonnier with
his lantern, bending over a dust-heap. For Taffy was, or thought
himself, a passionate realist in those days. He has changed, and now
paints nothing but King Arthurs and Guineveres and Lancelots and
Elaines, and floating Ladies of Shalott.

'That chiffonnier's basket isn't hitched high enough,' she remarked.
'How could he tap his pick against the rim and make the rag fall into
it if it's hitched only halfway up his back? And he's got the wrong
sabots, and the wrong lantern; it's all wrong.'

'Dear me!' said Taffy, turning very red; 'you seem to know a lot about
it. It's a pity you don't paint, yourself.'

'Ah! now you're cross!' said Miss O'Ferrall. 'Oh, mai'e ai'e!'

She went to the door and paused, looking round benignly. 'What nice
teeth you've all three got! That's because your Englishmen, I suppose,
and clean them twice a day. I do too. Trilby O'Ferrall, that's my
name, 48 Rue des Pousse-Cailloux!--pose pour l'ensemble, quand ce
l'amuse! va-t-en ville, et fait tout ce qui concerne son etat! Don't
forget. Thanks all, and good-bye.'

'En v'la une orichinale,' said Svengali.

'I think she's lovely,' said Little Billee, the young and tender. 'Oh
heavens, what angel's feet! It makes me sick to think she sits for the
figure. I'm sure she's quite a lady.'

And in five minutes or so, with the point of an old compass, he
scratched in white on the dark red wall a three-quarter profile
outline of Trilby's left foot, which was perhaps the more perfect poem
of the two.

Slight as it was, this little piece of impromptu etching, in its sense
of beauty, in its quick seizing of a peculiar individuality, its
subtle rendering of a strongly-received impression, was already v the
work of a master. It was Trilby's foot and nobody else's, nor could
have been, and nobody else but Little Billee could have drawn it in
just that inspired way.

'Qu'est-ce que c'est, "Ben Bolt"?' inquired Gecko.

Upon which Little Billee was made by Taffy to sit down to the piano
and sing it. He sang it very nicely with his pleasant little throaty
English baritone.

It was solely in order that Little Billee should have opportunities of
practising this graceful accomplishment of his, for his own and his
friends' delectation, that the piano had been sent over from London,
at great cost to Taffy and the Laird. It had belonged to Taffy's
mother, who was dead.

Before he had finished the second verse, Svengali exclaimed: 'Mais
c'est tout-a-fait chentil! Allons, Gecko, chouez-nous ca!' And he put
his big hands on the piano, over Little Billee's, pushed him off the
music-stool with his great gaunt body, and, sitting on it himself, he
played a masterly prelude. It was impressive to hear the complicated
richness and volume of the sounds he evoked after Little Billee's
gentle 'tink-a-tink.'

And Gecko, cuddling lovingly his violin and closing his upturned eyes
played that simple melody as it had probably never been played
before--such passion, such pathos, such a tone!--and they turned it
and twisted it, and went from one key to another, playing into each
other's hands, Svengali taking the lead; and fugued and canoned and
counterpointed and battledored and shuttlecocked it, high and low,
soft and loud, in minor, in pizzicato, and in sordino--adagio,
andante, allegretto, scherzo--and exhausted all its possibilities of
beauty; till their susceptible audience of three was all but crazed
with delight and wonder; and the masterful Ben Bolt, and his over-
tender Alice, and his too submissive friend, and his old schoolmaster
so kind and so true, and his long-dead schoolmates, and the rustic
porch and the mill, and the slab of granite so gray.

'And the dear little nook

By the clear running brook,'

were all magnified into a strange, almost holy poetic dignity and
splendour quite undreamed of by whoever wrote the words and music of
that unsophisticated little song, which has touched so many simple
British hearts that don't know any better--and among them, once, that
of the present scribe--long, long ago!

'Sacrepleu! il choue pien, le Checko, hein?' said Svengali, when they
had brought this wonderful double improvisation to a climax and a
close. 'C'est mon elefe! che le fais chanter sur son fiolon, c'est
comme si c'etait moi qui chantais! ach! si ch'afais pour teux sous de
voix, che serais le bremier chanteur du monte! I cannot sing!' he
continued. (I will translate him into English, without attempting to
translate his accent, which is a mere matter of judiciously
transposing p's and b's, and t's and d's, and f's and v's, and g's and
k's, and turning the soft French j into sch, and a pretty language
into an ugly one.)

'I cannot sing myself, I cannot play the violin, but I can teach--
hein, Gecko? And I have a pupil--hein, Gecko?--la betite Hon-onne;'
and here he leered all round with a leer that was not engaging. 'The
world shall hear of la betite Honorine some day--hein, Gecko? Listen
all--this is how I teach la betite Honorine! Gecko, play me a little
accompaniment in pizzicato.'

And he pulled out of his pocket a kind of little flexible flageolet
(of his own invention, it seems), which he screwed together and put to
his lips, and on this humble instrument he played 'Ben Bolt,' while
Gecko accompanied him, using his fiddle as a guitar, his adoring eyes
fixed in reverence on his master.

And it would be impossible to render in any words the deftness, the
distinction, the grace, power, pathos, and passion with which this
truly phenomenal artist executed the poor old twopenny rone on his
elastic penny whistle--for it was little more--such thrilling,
vibrating, piercing tenderness, now loud and full, a shrill scream of
anguish, now soft as a whisper, a mere melodic breath, more human
almost than the human voice itself, a perfection unattainable even by
Gecko, a master, on an instrument which is the acknowledged king of
all!

So that the tear, which had been so close to the brink of Little
Billee's eye while Gecko was playing, now rose and trembled under his
eyelid and spilled itself down his nose; and he had to dissemble and
surreptitiously mop it up with his little finger as he leaned his chin
on his hand, and cough a little husky, unnatural cough--pour se donner
une contenance!

He had never heard such music as this, never dreamed such music was
possible. He was conscious, while it lasted, that he saw deeper into
the beauty, the sadness of things, the very heart of them, and their
pathetic evanescence, as with a new, inner eye--even into eternity
itself, beyond the veil--a vague cosmic vision that faded when the
music was over, but left an unfading reminiscence of its having been,
and a passionate desire to express the like some day through the
plastic medium of his own beautiful art.

When Svengali ended, he leered again on his dumbstruck audience, and
said: 'That is how I teach la betite Honorine to sing; that is how I
teach Gecko to play; that is how I teach "il bel canto"! It was lost,
the bel canto--but I found it, in a dream--I, and nobody else--I--
Svengali--I--I--I! But that is enough of music; let us play at
something else--let us play at this!' he cried, jumping up and seizing
a foil and bending it against the wall... 'Come along, Little Billee,
and I will show you something more you don't know....'

So Little Billee took off coat and waistcoat, donned mask and glove
and fencing-shoes, and they had an 'assault of arms,' as it is nobly
called in French, and in which poor Little Billee came off very badly.
The German Pole fenced wildly, but well.

Then it was the Laird's turn, and he came off badly too; so then Taffy
took up the foil, and redeemed the honour of Great Britain, as became
a British hussar and a Man of Blood. For Taffy, by long and assiduous
practice in the best school in Paris (and also by virtue of his native
aptitudes), was a match for any maitre d'armes in the whole French
army, and Svengali got 'what for.'

And when it was time to give up play and settle down to work, others
dropped in--French, English, Swiss, German, American, Greek; curtains
were drawn and shutters opened; the studio was flooded with light--and
the afternoon was healthily spent in athletic and gymnastic exercises
till dinner-time.

But Little Billee, who had had enough of fencing and gymnastics for
the day, amused himself by filling up with black and white and red-
chalk strokes the outline of Trilby's foot on the wall, lest he should
forget his fresh vision of it, which was still to him as the thing
itself--an absolute reality, born of a mere glance, a mere chance--a
happy caprice!

Durien came in and looked over his shoulder, and exclaimed: 'Tiens! le
pied de Trilby! vous avez fait ca d'apres nature?'

'Nong:'

'De memoire, alors?'

'Wee!'

'Je vous en fais mon compliment! Vous avez eu la main heureuse. Je
voudrais bien avoir fait ca, moi! C'est un petit chef-d'oeuvre que
vous avez fait la--tout bonnement, mon cher! Mais vous elaborez trop.
De grace, n'y touchez plus!'

And Little Billee was pleased, and touched it no more; for Durien was
a great sculptor and sincerity itself.

And then--well, I happen to forget what sort of day this particular
day turned into at about six of the clock.

If it was decently fine, the most of them went off to dine at the
Restaurant de la Couronne, kept by the Pere Trin (in the Rue de
Monsieur), who gave you of his best to eat and drink for twenty sols
Parisis, or one franc in the com of the empire. Good distending soups,
omelets that were only too savoury, lentils, red and white beans, meat
so dressed and sauced and seasoned that you didn't know whether it was
beef or mutton--flesh, fowl, or good red herring or even bad, for that
matter--nor very greatly cared. And just the same lettuce, radishes,
and cheese, of Gruyere or Brie as you got at the Trois Freres
Provenceaux (but not the same butter!). And to wash it all down,
generous wine in wooden brocs--that stained a lovely aesthetic blue
everything it was spilled over.

And you hobnobbed with models, male and female, students of law and
medicine, painters and sculptors, workmen and l'anchisseuses and
grisettes, and found them very good company, and most improving to
your French, if your French was of the usual British kind, and even to
some of your manners, if these were very British indeed. And the
evening was innocently wound up with billiards, cards, or dominoes at
the Cafe du Luxembourg opposite; or at the Theatre du Luxembourg, in
the Rue de Madame, to see funny farces with screamingly droll
Englishmen in them; or, still better, at the Jardin Bullier (la
Closerie des Lilas), to see the students dance the cancan, or try and
dance it yourself, which is not so easy at it seems; or, best of all,
at the Theatre de l'Odeon, to see some piece of the classical
repertoire.

Or, if it were not only fine, but a Saturday afternoon into the
bargain, the Laird would put on a necktie and a few other necessary
things, and the three friends would walk arm-in-arm to Taffy's hotel
in the Rue de Seine, and wait outside till he had made himself as
presentable as the Laird, which did not take very long. And then
(Little Billee was always presentable) they would, arm-in-arm, the
huge Taffy in the middle, descend the Rue de Seine and cross a bridge
to the Cite, and have a look in at the Morgue. Then back again to the
quays on the rive gauche by the Pont Neuf, to wend their way westward;
now on one side to look at the print and picture shops and the
magasins of bric-a-brac, and haply sometimes buy thereof, now on the
other to finger and cheapen the second-hand books for sale on the
parapet, and even pick up one or two utterly unwanted bargains, never
to be read or opened again.

When they reached the Pont des Arts they would cross it, stopping in
the middle to look up the river towards the old Cite and Notre Dame,
eastward, and dream unutterable things, and try to utter them. Then,
turning westward, they would gaze at the glowing sky and all it glowed
upon--the corner of the Tuileries and the Louvre, the many bridges,
the Chamber of Deputies, the golden river narrowing its perspective
and broadening its bed as it went flowing and winding on its way
between Passy and Crenelle to St. Cloud, to Rouen, to the Havre, to
England perhaps--where they didn't want to be just then; and they
would try and express themselves to the effect that life was
uncommonly well worth living in that particular city at that
particular time of the day and ear and century, at that particular
epoch of their own mortal and uncertain lives.

Then, still arm-in-arm, and chatting gaily across the courtyard of the
Louvre, through gilded gates well guarded by reckless imperial
Zouaves, up the arcaded Rue de Rivoli as far as the Rue Castiglione,
where they would stare with greedy eyes at the window of the great
corner pastry-cook, and marvel at the beautiful assortment of bonbons,
pralines, dragees, marrons glaces--saccharine, crystalline substances
of all kinds and colours, as charming to look at as an illumination;
precious stones, delicately frosted sweets, pearls and diamonds so
arranged as to melt in the mouth; especially, at this particular time
of the year, the monstrous Easter-egg, of enchanting hue, enshrined
like costly jewels in caskets of satin and gold; and the Laird, who
was well read in his English classics and liked to show it, would
opine that 'they managed these things better in France.'

Then across the street by a great gate into the Alice des Feuillants,
and up to the Place de la Concorde--to gaze, but quite without base
envy, at the smart people coming back from the Bois de Boulogne. For
even in Paris 'carriage people' have a way of looking bored, of taking
their pleasure sadly, of having nothing to say to each other, as
though the vibration of so many wheels all rolling home the same way
every afternoon had hypnotised them into silence, idiocy, and
melancholia.

Arid our three musketeers of the brush would speculate on the vanity
of wealth and rank and fashion; on the satiety that follows in the
wake of self-indulgence and overtakes it; on the weariness of the
pleasures that become a toil--as if they knew all about it, had found
it all out for themselves, and nobody else had ever found it out
before!

Then they found out something else--namely, that the sting of healthy
appetite was becoming intolerable; so they would betake themselves to
an English eating-house in the Rue de la Madeleine (on the left-hand
side near the top), where they would renovate their strength and their
patriotism on British beef and beer, and household bread, and bracing,
biting, stinging yellow mustard, and heroic horseradish, and noble
apple-pie, and Cheshire cheese; and get through as much of these in an
hour or so as they could for talking, talking, talking; such happy
talk! as full of sanguine hope and enthusiasm, of cocksure
commendation or condemnation of all painters, dead or alive, of modest
but firm belief in themselves and each other, as a Paris Easter-egg is
full of sweets and pleasantness (for the young).

And then a stroll on the crowded, well-lighted boulevards, and a bock
at the cafe there, at a little three-legged marble table right out on
the genial asphalt side pavement, still talking nineteen to the dozen.

Then home by dark, old, silent streets and some deserted bridge to
their beloved Latin Quarter, the Morgue gleaming cold and still and
fatal in the pale lamplight, and Notre Dame pricking up its watchful
twin towers, which have looked down for so many centuries on so many
happy, sanguine, expansive youths walking arm-in-arm by twos and
threes, and for ever talking, talking, talking.

The Laird and Little Billee would see Taffy safe to the door of his
hotel garni in the Rue de Seine, where they would find much to say to
each other before they said good-night--so much that Taffy and Little
Billee would see the Laird safe to his door, in the Place St. Anatole
des Arts. And then a discussion would arise between Taffy and the
Laird on the immortality of the soul, let us say, or the exact meaning
of the word 'gentleman,' or the relative merits of Dickens and
Thackeray, or some such recondite and quite unhackneyed theme, and
Taffy and the Laird would escort Little Billee to his door, in the
Place de l'Odeon, and he would re-escort them both back again, and so
on till any hour you please.

Or again, if it rained, and Paris through the studio window loomed
lead-coloured, with its shiny slate roofs under skies that were ashen
and sober, and the wild west wind made woeful music among the chimney-
pots, and little gray waves ran up the river the wrong way, and the
Morgue looked chill and dark and wet, and almost uninviting (even to
three healthy-minded young Britons), they would resolve to dine and
spend a happy evening at home.

Little Billee, taking with him three francs (or even four), would dive
into back streets and buy a yard or so of crusty new bread, well
burned on the flat side, a fillet of beef, a litre of wine, potatoes
and onions, butter, a little cylindrical cheese called 'bondon de
Neufchatel,' tender curly lettuce, with chervil, parsley, spring
onions, and other fine herbs, and a pod of garlic, which would be
rubbed on a crust of bread to flavour things with.

Taffy would lay the cloth English-wise, and also make the salad, for
which, like everybody else I ever met, he had a special receipe of his
own (putting in the oil first and the vinegar after); and indeed his
salads were quite as good as everybody else's.

The Laird, bending over the stove, would cook the onions and beef into
a savoury Scotch mess so cunningly that you could not taste the beef
for the onions--nor always the onions for the garlic.

And they would dine far better than at le Pere Trin's, far better than
at the English Restaurant in the Rue de la Madeleine--better than
anywhere else on earth!

And after dinner, what coffee, roasted and ground on the spot, what
pipes and cigarettes of caporal, by the light of the three shaded
lamps, while the rain beat against the big north window, and the wind
went howling round the quaint old mediaeval tower at the corner of the
Rue Vieille des Trois Mauvais Ladres (the old street of the three bad
lepers), and the damp logs hissed and crackled in the stove!

What jolly talk into the small hours! Thackeray and Dickens again, and
Tennyson and Byron (who was 'not deed yet' in those days); and Titian
and Velasquez, and young Millais and Holman Hunt (just out); and
Monsieur Ingres and Monsieur Delacroix, and Balzac and Stendhal and
George Sand; and the good Dumas! and Edgar Allan Poe's, and the glory
that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome...

Good, honest, innocent, artless prattle--not of the wisest, perhaps,
nor redolent of the very highest culture (which, by the way, can mar
as well as make), nor leading to any very practical result; but quite
pathetically sweet from the sincerity and fervour of its convictions,
a profound belief in their importance, and a proud trust in their
life-long immutability.

Oh, happy days and happy nights, sacred to art and friendship! oh,
happy times of careless impecuniosity, and youth and hope and health
and strength and freedom--with all Paris for a playground, and its
dear old unregenerate Latin Quarter for a workshop, and a home!

And, up to then, no kill-joy complications of love!

No, decidedly no! Little Billee had never known such happiness as
this--never even dreamed of its possibility.

A day or two after this, our opening day, but in the afternoon, when
the fencing and boxing had begun and the trapeze was in full swing,
Trilby's 'Milk below!' was sounded at the door, and she appeared---
clothed this time and in her right mind, as it seemed: a tall,
straight, flat-backed, square-shouldered, deep-chested, full-bosomed
young grisette, in a snowy frilled cap, a neat black gown and white
apron, pretty faded, well-darned brown stockings, and well-worn, soft,
gray, square-toed slippers of list, without heels and originally
shapeless; but which her feet, uncompromising and inexorable as boot-
trees, had ennobled into everlasting classic shapeliness, and stamped
with an unforgettable individuality, as does a beautiful hand its
well-worn glove--a fact Little Billee was not slow to perceive, with a
curious conscious thrill that was only half aesthetic.

Then he looked into her freckled face, and met the kind and tender
mirthfulness of her gaze and the plucky frankness of her fine wide
smile with a thrill that was not aesthetic at all (nor the reverse),
but all of the heart. And in one of his quick flashes of intuitive
insight he divined far down beneath the shining surface of those eyes
(which seemed for a moment to reflect only a little image of himself
against the sky beyond the big north window) a well of sweetness; and
floating somewhere in the midst of it the very heart of compassion,
generosity, and warm sisterly love; and under that--alas! at the
bottom of all--a thin slimy layer of sorrow and shame. And just as
long as it takes for a tear to rise and gather and choke itself back
again, this sudden revelation shook his nervous little frame with a
pang of pity and the knightly wish to help. But he had no time to
indulge in such soft emotions. Trilby was met on her entrance by
friendly greetings on all sides.

'Tiens! c'est la grande Trilby!' exclaimed Jules Guinot through his
fencing-mask. 'Comment! t'es deja debout apres hier soir? Avons-nous
assez rigole chez Mathieu, hein? Crenom d'un nom, quelle noce! Via une
cremaillere qui peut se vanter d'etre diantrement bien pendue,
j'espere! Et la petite sante, c'matin?'

'He, he! mon vieux,' answered Trilby. 'Ca boulotte, apparemment! Et
toi? et Victorine? Comment qu'a s'porte a c't'heure? Elle avait un
fier coup d'chasselas! c'est-y jobard, hein? de s'fich 'paf comme ca
d'vant l'monde! Tiens, v'la, Gontran!? a marche-t-y, Gontran, Zouzou
d'mon coeur?'

'Comme sur des roulettes, ma biche!' said Gontran, alias l'Zouzou--a
corporal in the Zouaves. 'Mais tu t'es done mise chiffonniere, a
present? T'as fait banque-route?'

(For Trilby had a chiffonnier's basket strapped on her back, and
carried a pick and lantern.)

'Mais-z-oui, mon bon!' she said. 'Dame! pas d'veine hier soir! t'as
bien vu! Dans la deche jusqu'aux omoplates, mon pauvre caporal-sous-
off! nom d'un canon--faut bien vivre, s' pas?'

Little Billee's heart-sluices had closed during this interchange of
courtesies. He felt it to be of a very slangy kind, because he
couldn't understand a word of it, and he hated slang. All he could
make out was the free use of the tu and the toi, and he knew enough
French to know that this implied a great familiarity, which he
misunderstood.

So that Jules Guinot's polite inquiries whether Trilby were none the
worse after Mathieu's house-warming (which was so jolly), Trilby's
kind solicitude about the health of Victorine, who had very foolishly
taken a drop too much on that occasion, Trilby's mock regrets that her
own bad luck at cards had made it necessary that she should retrieve
her fallen fortunes by rag-picking--all these innocent, playful little
amenities (which I have tried to write down just as they were spoken)
were couched in a language that was as Greek to him--and he felt out
of it, jealous and indignant.

'Good-afternoon to you, Mr. Taffy,' said Trilby, in English. 'I've
brought you these objects of art and virtu to make the peace with you.
They're the real thing, you know. I borrowed 'em from le pere Martin,
chiffonnier en gros et en detail, grand officier de la Legion
d'Honneur, membre de l'Institut et cetera, treize his Rue du Puits
d'Amour, rez-de-chaussee au fond de la cour a gauche, vis-a vis le
mont-de-piete! He's one of my intimate friends, and--'

'You don't mean to say you're the intimate friend of a ragpicker?'
exclaimed the good Taffy.

'Oh yes! Pourquoi pas? I never brag; besides, there ain't any beastly
pride about le pere Martin,' said Trilby, with a wink. 'You'd soon
find that out if you were an intimate friend of his. This is how it's
put on. Do you see? If you'll put it on I'll fasten it for you, and
show you how to hold the lantern and handle the pick. You may come to
it yourself some day, you know. Il ne faut jurer de rien! Pere Martin
will pose for you in person, if you like. He's generally disengaged in
the afternoon. He's poor but honest, you know, and very nice and
clean; quite the gentleman. He likes artists, especially English--they
pay. His wife sells bric-a-brac and old masters: Rembrandts from two
francs fifty upwards. They've got a little grandson--a love of a
child. I'm his godmother. You know French, I suppose?'

'Oh yes,' said Taffy, much abashed. I'm very much obliged to you---
very much indeed--a--I--a--'

Y a pas d' quoi!' said Trilby, divesting herself of her basket and
putting it, with the pick and lantern, in a corner. 'Et maintenant le
temps d'absorber une fine de fin sec et je m'la brise. On m'attend a
l'Ambassade d'Autriche. Et pui, zut! Allez toujours, mes enfants. En
avant la boxe!'

She sat herself down cross-legged on the model-throne, and made
herself a cigarette, and watched the fencing and boxing Little Billee
brought her a chair, which she refused; so he sat down on it himself
by her side, and talked to her, just as he would have talked to any
young lady at home--about the weather, about Verdi's new opera (which
she had never heard), the impressive-ness of Notre Dame, and Victor
Hugo's beautiful romance (which she had never read), the mysterious
charm of Leonardo da Vinci's Lisa Gioconda's smile (which she had
never seen)---by all of which she was no doubt rather tickled and a
little embarrassed, perhaps also a little touched.

Taffy brought her a cup of coffee, and conversed with her in polite
formal French very well and carefully pronounced; and the Laird tried
to do likewise. His French was of that honest English kind that breaks
up the stiffness of even an English party; and his jolly manners were
such as to put an end to all shyness and constraint, and make self-
consciousness impossible.

Others dropped in from neighbouring studios--the usual cosmopolite
crew. It was a perpetual come-and-go in this particular studio between
four and six in the afternoon.

There were ladies too, en cheveux, in caps and bonnets, some of whom
knew Trilby, and thee'd and thou'd with familiar and friendly
affection, while others mademoiselle'd her with distant politeness,
and were mademoiselle'd and madame'd back again. 'Absolument comme a
l'Ambassade d'Autriche,' as Trilby observed to the Laird, with a
British wink that was by no means ambassadorial.

Then Svengali came and made some of his grandest music, which was as
completely thrown away on Trilby as fireworks on a blind beggar, for
all she held her tongue so piously.

Fencing and boxing and trapezing seemed to be more in her line; and
indeed, to a tone-deaf person, Taffy lunging his full spread with a
foil, in all the splendour of his long, lithe, youthful strength, was
a far gainlier sight than Svengali at the keyboard flashing his
languid bold eyes with a sickly smile, from one listener to another,
as if to say: 'N'est-ce pas que che suis peau? N'est-ce pas que ch'ai
tu chenie? N'est-ce pas que che suis suplime, enfin?'

Then enter Durien the sculptor, who had been presented with a
baignoire at the Porte St. Martin to see La Dame aux Camelias, and he
invited Trilby and another lady to dine with him au cabaret and share
his box.

So Trilby didn't go to the Austrian embassy after all, as the Laird
observed to Little Billee, with such a good imitation of her wink that
Little Billee was bound to laugh. But Little Billee was not inclined
for fun; a dulness, a sense of disenchantment, had come over him; as
he expressed it to himself, with pathetic self-pity:

'A feeling of sadness and longing

That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.'

And the sadness, if he had known, was that all beautiful young women
with kind sweet faces and noble figures and goddess-like extremities
should not be good and pure as they were beautiful; and the longing
was a longing that Trilby could be turned into a young lady--say the
vicar's daughter in a little Devonshire village--his sister's friend
and co-teacher at the Sunday school, a simple, pure, and pious maiden
of gentle birth.

For he adored piety in women, although he was not pious by any means.
His inarticulate intuitive perceptions were not of form and colour
secrets only, but strove to pierce the veil of deeper mysteries in
impetuous and dogmatic boyish scorn of all received interpretations.
For he flattered himself that he possessed the philosophical and
scientific mind, and piqued himself on thinking clearly, and was
intolerant of human inconsistency.

That small reserve portion of his ever-active brain which should have
lain fallow while the rest of it was at work or play, perpetually
plagued itself about the mysteries of life and death, and was for ever
propounding unanswerable arguments against the Christian belief,
through a kind of inverted sympathy with the believer. Fortunately for
his friends, Little Billee was both shy and discreet, and very tender
of other people's feelings; so he kept all his immature juvenile
agnosticism to himself.

To atone for such ungainly strong-mindedness in one so young and
tender, he was the slave of many little traditional observances which
have no very solid foundation in either science or philosophy. For
instance, he wouldn't walk under a ladder for worlds, nor sit down
thirteen to dinner, nor have his hair cut on a Friday, and was quite
upset if he happened to see the new moon through glass. And he
believed in lucky and unlucky numbers, and dearly loved the sights and
scents and sounds of high mass in some dim old French cathedral, and
found them secretly comforting.

Let us hope that he sometimes laughed at himself, if only in his
sleeve!

And with all his keenness of insight into life he had a well-brought-
up, middle-class young Englishman's belief in the infallible efficacy
of gentle birth--for gentle he considered his own and Taffy's and the
Laird's, and that of most of the good people he had lived among in
England--all people, in short, whose two parents and four grandparents
had received a liberal education and belonged to the professional
class. And with this belief he combined (or thought he did) a proper
democratic scorn for bloated dukes and lords, and even poor
inoffensive baronets, and all the landed gentry--everybody who was
born an inch higher up than himself.

It is a fairly good middle-class social creed, if you can only stick
to it through life in despite of life's experience. It fosters
independence and self-respect, and not a few stodgy practical virtues
as well. At all events, it keeps you out of bad company, which is to
be found both above and below. In media tutissimus ibis!

And all this melancholy preoccupation, on Little Billee's part, from
the momentary gleam and dazzle of a pair of over-perfect feet in an
over-aesthetic eye, too much enamoured of mere form!

Reversing the usual process, he had idealised from the base upward!

Many of us, older and wiser than Little Billee, have seen in lovely
female shapes the outer garment of a lovely female soul. The instinct
which guides us to do this is, perhaps, a right one, more often than
not. But more often than not, also, lovely female shapes are terrible
complicators of the difficulties and dangers of this earthly life,
especially for their owner, and more especially if she be a humble
daughter of the people, poor and ignorant, of a yielding, nature, too
quick to love and trust. This is all so true as to be trite--so trite
as to be a common platitude!

A modern teller of tales, most widely (and most justly) popular,
tells, us of Californian heroes and heroines who, like Lord Byron's
Corsair, were linked with one virtue and a thousand crimes. And so
dexterously does he weave his story that the Young Person may read it
and learn nothing but good.

My poor heroine was the converse of these engaging criminals; she had
all the virtues but one; but the virtue she lacked (the very one of
all that plays the title-role, and gives its generic name to all the
rest of that goodly company) was of such a kind that I have found it
impossible so to tell her history as to make it quite fit and proper
reading for the ubiquitous young person so dear to us all.

Most deeply to my regret. For I had fondly hoped it might one day be
said of me that whatever my other literary shortcomings might be, I at
least had never penned a line which a pure-minded young British mother
might not read aloud to her little blue-eyed babe as it lies sucking
its little bottle in its little bassinette.

Fate has willed it otherwise.

Would indeed that I could duly express poor Trilby's one shortcoming
in some not too familiar medium--in Latin or Greek, let us say--lest
the Young Person (In this ubiquitousness of hers, for which Heaven be
praised) should happen to pry into these pages when her mother is
looking another way.

Latin and Greek are languages the Young Person should not be taught to
understand--seeing that they are highly improper languages, deservedly
dead--in which pagan bards who should have known better have sung the
filthy loves of their gods and goddesses.

But at least I am scholar enough to enter one little Latin plea on
Trilby's behalf--the shortest, best, and most beautiful plea I can
think of. It was once used in extenuation and condonation of the
frailties of another poor weak woman, presumably beautiful, and a far
worse offender than Trilby, but who, like Trilby, repented of her
ways, and was most justly forgiven--

'Quia multum amavit!'

Whether it be an aggravation of her misdeeds or an extenuating
circumstance, no pressure of want, no temptations of greed or vanity,
had ever been factors in urging Trilby on her downward career after
her first false step in that direction--the result of ignorance, bad
advice (from her mother, of all people in the world), and base
betrayal. She might have lived in guilty splendour had she chosen, but
her wants were few. She had no vanity, and her tastes were of the
simplest, and she earned enough to gratify them all, and to spare.

So she followed love for love's sake only, now and then, as she would
have followed art if she had been a man--capriciously, desultorily,
more in a frolicsome spirit of camaraderie than anything else. Like an
amateur, in short--a distinguished amateur who is too proud to sell
his pictures, but willingly gives one away now and then to some
highly-valued and much-admiring friend.

Sheer gaiety of heart and genial good-fellowship, the difficulty of
saying nay to earnest pleading. She was bonne camarade et bonne fille
before everything. Though her heart was not large enough to harbour
more than one light love at a time (even in that Latin Quarter of
genially capacious hearts), it had room for many warm friendships; and
she was the warmest, most helpful, and most compassionate of friends,
far more serious and faithful in friendship than in love.

Indeed, she might almost be said to possess a virginal heart, so
little did she know of love's heartaches and raptures and torments and
clingings and jealousies.

With her it was lightly come and lightly go, and never come back
again; as one or two, or perhaps three, picturesque Bohemians of the
brush or chisel had found, at some cost to their vanity and self-
esteem; perhaps even to a deeper feeling--who knows?

Trilby's father, as she had said, had been a gentleman, the son of a
famous Dublin physician and friend of George the Fourth's. He had been
a Fellow of his college, and had entered holy orders. He also had all
the virtues but one; he was a drunkard, and began to drink quite early
in life. He soon left the Church and became a classical tutor, and
failed through this besetting sin of his, and fell into disgrace.

Then he went to Paris, and picked up a few English pupils there, and
lost them, and earned a precarious livelihood from hand to mouth,
anyhow, and sank from bad to worse.

And when his worst was about reached, he married the famous tartaned
and tam-o'-shantered barmaid at the Montagnards Ecossais, in the Rue
du Paradis Poissonniere (a very fishy paradise indeed); she was a most
beautiful Highland lassie of low degree, and she managed to support
him, or helped him to support himself, for ten or fifteen years.
Trilby was born to them, and was dragged up in some way--a la grace de
Dieu!

Patrick O'Ferrall soon taught his wife to drown all care and
responsibility in his own simple way, and opportunities for doing so
were never lacking to her.

Then he died, and left a posthumous child--born ten months after his
death, alas! and whose birth cost its mother her life.

Then Trilby became a blanchisseuse de fin, and in two or three years
came to grief through her trust in a friend of her mother's. Then she
became a model besides, and was able to support her little brother,
whom she dearly loved.

At the time this story begins, this small waif and stray was en
pension with le pere Martin, the rag-picker, and his wife, the dealer
in bric-a-brac and inexpensive old masters. They were very good
people, and had grown fond of the child, who was beautiful to look at,
and full of pretty tricks and pluck and cleverness--a popular
favourite in the Rue du Puits d'Amour and its humble neighbourhood.

Trilby, for some freak, always chose to speak of him as her godson,
and as the grandchild of le pere et la mere Martin, so that these good
people had almost grown to believe he really belonged to them.

And almost every one else believed that he was the child of Trilby (in
spite of her youth), and she was so fond of him that she didn't mind
in the least.

He might have had a worse home.

La mere Martin was pious, or pretended to be; le pere Martin was the
reverse. But they were equally good for their kind, and though coarse
and ignorant and unscrupulous in many ways (as was natural enough),
they were gifted in a very full measure with the saving graces of love
and charity, especially he. And if people are to be judged by their
works, this worthy pair are no doubt both equally well compensated by
now for the trials and struggles of their sordid earthly life.

So much for Trilby's parentage.

And as she sat and wept at Madame Doche's impersonation of La Dame aux
Camillas (with her hand in Durien's) she vaguely remembered, as in a
waking dream, now the noble presence of Taffy as he towered cool and
erect, foil in hand, gallantly waiting for his adversary to breathe,
now the beautiful sensitive face of Little Billee and his deferential
courtesy.

And during the entr'actes her heart went out in friendship to the
jolly Scotch Laird of Cockpen, who came out now and then with such
terrible French oaths and abominable expletives (and in the presence
of ladies, too!), without the slightest notion of what they meant.

For the Laird had a quick ear, and a craving to be colloquial and
idiomatic before everything else, and made many awkward and
embarrassing mistakes.

It would be with him as though a polite Frenchman should say to a fair
daughter of Albion, 'D--my eyes, mees, your tea is getting---cold; let
me tell that good old--of a Jules to bring you another cup.'

And so forth, till time and experience taught him better. It is
perhaps well for him that his first experiments in conversational
French were made in the unconventional circle of the Place St. Anatole
des Arts.
 
 

PART SECOND

'Dieu! qu'il fait bon la regarder.
La gracieuse, bonne et belle!
Pour les grands biens qui sont en elle
Chacun est pret de la louer.'

NOBODY KNEW EXACTLY how Svengali lived, and very few knew where (or
why). He occupied a roomy dilapidated garret, au sixieme, in the Rue
Tire-Liard, with a trucklebed and a pianoforte for furniture, and very
little else.

He was poor, for in spite of his talent he had not yet made his mark
in Paris. His manners may have been accountable for this. He would
either fawn or bully, and could be grossly impertinent. He had a kind
of cynical humour, which was more offensive than amusing, and always
laughed at the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. And
his laughter was always derisive and full of malice. And his egotism
and conceit were not to be borne; and then he was both tawdry and
dirty in his person; more greasily, mattedly unkempt than even a
really successful pianist has any right to be even in the best
society.

He was not a nice man, and there was no pathos in his poverty--a
poverty that was not honourable, and need not have existed at all; for
he was constantly receiving supplies from his own people in Austria---
his old father and mother, his sisters, his cousins, and his aunts,
hardworking, frugal folk of whom he was the pride and the darling.

He had but one virtue--his love of His art; or, rather, his love of
himself as a master of his art--the master; for he despised, or
affected to despise, all other musicians, living or dead--even those
whose work he interpreted so divinely, and pitied them for not hearing
Svengali give utterance to their music, which of course they could not
utter themselves.

'Ils safent tous un peu toucher du biano, mais pas grand chose!'

He had been the best pianist of his time at the Conservatory in
Leipsic; and, indeed, there was perhaps some excuse for this
overweening conceit, since he was able to lend a quite peculiar
individual charm of his own to any music he played, except the highest
and best of all, in which he conspicuously failed.

He had to draw the line just above Chopin, where he reached his
highest level. It will not do to lend your own quite peculiar
individual charm to Handel and Bach and Beethoven; and Chopin is not
bad as a pis-aller.

He had ardently wished to sing, and had studied hard to that end in
Germany, in Italy, in France, with the forlorn hope of evolving from
some inner recess a voice to sing with. But nature had been singularly
harsh to him in this one respect--inexorable. He was absolutely
without voice, beyond the harsh, hoarse, weak raven's croak he used to
speak with, and no method availed to make one for him. But he grew to
understand the human voice as perhaps no one has understood it--before
or since.

So in his head he went for ever singing, singing, singing, as probably
no human nightingale has ever yet been able to sing out loud for the
glory and delight of his fellow-mortals; making unheard heavenly
melody of the cheapest, trivialest tunes--tunes of the cafe concert,
tunes of the nursery, the shop-parlour, the guard-room, the
schoolroom, the pothouse, the slum. There was nothing so humble, so
base even, but what his magic could transform it into the rarest
beauty without altering a note. This seems impossible, I know. But if
it didn't, where would the magic come in?

Whatever of heart or conscience--pity, love, tenderness, manliness,
courage, reverence, charity--endowed him at his birth had been
swallowed up by this one faculty, and nothing of them was left for the
common uses of life. He poured them all into his little flexible
flageolet.

Svengali playing Chopin on the pianoforte, even (or especially)
Svengali playing 'Ben Bolt' on that penny whistle of his, was as one
of the heavenly host.

Svengali walking up and down the earth seeking whom he might cheat,
betray, exploit, borrow money from, make brutal fun of, bully if he
dared, cringe to if he must--man, woman, child, or dog--was about as
bad as they make 'em.

To earn a few pence when he couldn't borrow them he played
accompaniments at cafe concerts, and even then he gave offence; for in
his contempt for the singer he would play too loud, and embroider his
accompaniments with brilliant improvisations of his own, and lift his
hands on high and bring them down with a bang in the sentimental
parts, and shake his dirty mane and shrug his shoulders, and smile and
leer at the audience, and do all he could to attract their attention
to himself. He also gave a few music lessons (not at ladies' schools,
let us hope), for which he was not well paid, presumably, since he was
always without a sou, always borrowing money, that he never paid back,
and exhausting the pockets and the patience of one acquaintance after
another.

He had but two friends. There was Gecko, who lived in a little garret
close by in the Impasse des Ramoneurs, and who was second violin in
the orchestra of the Gymnase, and shared his humble earnings with his
master, to whom, indeed, he owed his great talent, not yet revealed to
the world.

Svengali's other friend and pupil was (or rather had been) the
mysterious Honorine, of whose conquest he was much given to boast,
hinting that she was une jeune femme du monde. This was not the case.
Mademoiselle Honorine Cahen (better known in the Quartier Latin as
Mimi la Salope) was a difty, drabby little dolly-mop of a Jewess, a
model for the figure--a very humble person indeed, socially.

She was, however, of a very lively disposition, and had a charming
voice, and a natural gift of singing so sweetly that you forgot her
accent, which was that of the tout ce qu'ily a de plus canaille.

She used to sit at Carrel's, and during the pose she would sing. When
Little Billee first heard her he was so fascinated that 'it made him
sick to think she sat for the figure'--an effect, by the way, that was
always produced upon him by all specially attractive figure models of
the gender sex, for he had a reverence for woman. And before
everything else, he had for the singing woman an absolute worship. He
was especially thrall to the contralto--the deep low voice that breaks
and changes in the middle and soars all at once into a magnified
angelic boy treble. It pierced through his ears to his heart, and
stirred his very vitals.

He had once heard Madame Alboni, and it had been an epoch in his life;
he would have been an easy prey to the sirens! Even beauty paled
before the lovely female voice singing in the middle of the note--the
nightingale killed the bird of paradise.

I need hardly say that poor Mimi la Salope had not the voice of Madame
Alboni, nor the art; but it was a beautiful voice of its little kind,
always in the very middle of the note, and her artless art had its
quick seduction.

She sang little songs of Beranger's--'Grand'mere, parlez-nous del
lui!' or 'T'en souviens-tu? disait un capitaine--' or 'Enfants, c'est
moi qui suis Lisette!' and such like pretty things, that almost
brought the tears to Little Billee's easily-moistened eyes.

But soon she would sing little songs that were not by Beranger---
little songs with slang words Little Billee hadn't French enough to
understand; but from the kind of laughter with which the points were
received by the 'rapins' in Carrel's studio he guessed these little
songs were vile, though the touching little voice was as that of the
seraphim still; and he knew the pang of disenchantment and vicarious
shame.

Svengali had heard her sing at the Brasserie des Porcherons in the Rue
du Crapaud-volant, and had volunteered to teach her-and she went to
see him in his garret, and he played to her, and leered and ogled, and
flashed his bold, black, beady Jew's eyes into hers, and she
straightway mentally prostrated herself in reverence and adoration
before this dazzling specimen of her race.

So that her sordid, mercenary little gutter-draggled soul was filled
with the sight and the sound of him, as of a lordly, godlike, shawm-
playing, cymbal-banging hero and prophet of the Lord God of Israel--
David and Saul in one!

And then he set himself to teach her--kindly and patiently at first,
calling her sweet little pet names--his 'Rose of Sharon,' his 'pearl
of Pabylon,' his 'cazelle-eyed liddle Cherusalem skylark'--and
promised her that she should be the queen of the nightingales.

But before he could teach her anything he had to unteach her all she
knew; her breathing, the production of her voice, its emission---
everything was wrong. She worked indefatigably to please him, and soon
succeeded in forgetting all the pretty little sympathetic tricks of
voice and phrasing Mother Nature had taught her.

But though she had an exquisite ear she had no real musical
intelligence--no intelligence of any kind except about sous and
centimes; she was as stupid as a little downy owl, and her voice was
just a light native warble, a throstle's pipe, all in the head and
nose and throat (a voice he didn't understand, for once), a thing of
mere youth and health and bloom and high spirits--like her beauty,
such as it was--beaute du diable, beaute damnee.

She did her very best, and practised all she could in this new way,
and sang herself hoarse: she scarcely ate or slept for practising. He
grew harsh and impatient and coldly severe, and of course she loved
him all the more; and the more she loved him the more nervous she got
and the worse she sang. Her voice cracked; her ear became demoralised;
her attempts to vocalise grew almost as distressing as Trilby's. So
that he lost his temper completely, and called her terrible names, and
pinched and punched her with his big bony hands till she wept worse
than Niobe, and borrowed money of her--five-franc pieces, even francs
and demifrancs--which he never paid her back; and browbeat and bullied
and 'bully-ragged her till she went quite mad for love of him, and
vould have jumped out of his sixth-floor window to give him a moment's
pleasure!

He did not ask her to do this--it never occurred to him, and vould
have given him no pleasure to speak of. But one fine Sabbath corning
(a Saturday, of course) he took her by the shoulders and plucked her,
neck and crop, out of his garret, with the threat that if the ever
dared to show her face there again he would denounce her to the
police--an awful threat to the likes of poor Mimi la Salope! 'For
where did all those five-franc pieces come from--hein? with which she
had tried to pay for all the singing lessons that had been thrown away
upon her? Not from merely sitting to painters--hein?'

Thus the little gazelle-eyed Jerusalem skylark went back to her native
streets again--a mere mud-lark of the Paris slums--her rings clipped,
her spirit quenched and broken, and with no more singing left in her
than a common or garden sparrow--not so much! And so, no more of 'la
betite Honorine!'

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

He made a long arm and reached his waistcoat and trousers off be
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 rimy. 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 or 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
ablutions after the hissing, splashing, energetic fashion 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
circumstances, 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.

As the reader will no doubt anticipate, he found Taffy in his bath
also, and fell to laughing with such convulsive laughter, such
twistings, screwings, 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 pigdog! what
for a rotten, brutal, verflucbter 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.'

So he breakfasted at the cremerie Souchet, in the Rue Clopin-Clopant,
and, feeling quite safe again, he laughed and laughed till his very
sides were sore.

Two Englanders in one day--as naked as your hand!--a big one and a
little one, trying to get themselves clean!

He rather flattered himself he had scored off those two Englanders.

After all, he was right perhaps, from his point of view; you can get
as dirty in a week as in a lifetime, so what's the use of taking such
a lot of trouble? Besides, so long as you are clean enough to suit
your kind, to be any cleaner would be priggish and pedantic, and get
you disliked.

Just as Svengali was about to knock at the Laird's door, Trilby came
downstairs from Durien's, very unlike herself. Her eyes were red with
weeping, and there were great black rings round them; she was pale
under her freckles.

'Fous afez du chacrin, matemoiselle?' asked he.

She told him that she had neuralgia in her eyes, a thing she was
subject to; that the pain was maddening, and generally lasted twenty-
four hours.

'Perhaps I can cure you; come in here with me.'

The Laird's ablutions (if he had indulged in any that morning) were
evidently over for the day. He was breakfasting on a roll and butter,
and coffee of his own brewing. He was deeply distressed at the sight
of poor Trilby's sufferings, and offered whisky and coffee and
gingernuts, which she would not touch.

Svengali told her to sit down on the divan, and sat opposite to her,
and bade her look him well in the white of the eyes.

'Recartez-moi pien tans le plane tes yeux.'

Then he made little passes and counterpasses on her forehead and
temples and down her cheek and neck. Soon her eyes closed and her face
grew placid. After a while, a quarter of an hour perhaps, he asked her
if she suffered still.

'Oh! presque plus du tout, monsieur--c'est le ciel.'

In a few minutes more he asked the Laird if he knew German.

'Just enough to understand,' said the Laird (who had spent a year in
Dusseldorf), and Svengali said to him in German: 'See, she sleeps not,
but she shall not open her eyes. Ask her.'

'Are you asleep, Miss Trilby?' asked the Laird.

'No.'

'Then open your eyes and look at me.'

She strained to open her eyes, but could not, and said so.

Then Svengali said, again in German, 'She shall not open her mouth.
Ask her.'

'Why couldn't you open your eyes, Miss Trilby?'

She strained to open her mouth and speak, but in vain.

'She shall not rise from the divan. Ask her.'

But Trilby was spellbound, and could not move.

'I will now set her free,' said Svengali.

And, lo! she got up and waved her arms, and cried, 'Vive la Prusse!
Vive la guerie!' and in her gratitude she kissed Svengali's hand; and
he leered, and showed his big brown teeth and the yellow whites at the
top of his big black eyes, and drew his breath with a hiss.

'Now I'll go to Durien's and sit. How can I thank you, monsieur? You
have taken all my pain away.'

'Yes, matemoiselle. I have got it myself; it is in my elbows. But I
love it, because it comes from you. Every time you have pain you shall
come to me, 12 Rue Tire-Liard, au sixieme au-dessus de Pentresol, and
I will cure you and take your pain myself--'

'Oh, you are too good!' and in her high spirits she turned round on
her heel and uttered her portentous warcry, 'Milk below!' The very
rafters rang with it, and the piano gave out a solemn response.

'What is that you say, matemoiselle?'

'Oh, it's what the milkmen say in England.'

'It is a wonderful cry, matemoiselle--ivunderscbon! It comes straight
through the heart; it has its roots in the stomach, and blossoms into
music on the lips like the voice of Madame Alboru--voce sulle labbre!
It is good production--c'est un cri du coeur!'

Trilby blushed with pride and pleasure.

'Yes, matemoiselle! I know only one person in the whole world who can
produce the voice so well as you! I give you my word of honour.'

'Who is it, monsieur--yourself?'

'Ach, no, matemoiselle; I have not that privilege. I have
unfortunately no voice to produce. ... It is a waiter at the Cafe de
la Rotonde, in the Palais Royal; when you call for coffee, he says
"Bourn!" in basso profondo. Tiefstimme--F moll below the line--it is
phenomenal! It is like a cannon--a cannon also has very good
production, matemoiselle. They pay him for it a thousand francs a
year, because he brings many customers to the Cafe de la Rotonde,
where the coffee isn't very good, although it costs three sous a cup
dearer than at the Cafe Larsouille in the Rue Flamberge-au-Vent. When
he dies they will search all France for another, and then all Germany,
where the good big waiters come from--and the cannons--but they will
not find him, and the Cafe de la Rotonde will be bankrupt--unless you
will consent to take his place. Will you permit that I shall look into
your mouth, matemoiselle?'

She opened her mouth wide, and he looked into it.

'Himmel! the roof of your mouth is like the dome of the Pantheon;
there is room in it for "toutes les gloires de la France," and a
little to spare! The entrance to your throat is like the middle porch
of St. Sulpice when the doors are open for the faithful on All Saints'
Day; and not one tooth is missing--thirty-two British teeth as white
as milk and as big as knuckle-bones! and your little tongue is scooped
out like the leaf of a pink peony, and the bridge of your nose is like
the belly of a Stradivarius--what a sounding-board! and inside your
beautiful big chest the lungs are made of leather! and your breath, it
embalms--like the breath of a beautiful white heifer fed on the
buttercups and daisies of the Vater-land! and you have a quick, soft,
susceptible heart, a heart of gold, matemoiselle--all that sees itself
in your face!

'"Votre coeur est un luth suspendu!

Aussitot qu'on le touche, il resonne..."'

What a pity you have not also the musical organisation!' 'Oh, but I
have, monsieur; you heard me sing "Ben Bolt" didn't you? What makes
you say that?'

Svengali was confused for a moment. Then he said: 'When I play the
"Rosemonde" of Schubert, matemoiselle, you look the other way and
smoke a cigarette... You look at the big Taffy, at the Little Billee,
at the pictures on the walls, or out of window, at the sky, the
chimney-pots of Notre Dame de Paris; you do not look at Svengali!---
Svengali, who looks at you with all his eyes, and plays you the
"Rosemonde" of Schubert!'

'Oh, mai'e ai'e!' exclaimed Trilby; 'you do use lovely language!'

'But never mind, matemoiselle; when your pain arrives, then shall you
come once more to Svengali, and he shall take it away from you, and
keep it himself for a soufenir of you when you are gone. And when you
have it no more, he shall play you the "Rosemonde" of Schubert, all
alone for you; and then "Messieurs les etutiants, montez a la
chaumiere!"...because it is gayer! And you shall see nothing, hear
nothing, think of nothing but Svengali, Svengali, Svengali!'

Here he felt his peroration to be so happy and effective that he
thought it well to go at once and make a good exit. So he bent over
Trilby's shapely freckled hand and kissed it, and bowed himself out of
the room, without even borrowing his five-franc piece.

'He's a rum 'un, ain't he?' said Trilby. 'He reminds me of a big
hungry spider, and makes me feel like a fly! But he's cured my pain!
he's cured my pain! Ah! you don't know what my pain is when it comes!'

'I wouldn't have much to do with him, all the same!' said the Laird.
'I'd sooner have any pain than have it cured in that unnatural way,
and by such a man as that! He's a bad fellow, Svengali--I'm sure of
it! He mesmerised you; that's what it is--mesmerism! I've often heard
of it, but never seen it done before. They get you into their power,
and just make you do any blessed thing they please--lie, murder,
steal---anything! and kill yourself into the bargain when they've done
with you! It's just too terrible to think of!'

So spake the Laird, earnestly, solemnly, surprised out of his usual
self, and most painfully impressed--and his own impressive-ness grew
upon him and impressed him still more. He loomed quite prophetic.

Cold shivers went down Trilby's back as she listened. She had a
singularly impressionable nature, as was shown by her quick and ready
susceptibility to Svengali's hypnotic influence. And all that day, as
She posed for Durien (to whom she did not mention her adventure), she
was haunted by the memory of Svengali's big eyes and the touch of his
soft, dirty finger-tips on her face; and her fear and her repulsion
grew together.

And 'Svengali, Svengali, Svengali!' went ringing in her head and ears
till it became an obsession, a dirge, a knell, an unendurable burden,
almost as hard to bear as the pain in her eyes.

'Svengali, Svengali, Svengali!'

At last she asked Dorien if he knew him.

'Parbleu! Si je connais Svengali!'

'Qu'est-ce que t'en penses?'

'Quand il sera mort, ca fera une fameuse crapule de moins!'

'CHEZ CARREL.'

Carrel's atelier (or painting-school) was in the Rue Notre Dame des
Potirons St. Michel, at the end of a large courtyard, where there were
many large dirty windows facing north, and each window let the light
of heaven into a large dirty studio.

The largest of these studios, and the dirtiest, was Carrel's, where
some thirty or forty art students drew and painted from the nude model
every day but Sunday from eight till twelve, and for two hours in the
afternoon, except on Saturdays, when the afternoon was devoted to
much-needed Augean sweepings and cleanings.

One week the model was male, the next female, and so on, alternating
through the year.

A stove, a model-throne, stools, boxes, some fifty strongly-built low
chairs with backs, a couple of score easels and many drawing-boards,
completed the mobilier.

The bare walls were adorned with endless caricatures--des charges--in
charcoal and white chalk; and also the scrapings of many palettes--a
polychromous decoration not unpleasing.

For the freedom of the studio and the use of the model each student
paid ten francs a month to the mossier, or senior student, the
responsible bell-wether of the flock; besides this, it was expected of
you, on your entrance or initiation, that you should pay for your
footing--your bienvenue--some thirty, forty, or fifty francs, to be
spent on cakes and rum punch all round.

Every Friday Monsieur Carrel, a great artist, and also a stately,
well-dressed, and most courteous gentleman (duly decorated with the
red rosette of the Legion of Honour), came for two or three hours and
went the round, spending a few minutes at each drawing-board or
easel--ten or even twelve when the pupil was an industrious and
promising one.

He did this for love, not money, and deserved all the reverence with
which he inspired this somewhat irreverent and most unruly company,
which was made up of all sorts.

Graybeards who had been drawing and painting there for thirty years
and more, and remembered other masters than Carrel, and who could draw
and paint a torso almost as well as Titian or Velasquez--almost, but
not quite--and who could never do anything else, and were fixtures at
Carrel's for life.

Younger men who in a year or two, or three or five, or ten or twenty,
were bound to make their mark, and perhaps follow in the footsteps of
the master; others as conspicuously singled out for failure and future
mischance--for the hospital, the garret, the river, the Morgue, or,
worse, the traveller's bag, the road, or even the paternal counter.

Irresponsible boys, mere rapins, all laugh and chaff and mischief--
blague et bagout Parisien; little lords of misrule---wits, butts,
bullies; the idle and industrious apprentice, the good and the bad,
the clean and the dirty (especially the latter)--all more or less
animated by a certain esprit de corps, and working very happily and
genially together, on the whole, and always willing to help each other
with sincere artistic counsel if it was asked for seriously, though it
was not always couched in terms very flattering to one's self-love.

Before Little Billee became one of this band of brothers he had been
working for three or four years in a London art school, drawing and
painting from the life; he had also worked from the antique in the
British Museum--so that he was no novice.

As he made his debut at Carrel's one Monday morning he felt somewhat
shy and ill at ease. He had studied French most earnestly at home in
England and could read it pretty well, and even write it and speak it
after a fashion; but he spoke it with much difficulty, and found
studio French a different language altogether from the formal and
polite language he had been at such pains to acquire. Ollendorff does
not cater for the Quartier Latin. Acting on Taffy's advice--for Taffy
had worked under Carrel--Little Billee handed sixty francs to the
massier for his bienvenue--a lordly sum--and this liberality made a
most favourable impression, and went far to destroy any little
prejudice that might have been caused by the daintiness of his dress,
the cleanliness of his person, and the politeness of his manners. A
place was assigned to him, and an easel and a board; for he elected to
stand at his work and begin with a chalk drawing. The model (a male)
was posed, and work began In silence. Monday morning is always rather
sulky everywhere (except perhaps in Judee). During the ten minutes'
rest three or four students came and looked at Little Billee's
beginnings, and saw at a glance that he thoroughly; well knew what he
was about, and respected him for it.

Nature had given him a singularly light hand--or rather two, for he
was ambidextrous, and could use both with equal skill; and a few
months' practice at a London life school had quite cured him of that
purposeless Indecision of touch which often characterises the prentice
hand for years of apprenticeship, and remains with the amateur for
life. The lightest and most careless of his pencil strokes had a
precision that was inimitable, and a charm that specially belonged to
him, and was easy to recognise at a glance. His touch on either canvas
or paper was like Svengali's on the keyboard--unique.

As the morning ripened little attempts at conversation were made---
little breakings of the ice of silence. It was Lambert, a youth with a
singularly facetious face, who first woke the stillness with the
following uncalled-for remarks in English very badly pronounced:

'Av you seen my fahzere's ole shoes?'

'I av not seen your fahzere's ole shoes.'

Then, after a pause:

'Av you seen my fahzere's ole 'at?'

'I av not seen your fahzere's ole 'at!'

Presently another said, 'Je trouve qu'il a une jolie tete, l'Anglais.'

But I will put it all into English:

'I find that he has a pretty head--the Englishman! What say you,
Barizel?'

'Yes; but why has he got eyes like brandy-balls, two a penny?'
'Because he's an Englishman!'

'Yes; but why has he got a mouth like a guinea-pig, with two big teeth
in front like the double blank at dominoes?' 'Because he's an
Englishman!'

'Yes; but why has he got a back without any bend in it, as if he'd
swallowed the Colonne Vendome as far up as the battle of Austerlitz?'

'Because he's an Englishman!'

And so on, till all the supposed characteristics of Little Billee's
outer man were exhausted. Then: 'Papelard!'

'What?'

'I should like to know if the Englishman says his prayers before going
to bed.'

'Ask him.'

'Ask him yourself.'

'I should like to know if the Englishman has sisters; and if so, how
old and how many and what sex.'

'Ask him.'

'Ask him yourself!'

'I should like to know the detailed and circumstantial history of the
Englishman's first love, and how he lost his innocence!'

'Ask him,' etc. etc. etc.

Little Billee, conscious that he was the subject of conversation, grew
somewhat nervous. Soon he was addressed directly.

'Dites done, l'Anglais?'

'Kwaw?' said Little Billee.

'Avez-vous une soeur?'

'Wee.'

'Est-ce qu'elle vous ressemble?'

'Nong.'

'C'est bien dommage! Est-ce qu'elle dit ses prieres, le soir, en se
couchant?'

A fierce look came into Little Billee's eyes and a redness to his
cheeks, and this particular form of overture to friendship was
abandoned.

Presently Lambert said, 'Si nous mettions l'Anglais a l'echelle?'

Little Billee, who had been warned, knew what this ordeal meant.

They tied you to a ladder, and carried you in procession up and down
the courtyard, and if you were nasty about it they put you under the
pump.

During the next rest it was explained to him that he must submit to
this indignity, and the ladder (which was used for reaching the high
shelves round the studio) was got ready.

Little Billee smiled a singularly winning smile, and suffered himself
to be bound with such good-humour that they voted it wasn't amusing,
and unbound him, and he escaped the ordeal by ladder.

Taffy had also escaped, but in another way. When they tried to seize
him he took up the first rapin that came to hand,' and using him as a
kind of club, he swung him about so freely and knocked down so many
students and easels and drawing-boards with him, and made such a
terrific rumpus, that the whole studio had to cry for 'pax!' Then he
performed feats of strength of such a surprising kind that the memory
of him remained in Carrel's studio for years, and he became a legend,
a tradition, a myth! It is now said (in what still remains of the
Quartier Latin) that he was seven feet high, and used to juggle with
the massier and model as with a pair of billiard balls, using only his
left hand!

To return to Little Billee. When it struck twelve, the cakes and rum
punch arrived--a very goodly sight that put every one in a good
temper.

The cakes were of three kinds--Babas, Madeleines, and Savarins---three
sous apiece, fourpence-halfpenny the set of three. No nicer cakes are
made in France, and they are as good in the Quartier Latin as anywhere
else; no nicer cakes are made in the whole world, that I know of. You
must begin with the Madeleine, which is rich and rather heavy; then
the Baba; and finish up with the Savarin, which is shaped like a ring,
very light, and flavoured with rum. And then you must really leave
off.

The rum punch was tepid, very sweet, and not a bit too strong.

They dragged the model-throne into the middle, and a chair was put on
for Little Billee, who dispensed his hospitality in a very polite and
attractive manner, helping the massier first, and then the other
graybeards in the order of their grayness, and so on down to the
model.

Presently, just as he was about to help himself, he was asked to sing
them an English song. After a little pressing he sung them a song
about a gay cavalier who went to serenade his mistress (and a ladder
of ropes, and a pair of masculine gloves that didn't belong to the gay
cavalier, but which he found in his lady's bower)--a poor sort of
song, but it was the nearest approach to a comic song he knew. There
are four verses to it, and each verse is rather long. It does not
sound at all funny to a French audience, and even with an English one
Little Billee was not good at comic songs.

He was, however, much applauded at the end of each verse. When he had
finished, he was asked if he were quite sure there wasn't any more of
it, and they expressed a deep regret; and then each student,
straddling on his little thick-set chair as on a horse, and clasping
the back of it in both hands, galloped round Little Billee's throne
quite seriously--the strangest procession he had ever seen. It made
him laugh till he cried, so that he could not eat or drink.

Then he served more punch and cake all round; and just as he was going
to begin himself, Papelard said:

'Say, you others, I find that the Englishman has something of truly
distinguished in the voice, something of sympathetic, of touching---
something of je ne sais quoi!'

Bouchardy: 'Yes, yes--something of je ne sais quoi! That's the very
phrase--n'est-ce pas, vous autres?--that is a good phrase that
Papelard has just invented to describe the voice of the Englishman. He
is very intelligent--Papelard.'

Chorus: 'Perfect, perfect; he has the genius of characterisation--
Papelard. Dites done, l'Anglais! once more that beautiful song---hein?
Nous vous en prions tous.'

Little Billee willingly sang it again, with even greater applause, and
again they galloped, but the other way round and faster, so that
Little Billee became quite hysterical, and laughed till his sides
ached.

Then Dubose: 'I find there is something of very capitous and exciting
in English music--of very stimulating. And you, Bouchardy?'

Bouchardy: 'Oh me! It is above all the words that I admire; they have
something of passionate, of romantic--"ze-ese gla-aves, zese gla-aves,
zey do not belong to me." I don't know what that means, but I love
that sort of--of--of--of--je ne sais quoi, in short! Just once more,
l'Anglais; only once, the bar couplets.'

So he sang it a third time, all four verses, while they leisurely ate
and drank and smoked and looked at each other, nodding solemn
commendation of certain phrases in the song: 'Tres bien!' 'Tres bien!'
'Ah! voila qui est bien reussi!' 'Epatant, ca'.' 'Tres fin!' etc. etc.
For, stimulated by success, and rising to the occasion, he did his
very utmost to surpass himself in emphasis of gesture and accent and
histrionic drollery--heedless of the fact that not one of his
listeners had the slightest notion what his song was about.

It was a sorry performance.

And it was not till he had sung it four times that he discovered the
whole thing was an elaborate impromptu farce, of which he was the
butt, and that of all his royal spread not a crumb or a drop was left
for himself.

It was the old fable of the fox and the crow! And to do him justice,
he laughed as heartily as any one, as if he thoroughly enjoyed the
joke--and when you take jokes in that way people soon leave off poking
fun at you. It is almost as good as being very big, like Taffy, and
having a choleric blue eye!

Such was Little Billee's first experience of Carrel's studio, where he
spent many happy mornings and made many good friends.

No more popular student had ever worked there within the memory of the
grayest graybeards; none more amiable, more genial, more cheerful,
self-respecting, considerate, and polite, and certainly none with
greater gifts for art.

Carrel would devote at least fifteen minutes to him, and invited him
often to his own private studio. And often, on the fourth or fifth day
of the week, a group of admiring students would be gathered by his
easel watching him as he worked.

'C'est un rude lapin, l'Anglais! au moins il sait son orthographe en
peinture, ce coco-la!'

Such was the verdict on Little Billee at Carrel's studio; and I can
conceive no much loftier praise.

Young as she was (seventeen or eighteen, or thereabouts), and also
tender (like Little Billee), Trilby had singularly clear and quick
perceptions in all matters that concerned her tastes, fancies, or
affections, and thoroughly knew her own mind, and never lost much time
in making it up.

On the occasion of her first visit to the studio in the Place St.
Anatole des Arts, it took her just five minutes to decide that it was
quite the nicest, homeliest, genialest, jolliest studio in the whole
Quartier Latin, or out of it, and its three inhabitants, individually
and collectively, were more to her taste than any one else she had
ever met.

In the first place, they were English, and she loved to hear her
mother-tongue and speak it. It awoke all manner of tender
recollections, sweet reminiscences of her childhood, her parents, her
old home--such a home as it was--or, rather, such homes; for there had
been many flirtings from one poor nest to another. The O'Ferralls had
been as birds on the bough.

She had loved her parents very dearly; and, indeed, with all their
faults, they had many endearing qualities--the qualities that so often
go with those particular faults--charm, geniality, kindness, warmth of
heart, the constant wish to please, the generosity that comes before
justice, and lends its last sixpence and forgets to pay its debts!

She knew other English and American artists, and had sat to them
frequently for the head and hands; but none of these, for general
agreeableness of aspect or manner, could compare in her mind with the
stalwart and magnificent Taffy, the jolly fat Laird of Cockpen, the
refined, sympathetic, and elegant Little Billee; and she resolved that
she would see as much of them as she could, that she would make
herself at home in that particular studio, and necessary to its
locataires; and without being the least bit vain or self-conscious,
she had no doubts whatever of her power to please--to make herself
both useful and ornamental if it suited her purpose to do so.

Her first step in this direction was to borrow pere Martin's basket
and lantern and pick (he had more than one set of these trade
properties) for the use of Taffy, whom she feared she might have
offended by the freedom of her comments on his picture.

Then, as often as she felt it to be discreet, she sounded her war-cry
at the studio door and went in and made kind inquiries, and, sitting
cross-legged on the model-throne, ate her bread and cheese and smoked
her cigarette and 'passed the time of day,' as she chose to call it;
telling them all such news of the Quartier as had come within her own
immediate ken. She was always full of little stories of other studios,
which, to do her justice, were always good-natured, and probably
true--quite so, as far as she was concerned; she was the most literal
person alive; and she told all these ragots, cancans, et potins
d'atelier in a quaint and amusing manner. The slightest look of
gravity or boredom on one of those three faces, and she made herself
scarce at once.

She soon found opportunities for usefulness also. If a costume were
wanted, for instance, she knew where to borrow it, or hire it or buy
it cheaper than any one anywhere else. She procured stuffs for them at
cost-price, as it seemed, and made them into draperies and female
garments of any kind that was wanted, and sat in them for the
toreador's sweetheart (she made the mantilla herself), for Taffy's
starving dressmaker about to throw herself into the Seine, for Little
Billee's studies of the beautiful French peasant girl in his picture,
now so famous, called 'The Pitcher Goes to the Well.'

Then she darned their socks and mended their clothes, and got all
their washing done properly and cheaply at her friend Madame Boisse's,
in the Rue des Cloitres Ste. Petronille.

And then again, when they were hard up and wanted a good round sum of
money for some little pleasure excursion, such as a trip to
Fontainebleau or Barbizon for two or three days, it was she who took
their watches and scarf-pins and things to the Mount of Piety in the
Street of the Well of Love (where dwelt ma tante, which is French for
'my uncle' in this connection), in order to raise the necessary funds.

She was, of course, most liberally paid for all these little services,
rendered with such pleasure and goodwill--far too liberally, she
thought. She would have been really happier doing them for love. Thus
in a very short time she became a persona gratissima--a my and ever-
welcome vision of health and grace and liveliness id unalterable good-
humour, always ready to take any trouble to please her beloved
'Angliches,' as they were called by Madame Vinard, the handsome
shrill-voiced concierge, who was almost jealous; for she was devoted
to the Angliches too--and so was Monsieur Vinard--and so were the
little Vinards.

She knew when to talk and when to laugh and when to hold her tongue;
and the sight of her sitting cross-legged on the model-irone darning
the Laird's socks or sewing buttons on his shirts or repairing the
smoke-holes in his trousers was so pleasant that it was painted by all
three. One of these sketches (in water-colour Little Billee) sold the
other day at Christie's for a sum so large that I hardly dare to
mention it. It was done in an afternoon.

Sometimes on a rainy day, when it was decided they should line at
home, she would fetch the food and cook it, and lay the cloth, and
even make the salad. She was a better saladist than Taffy, a better
cook than the Laird, a better caterer than Little Billee. And she
would be invited to take her share in the banquet, id on these
occasions her tremulous happiness was so immense that it would be
quite pathetic to see--almost painful; and their three British hearts
were touched by thoughts of all the loneliness id homelessness, the
expatriation, the half-conscious loss of taste, that all this eager
childish clinging revealed. And that is why (no doubt) that with all
this familiar intimacy there was never any hint of gallantry or
flirtation in any shape or form whatever--bonne camaraderie voila
tout. Had she been Little Billee's sister she could not have been
treated with more real respect. And her deep gratitude for this
unwonted compliment transcended any passion she had ever felt. As the
good Lafontaine so prettily says--

'Ces animaux vivaient entre eux comme cousins;

Cette union si douce, et presque fraternelle.

Edifiait tous les voisins!'

And then their talk! It was to her as the talk of the gods in Olympus,
save that it was easier to understand, and she could always understand
it. For she was a very intelligent person, in spite of her woefully
neglected education, and most ambitious to learn--a new ambition for
her.

So they lent her books--English books: Dickens, Thackeray, Walter
Scott--which she devoured in the silence of the night, the solitude of
her little attic in the Rue des Pousse-Cailloux, and new worlds were
revealed to her. She grew more English every day; and that was a good
thing.

Trilby speaking English and Trilby speaking French were two different
beings. Trilby's English was more or less that of her father, a
highly-educated man; her mother, who was a Scotchwoman, although an
uneducated one, had none of the ungainliness that mars the speech of
so many Englishwomen in that humble rank--no droppings of the h, no
broadening of the o's and a's.

Trilby's French was that of the Quartier Latin--droll, slangy,
piquant, quaint, picturesque--quite the reverse of ungainly, but in
which there was scarcely a turn of phrase that would not stamp the
speaker as being hopelessly, emphatically 'no lady!' Though it was
funny without being vulgar, it was perhaps a little too funny!

And she handled her knife and fork in the dainty English way, as no
doubt her father had done--and his; and, indeed, when alone with them
she was so absolutely 'like a lady' that it seemed quite odd (though
very seductive) to see her in a grisette's cap and dress and apron. So
much for her English training.

But enter a Frenchman or two, and a transformation effected itself
immediately--a new incarnation of Trilbyness--so droll and amusing
that it was difficult to decide which of her two incarnations was the
more attractive.

It must be admitted that she had her faults--like Little Billee. For
instance, she would be miserably jealous of any other woman who came
to the studio, to sit or scrub or sweep or do anything else, even of
the dirty tipsy old hag who sat for Taffy's 'Found drowned'--'as if
she couldn't have sat for it herself!'

And then she would be cross and sulky, but not for long--an injured
martyr, soon ready to forgive and be forgiven.

She would give up any sitting to come and sit to her three English
friends. Even Durien had serious cause for complaint.

Then her affection was exacting: she always wanted to be told one was
fond of her, and she dearly loved her own way, even in the sewing on
of buttons and the darning of socks, which was innocent enough. But
when it came to the cutting and fashioning of garments for a
toreador's bride, it was a nuisance not to be borne!

'What could she know of toreadors' brides and their wedding-dresses?'
the Laird would indignantly ask--as if he were a toreador himself; and
this was the aggravating side of her irrepressible Trilbyness.

In the caressing, demonstrative tenderness of her friendship she 'made
the soft eyes' at all three indiscriminately. But sometimes Little
Billee would look up from his work as she was sitting to Taffy or the
Laird, and find her gray eyes fixed on him with an all-enfolding gaze,
so piercingly, penetratingly, unutterably sweet and kind and tender,
such a brooding, dovelike look of soft and warm solicitude, that he
would feel a flutter at his heart, and his hand would shake so that he
could not paint; and in a waking dream he would remember that his
mother had often looked at him like that when he was a small boy, and
she a beautiful young woman untouched by care or sorrow; and the tear
that always lay in readiness so close to the corner of Little Billee's
eye would find it very difficult to keep itself in its proper place--
unshed.

And at such moments the thought that Trilby sat for the figure would
go through him like a knife.

She did not sit promiscuously to anybody who asked, it is true. But
she still sat to Durien; to the great Gerome; to M. Carrel, who
scarcely used any other model.

It was poor Trilby's sad distinction that she surpassed all other
models as Calypso surpassed her nymphs; and whether by long habit, or
through some obtuseness in her nature, or lack of imagination, she was
equally unconscious of self with her clothes on or without! Truly, she
could be naked and unashamed--in this respect an absolute savage.

She would have ridden through Coventry, like Lady Godiva--but without
giving it a thought beyond wondering why the streets were empty and
the shops closed and the blinds pulled down--would even have looked up
to Peeping Tom's shutter with a friendly nod, had she known he was
behind it.

In fact, she was absolutely without that kind of shame, as she was
without any kind of fear. But she was destined soon to know both fear
and shame.

And here it would not be amiss for me to state a fact well known to
all painters and sculptors who have used the nude model (except a few
shady pretenders, whose purity, not being of the right sort, has gone
rank from too much watching), namely, that nothing is so chaste as
nudity. Venus herself, as she drops her garments and steps on to the
model-throne, leaves behind her on the floor every weapon in her
armoury by which she can pierce to the grosser passions of man. The
more perfect her unveiled beauty, the more keenly it appeals to his
higher instincts. And where her beauty fails (as it almost always does
somewhere in the Venuses who sit for hire), the failure is so
lamentably conspicuous in the studio light--the fierce light that
beats on this particular throne--that Don Juan himself, who has not
got to paint, were fain to hide his eyes in sorrow and disenchantment,
and fly to other climes.

All beauty is sexless in the eyes of the artist at his work--the
beauty of man, the beauty of woman, the heavenly beauty of the child,
which is the sweetest and best of all.

Indeed it is woman, lovely woman, whose beauty falls the shortest, for
sheer lack of proper physical training.

As for Trilby, G--, to whom she sat for his Phryne, once told me that
the sight of her thus was a thing to melt Sir Galahad, yet sober
Silenus, and chasten Jove himself--a thing to Quixotise a modern
French masher! I can well believe him. For myself, I only speak of
Trilby as I have seen her--clothed and in her right mind. She never
sat to me for any Phryne, never bared herself to me, nor did I ever
dream of asking her. I would as soon have asked the Queen of Spain to
let me paint her legs! But I have worked from many female models in
many countries, some of them the best of their kind. I have also, like
Svengali, seen Taffy 'trying to get himself clean,' either at home or
in the swimming-baths of the Seine; and never a sitting woman among
them all who could match for grace or finish or splendour of outward
form that mighty Yorkshireman sitting in his tub, or sunning himself,
like Ilyssus, at the Bains Henri Quatre, or taking his running header
a la hussarde, off the springboard at the Bains Deligny, with a group
of wondering Frenchmen gathered round.

Up he shot himself into mid-air with a sounding double downward kick,
parabolically; then, turning a splendid semi-demi-som-ersault against
the sky, down he came headlong, his body straight and stiff as an
arrow, and made his clean hole in the water without splash or sound,
to reappear a hundred yards farther on! 'Sac a papier! quel gaillard
que cet Anglais, hein?'

'A-t-on jamais vu un torse pareil!' 'Et les bras, done!' 'Et les
jambes, nom d'un tonnerre!'

'Matin! J'aimerais mieux etre en colere centre lui qu'il ne sort en
colere contre moi!' etc. etc. etc. Omne ignotum pro magnifico!

If our climate were such that we could go about without any clothes
on, we probably should; in which case, although we should still murder
and lie and steal and bear false witness against our neighbour, and
break the Sabbath Day, and take the Lord's name in vain, much
deplorable wickedness of another kind would cease to exist for sheer
lack of mystery; and Christianity would be relieved of its hardest
task in this sinful world, and Venus Aphrodite (alias Aselgeia) would
have to go a-begging along with the tailors and dressmakers and
bootmakers, and perhaps our bodies and limbs would be as those of the
Theseus and Venus of Milo; who was no Venus, except in good looks!

At all events, there would be no cunning, cruel deceptions, no artful
taking in of artless inexperience, no unduly hurried waking up from
Love's young dream, no handing down to posterity of hidden uglinesses
and weaknesses, and worse!

And also many a flower, now born to blush unseen, would be reclaimed
from its desert, and suffered to hold its own, and flaunt away with
the best in the inner garden of roses! And poor Miss Gale, the figure-
model, would be permitted to eke out her slender earnings by teaching
calisthenics and deportment to the daughters of the British upper
middle-class at Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, The Mall,
Chiswick.

And here let me humbly apologise to the casual reader for the length
and possible irrelevancy of this digression, and for its subject. To
those who may find matter for sincere disapprobation or even grave
offence in a thing that has always seemed to me so simple, so
commonplace, as to be hardly worth talking or writing about, I can
only plead sincerity equal to theirs, and as deep a love and reverence
for the gracious, goodly shape that God is said to have made after His
own image for inscrutable purposes of His own.

Nor, indeed, am I pleading for such a subversive and revolutionary
measure as the wholesale abolition of clothes, being the chilliest of
mortals, and quite unlike Mr. Theseus or Mr. Ilyssus either.

Sometimes Trilby would bring her little brother to the studio in the
Place St. Anatole des Arts, in his beaux habits de Palques, his hair
well curled and pomatumed, his hands and face well washed.

He was a very engaging little mortal. The Laird would fill his pockets
full of Scotch goodies, and paint him as a little Spaniard, in 'Le
Fils du Toreador,' a sweet little Spaniard with blue eyes, and curly
locks as light as tow, and a complexion of milk and roses, in singular
and piquant contrast to his swarthy progenitors.

Taffy would use him as an Indian club or a dumb-bell, to the child's
infinite delight, and swing him on the trapeze, and teach him la boxe.

And the sweetness and fun of his shrill, happy, infantile laughter
(which was like an echo of Trilby's, only an octave higher) so moved
and touched and tickled one that Taffy had to look quite fierce, so he
might hide the strange delight of tenderness that somehow filled his
manly bosom at the mere sound of it (lest Little Billee and the Laird
should think him goody-goody); and the fiercer Taffy looked, the less
this small mite was afraid of him.

Little Billee made a beautiful water-colour sketch of him, just as he
was, and gave it to Trilby, who gave it to le pere Martin, who gave it
to his wife with strict injunctions not to sell it as an old master.
Alas! it is an old master now, and Heaven only knows who has got it!

Those were happy days for Trilby's little brother, happy days for
Trilby, who was immensely fond of him, and very proud. And the
happiest day of all was when the trois Angliches took Trilby and
Jeannot (for so the mite was called)--to spend the Sunday in the woods
at Meudon, and breakfast and dine at the garde cham-petre's. Swings,
peep-shows, donkey-rides; shooting at a mark with crossbows and little
pellets of clay, and smashing little plaster figures and winning
macaroons; losing one's self in the beautiful forest; catching newts
and tadpoles and young frogs; making music on mirlitons. Trilby
singing 'Ben Bolt' into a mirliton was a thing to be remembered,
whether one would or no!

Trilby on this occasion came out in a new character, en demoiselle,
with a little black bonnet, and a gray jacket of her own making.

To look at (but for her loose, square-toed, heel-less silk boots laced
up the inner side), she might have been the daughter of an English
dean--until she undertook to teach the Laird some favourite cancan
steps. And then the Laird himself, it must be admitted, no longer
looked like the son of a worthy, God-fearing, Sabbath-keeping Scotch
solicitor.

This was after dinner, in the garden, at la loge du garde champetre.
Taffy and Jeannot and Little Billee made the necessary music on their
mirlitons, and the dancing soon became general, with plenty also to
look on, for the garde had many customers who dined there on summer
Sundays.

It is no exaggeration to say that Trilby was far and away the belle of
that particular ball, and there have been worse balls in much finer
company, and far plainer women!

Trilby lightly dancing the cancan (there are cancans and cancans) was
a singularly gainly and seductive person--et vera incessu patuit d'ea!
Here, again, she was funny without being vulgar. And for mere grace
(even in the cancan), she was the forerunner of Miss Kate Vaughan; and
for sheer fun, the precursor of Miss Nelly Farren!

And the Laird, trying to dance after her ('dongsong le konkong,' as he
called it), was too funny for words; and if genuine popular success is
a true test of humour, no greater humorist ever danced a pas seul.

What Englishmen could do in France during the fifties, and yet manage
to preserve their self-respect, and even the respect of their
respectable French friends!

'Voila l'espayce de horn ker jer swee!' said the Laird, every time he
bowed in acknowledgment of the applause that greeted his performance
of various solo steps of his own--Scotch reels and sword-dances that
came in admirably....

Then, one fine day (as a judgment on him, no doubt), the Laird fell
ill, and the doctor had to be sent for, and he ordered a nurse. But
Trilby would hear of no nurses, not even a Sister of Charity! She did
all the nursing herself, and never slept a wink for three successive
days and nights.

On the third day the Laird was out of all danger, the delirium was
past, and the doctor found poor Trilby fast asleep by the bedside.

Madame Vinard, at the bedroom door, put her finger to her lips, and
whispered: 'Quel bonheur! il est sauve, M. le Docteur; ecoutez! il dit
ses prieres en Anglais, ce brave garcon!'

The good old doctor, who didn't understand a word of English,
listened, and heard the Laird's voice, weak and low, but quite clear,
and full of heartfelt fervour, intoning, solemnly:

'"Green herbs, red peppers mussels, saffron.

Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace--

All these you eat at Terre's Tavern

In that one dish of bouillabaisse!"'

'Ah! mais c'est tres bien de sa part, ce brave jeune homme! rendre
graces au ciel comme cela, quand le danger est passe! tres bien, tres
bien!'

Sceptic and Voltairian as he was, and not the friend of prayer, the
good doctor was touched, for he was old, and therefore kind and
tolerant, and made allowances.

And afterwards he said such sweet things to Trilby about it all, and
about her admirable care of his patient, that she positively wept with
delight--like sweet Alice with hair so brown, whenever Ben Bolt gave
her a smile.

All this sounds very goody-goody, but it's true. So it will be easily
understood how the trois Angliches came in time to feel for Trilby
quite a peculiar regard, and looked forward with sorrowful forebodings
to the day when this singular and pleasant little quartet would have
to be broken up, each of them to spread his wings and fly away on his
own account, and poor Trilby to be left behind all by herself. They
would even frame little plans whereby she might better herself in
life, and avoid the many snares and pitfalls that would beset her
lonely path in the Quartier Latin when they were gone.

Trilby never thought of such things as these; she took short views of
life, and troubled herself about no morrows.

There was, however, one jarring figure in her little fool's paradise,
a baleful and most ominous figure that constantly crossed her path,
and came between her and the sun, and threw its shadow over her, and
that was Svengali.

He also was a frequent visitor at the studio in the Place St. Anatole,
where much was forgiven him for the sake of his music, especially when
he came with Gecko and they made music together. But it soon became
apparent that they did not come there to play to the three Angliches;
it was to see Trilby, whom they both had taken it into their heads to
adore, each in a different fashion:

Gecko, with a humble, doglike worship that expressed itself in mute,
pathetic deference and looks of lowly self-depreciation, of apology
for his own unworthy existence, as though the only requital he would
ever dare to dream of were a word of decent politeness, a glance of
tolerance or good-will--a mere bone to a dog.

Svengali was a bolder wooer. When he cringed, it was with a mock
humility full of sardonic threats; when he was playful, it was with a
terrible playfulness, like that of a cat with a mouse--a weird,
ungainly cat, and most unclean; a sticky, haunting, long, lean,
uncanny, black spider-cat, if there is such an animal outside a bad
dream.

It was a great grievance to him that she had suffered from no more
pains in her eyes. She had; but preferred to endure them rather than
seek relief from him.

So he would playfully try to mesmerise her with his glance, and sidle
up nearer and nearer to her, making passes and counter-passes, with
stern command in his eyes, till she would shake and shiver and almost
sicken with fear, and all but feel the spell come over her, as in a
nightmare, and rouse herself with a great effort and escape.

If Taffy were there he would interfere with a friendly 'Now then, old
fellow, none of that!' and a jolly slap on the back, which would make
Svengali cough for an hour, and paralyse his mesmeric powers for a
week.

Svengali had a stroke of good-fortune. He played at three grand
concerts with Gecko, and had a well-deserved success. He even gave a
concert of his own, which made a furore, and blossomed out into
beautiful and costly clothes of quite original colour and shape and
pattern, so that people would turn round and stare at him in the
street--a thing he loved. He felt his fortune was secure, and ran into
debt with tailors, hatters, shoemakers, jewellers, but paid none of
his old debts to his friends. His pockets were always full of printed
slips---things that had been written about him in the papers--and he
would read them aloud to everybody he knew, especially to Trilby, as
she sat darning socks on the model-throne while the fencing and boxing
were in train. And he would lay his fame and his fortune at her feet,
on condition that she should share her life with him.

'Ach, himmel, Drilpy!' he would say, 'you don't know what it is to be
a great pianist like me--bein? What is your Little Billee, with his
stinking oil-bladders, sitting mum in his corner, his mahlstick and
his palette in one hand, and his twiddling little footle pig's-hair
brush in the other! What noise does he make? When his little fool of a
picture is finished he will send it to London, and they will hang it
on a wall with a lot of others, all in a line, like recruits called
out for inspection, and the yawning public will walk by in procession
and inspect, and say "damn!" Svengali will go to London himself. Ha!
ha! He will be all alone on a platform, and play as nobody else can
play; and hundreds of beautiful Englanderinnen will see and hear and
go mad with love for him--Prinzessen, Comtessen, Serene English
Altessen. They will soon lose their Serenity and their Highness when
they hear Svengali! They will invite him to their palaces, and pay him
a thousand francs to play for them; and after, he will loll in the
best armchair, and they will sit all round him on footstools, and
bring him tea and gin and kitchen and marrvns glace's, and lean over
him and fan him--for he is tired after playing them for a thousand
francs of Chopin! Ha, ha! I know all about it--hein?

'And he will not look at them, even! He will look inward, at his own
dream--and his dream will be about Drilpy--to lay his talent, his
glory, his thousand francs at her beautiful white feet!

'Their stupid, big, fat, tow-headed, putty-nosed husbands will be mad
with jealousy, and long to box him, but they will be afraid. Ach!
those beautiful Anclaises! they will think it an honour to mend his
shirts, to sew buttons on his pantaloons; to darn his socks, as you
are doing now for that sacred imbecile of a Scotchman who is always
trying to paint toreadors, or that sweating, pigheaded bullock of an
Englander who is always trying to get himself dirty and then to get
himself clean again!--e da capo! 'Himmel! what big socks are those!
what potato-sacks! 'Look at your Taffy! what is he good for but to
bang great musicians on the back with his big bear's paw! He finds
that droll, the bullock!

'Look at your Frenchmen there--your damned conceited ver-fluchte pig-
dogs of Frenchmen--Durien, Barizel, Bouchardy! What can a Frenchman
talk of, hein? Only himself, and run down everybody else! His vanity
makes me sick! He always thinks the world is talking about him, the
fool! He forgets that there is a fellow called Svengali for the world
to talk about! I tell you, Drilpy, it is about me the world is
talking--me and nobody else---me, me, me!

'Listen what they say in the Figaro (reads it).

'What do you think of that, hein? What would your Durien say if people
wrote of him, like that?

'But you are not listening, sapperment! great big she-fool that you
are--sheep's-head! Dummkopf! Donnerwetter! you are looking at the
chimney-pots when Svengali talks! Look a little lower down between the
houses, on the other side of the river! There is a little ugly gray
building there, and inside are eight slanting slabs of brass, all of a
row, like beds in a school dormitory, and one fine day you shall lie
asleep on one of those slabs--you, Drilpy, who would not listen to
Svengali, and therefore lost him!...And over the middle of you will be
a little leather apron, and over your head a little brass tap, and all
day long and all night the cold water shall trickle, trickle, trickle
all the way down your beautiful white body to your beautiful white
feet till they turn green, and your poor, damp, draggled, muddy rags
will hang above you from the ceiling for your friends to know you by;
drip, drip, drip! But you will have no friends. . ..

'And people of all sorts, strangers, will stare at you through the big
plate-glass window--Englanders, chiffonniers, painters and sculptors,
workmen, piou-pious, old hags of washerwomen--and say, "Ah! what a
beautiful woman was that! Look at her! She ought to be rolling in her
carriage and pair!" And just then who should come by, rolling in his
carriage and pair, smothered in furs, and smoking a big cigar of the
Havana, but Svengali, who will jump out, and push the canaille aside,
and say, "Ha! ha! that is la grande Drilpy, who would not listen to
Svengali, but looked at the chimney-pots when he told her of his manly
love, and--"'

'Hi! damn it, Svengali, what the devil are you talking to Trilby
about? You're making her sick; can't you see? Leave off, and go to the
piano, man, or I'll come and slap you on the back again!'

Thus would that sweating, pig-headed bullock of an Englander stop
Svengali's love-making and release Trilby from bad quarters of an
hour.

Then Svengali, who had a wholesome dread of the pig-headed bullock,
would go to the piano and make impossible discords, and say: 'Dear
Drilpy, come and sing "Pen Poll!" I am thirsting for those so
beautiful chest notes! Come!'

Poor Trilby needed little pressing when she was asked to sing, and
would go through her lamentable performance, to the great discomfort
of Little Billee. It lost nothing of its grotesqueness from Svengali's
accompaniment, which was a triumph of cacophony, and he would
encourage her--Trespien, trespten, cay est!

When it was over, Svengali would test her ear, as he called it, and
strike the C in the middle and then the F just above, and ask which
was the highest; and she would declare they were both exactly the
same. It was only when he struck a note in the bass and another in the
treble that she could perceive any difference, and said that the first
sounded like pere Martin blowing up his wife, and the second like her
little godson trying to make the peace between them.

She was quite tone-deaf, and didn't know it; and he would pay her
extravagant compliments on her musical talent, till Taffy would say:
'Look here, Svengali, let's hear you sing a song!'

And he would tickle him so masterfully under the ribs that the
creature howled and became quite hysterical.

Then Svengali would vent his love of teasing on Little Billee, and pin
his arms behind his back and swing him round, saying: 'Himmel! what's
this for an arm? It's like a girl's!' 'It's strong enough to paint!'
said Little Billee. 'And what's this for a leg? It's like a
mahlstick!' 'It's strong enough to kick, if you don't leave off!!' And
Little Billee, the young and tender, would let out his little heel and
kick the German's shins; and just as the German was going to
retaliate, big Taffy would pin his arms and make him sing another
song, more discordant than Trilby's--for he didn't dream of kicking
Taffy: of that you may be sure!

Such was Svengali--only to be endured for the sake of his 'music---
always ready to vex, frighten, bully, or torment anybody or anything
smaller and weaker than himself--from a woman or a child to a mouse or
a fly.
 
 

PART THIRD

Par dela, ne dela la mer
Ne s'jay dame ni damoiselle
Qui soil en tous biens parfaits telle--
C'est un songe que d'y penser:
Dieu! qu'il fait bon la regarder!'

ONE LOVELY MONDAY morning in late September, at about eleven or so,
Taffy and the Laird sat in the studio--each opposite his picture,
smoking, nursing his knee, and saying nothing. The heaviness of Monday
weighed on their spirits more than usual, for the three friends had
returned late on the previous night from a week spent at Barbizon and
in the forest of Fontainebleau--a heavenly week among the painters;
Rousseau, Millet, Corot, Daubigny, let us suppose, and others less
known to fame this day. Little Billee, especially, had been fascinated
by all this artistic life in blouses and sabots and immense straw hats
and panamas, and had sworn to himself and to his friends that he would
some day live and the there--painting the forest as it is, and
peopling it with beautiful people out of his own fancy--leading a
healthy outdoor life of simple wants and lofty aspirations.

At length Taffy said: 'Bother work this morning! I feel much more like
a stroll in the Luxembourg Gardens and lunch at the Cafe de l'Odeon,
where the omelets are good and the wine isn't blue.'

'The very thing I was thinking of myself,' said the Laird.

So Taffy slipped on his old shooting-jacket and his old Harrow cricket
cap, with the peak turned the wrong way, and the Laird put on an old
greatcoat of Taffy's that reached to his heels, and a battered straw
hat they had found in the studio when they took it; and both sallied
forth into the mellow sunshine on the way to Carrel's. For they meant
to seduce Little Billee from his work, that he might share in their
laziness, greediness, and general demoralisation.

And whom should they meet coming down the narrow turreted Rue Vielle
des Trois Mauvais Ladres but Little Billee himself, with an air of
general demoralisation so tragic that they were quite alarmed. He had
his paint-box and field-easel in one hand and his little valise in the
other. He was pale, his hat on the back of his head, his hair starting
all at sixes and sevens, like a sick Scotch terrier's.

'Good Lord! what's the matter?' said Taffy.

'Oh! oh! oh! she's sitting at Carrel's!'

'Who's sitting at Carrel's?'

'Trilby! sitting to all those ruffians! There she was, just as I
opened the door; I saw her, I tell you! The sight of her was like a
blow between the eyes, and I bolted! I shall never go back to that
beastly hole again! I'm off to Barbizon, to paint the forest; I was
corning round to tell you. Good-bye!...'

'Stop a minute--are you mad?' said Taffy, collaring him. 'Let me go,
Taffy--let me go, damn it! I'll come back in a week--but I'm going
now! Let me go; do you hear?' 'But look here--I'll go with you.'

'No; I want to be alone--quite alone. Let me go, I tell you!' 'I
shan't let you go unless you swear to me, on your honour, that you'll
write directly you get there, and every day till you come back.
Swear!'

'All right; I swear--honour bright! Now there! Good-bye--good-bye;
back on Sunday--good-bye!' And he was off.

'Now, what the devil does all that mean?' asked Taffy, much perturbed.

'I suppose he's shocked at seeing Trilby in that guise, or disguise,
or unguise, sitting at Carrel's--he's such an odd little chap. And I
must say, I'm surprised at Trilby. It's a bad thing for her when we're
away. What could have induced her? She never sat in a studio of that
kind before. I thought she only sat to Durien and old Carrel.'

They walked for a while in silence.

'Do you know, I've got a horrid idea that the little fool's in love
with her!'

'I've long had a horrid idea that she's in love with him.'

'That would be a very stupid business,' said Taffy.

They walked on, brooding over those two horrid ideas, and the more
they brooded, considered, and remembered, the more convinced they
became that both were right.

'Here's a pretty kettle of fish!' said the Laird--'and talking of
fish, let's go and lunch.'

And so demoralised were they that Taffy ate three omelets without
thinking, and the Laird drank two half-bottles of wine, and Taffy
three, and they walked about the whole of that afternoon for fear
Trilby should come to the studio--and were very unhappy--

This is how Trilby came to sit at Carrel's studio:

Carrel had suddenly taken it into his head that he would spend a week
there, and paint a figure among his pupils, that they might see and
paint with--and if possible like--him. And he had asked Trilby as a
great favour to be the model, and Trilby was so devoted to the great
Carrel that she readily consented. So that Monday morning found her
there, and Carrel posed her as Ingres's famous figure in his picture
called 'La Source,' holding an earthenware pitcher on her shoulder.

And the work began in religious silence. Then in five minutes or so
Little Billee came bursting in, and as soon as he caught sight of her
he stopped and stood as one petrified, his shoulders up, his eyes
staring. Then lifting his arms, he turned and fled.

'Qu'est ce qu'il a done, ce Litrebili?' exclaimed one or two students
(for they had turned his English nickname into French).

'Perhaps he's forgotten something,' said another. 'Perhaps he's
forgotten to brush his teeth and part his hair!'

'Perhaps he's forgotten to say his prayers!' said Barizel.

'He'll come back, I hope!' exclaimed the master.

And the incident gave rise to no further comment.

But Trilby was much disquieted, and fell to wondering what on earth
was the matter.

At first she wondered in French: French of the Quartier Latin. She had
not seen Little Billee for a week, and wondered if he were ill. She
had looked forward so much to his painting her--painting her
beautifully--and hoped he would soon come back, and lose no time.

Then she began to wonder in English--nice clean English of the studio
in the Place St. Anatole des Arts--her fadier's English--and suddenly
a quick thought pierced her through and through, and made the flesh
tingle on her insteps and the backs of her hands, and bathed her brow
and temples with sweat.

She had good eyes, and Little Billee had a singularly expressive face.

Could it possibly be that he was shocked at seeing her sitting there?

She knew that he was peculiar in many ways. She remembered that
neither he nor Taffy nor the Laird had ever asked her to sit for the
figure, though she would have been only too delighted to do so for
them. She also remembered how Little Billee had always been silent
whenever she alluded to her posing for the 'alto-gedier,' as she
called it, and had sometimes looked pained and always very grave.

She turned alternately pale and red, pale and red all over, again and
again, as the thought grew up in her--and soon the growing thought
became a torment.

This new-born feeling of shame was unendurable--its birth a travail
that racked and rent every fibre of her moral being, and she suffered
agonies beyond anything she had ever felt in her life.

'What is the matter with you, my child? Are you ill?' asked Carrel,
who, like every one else, was very fond of her, and to whom she had
sat as a child ('l'Enfance de Psyche,' now in the Luxembourg Gallery,
was painted from her).

She shook her head, and the work went on.

Presently she dropped her pitcher, that broke into bits; and putting
her two hands to her face she burst into tears and sobs--and there, to
the amazement of everybody, she stood crying like a big baby--La
source aux larmes?

'What is the matter, my poor dear child?' said Carrel, jumping up and
helping her off the throne.

'Oh, I don't know--I don't know--I'm ill--very ill--let me go home!'

And with kind solicitude and despatch they helped her on with her
clothes, and Carrel sent for a cab and took her home.

And on the way she dropped her head on his shoulder, and wept, and
told him all about it as well as she could, and Monsieur Carrel had
tears in his eyes too, and wished to Heaven he had never induced her
to sit for the figure, either then or at any other time. And pondering
deeply and sorrowfully on such terrible responsibility (he had grown-
up daughters of his own), he went back to the studio; and in an hour's
time they got another model and another pitcher, and went to work
again. So the pitcher went to the well once more.

And Trilby, as she lay disconsolate on her bed all that day and all
the next, and all the next again, thought of her past life with
agonies of shame and remorse that made the pain in her eyes seem as a
light and welcome relief. For it came, and tortured worse and lasted
longer than it had ever done before. But she soon found, to her
miserable bewilderment, that mind-aches are the worst of all.

Then she decided that she must write to one of the trois Angliches,
and chose the Laird.

She was more familiar with him than with the other two: it was
impossible not to be familiar with the Laird if he liked one, as he
was so easy-going and demonstrative, for all that he was such a canny
Scot! Then she had nursed him through his illness; she had often
hugged and kissed him before the whole studio full of people--and even
when alone with him it had always seemed quite natural for her to do
so. It was like a child caressing a favourite young uncle or elder
brother. And though the good Laird was the least susceptible of
mortals, he would often find these innocent blandishments a somewhat
trying ordeal! She had never taken such a liberty with Taffy; and as
for Little Billee, she would sooner have died!

So she wrote to the Laird. I give her letter without the spelling,
which was often faulty, although her nightly readings had much
improved it:

'MY dear friend--I am very unhappy. I was sitting at Carrel's, in the
Rue des Potirons, and Little Billee came in, and was so shocked and
disgusted that he ran away and never came back.

'I saw it all in his face.

'I sat there because M. Carrel asked me to. He has always been very
kind to me--M. Carrel--ever since I was a child; and I would do
anything to please him, but never that again.

'He was there too.

'I never thought anything about sitting before. I sat first as a child
to M. Carrel. Mamma made me, and made me promise not to tell papa, and
so I didn't. It soon seemed as natural to sit for people as to run
errands for them, or wash and mend their clothes. Papa wouldn't have
liked my doing that either, though we wanted the money badly. And so
he never knew.

'I have sat for the "altogether" to several other people besides--M.
Gerome, Durien, the two Hennequins, and Ernile Baratier; and for the
head and hands to lots of people, and for the feet only to Charles
Faure, Andre Besson, Mathieu Dumoulin, and Collinet. Nobody else.

'It seemed as natural for me to sit as for a man. Now I see the awful
difference.

'And I have done dreadful things besides, as you must know--as all the
Quartier knows. Baratier and Besson; but not Durien, though people
think so. Nobody else, I swear--except old Monsieur Penque at the
beginning, who was mamma's friend.

'It makes me almost the of shame and misery to think of it; for that's
not like sitting. I knew how wrong it was all along--and there's no
excuse for me, none. Though lots of people do as bad, and nobody in
the Quartier seems to think any the worse of them. 'If you and Taffy
and Little Billee cut me, I really think I shall go mad and die.
Without your friendship I shouldn't care to live a bit. Dear Sandy, I
love your little finger better than any man or woman I ever met; and
Taffy's and Little Billee's little fingers too. 'What shall I do? I
daren't go out for fear of meeting one of you. Will you come and see
me?

'I am never going to sit again, not even for the face and hands. I am
going back to be a blanchisseuse de fin with my old friend Angele
Boisse, who is getting on very well indeed, in the Rue des Cloitres
Ste. Petronille.

'You will come and see me, won't you? I shall be in all day till you
do. Or else I will meet you somewhere, if you will tell me where and
when; or else I will go and see you in the studio, if you are sure to
be alone. Please don't keep me waiting long for an answer.

'You don't know what I'm suffering.

'Your ever loving, faithful friend.

'TRILBY O'FERRALL'

She sent this letter by hand, and the Laird came in less than ten
minutes after she had sent it; and she hugged and kissed and cried
over him so that he was almost ready to cry himself; but he burst out
laughing instead--which was better and more in his line, and very much
more comforting--and talked to her so nicely and kindly and naturally
that by the time he left her humble attic in the Rue des Pousse-
Cailloux her very aspect, which had quite shocked him when he first
saw her, had almost become what it usually was.

The little room under the leads, with its sloping roof and mansard
window, was as scrupulously neat and clean as if its tenant had been a
holy sister who taught the noble daughters of France at some Convent
of the Sacred Heart. There were nasturtiums and mignonette on the
outer window-sill, and convolvulus was trained to climb round the
window.

As she sat by his side on the narrow white bed, clasping and stroking
his painty, turpentiny hand, and kissing it every five minutes, he
talked to her like a father--as he told Taffy afterwards--and scolded
her for having been so silly as not to send for him directly, or come
to the studio. He said how glad he was, how glad they would all be,
that she was going to give up sitting for the figure---not, of course,
that there was any real harm in it, but it was better not--and
especially how happy it would make them to feel she intended to live
straight for the future. Little Billee was to remain at Barbizon for a
little while; but she must promise to come and dine with Taffy and
himself that very day, and cook the dinner; and when he went back to
his picture, 'Les Noces du Toreador'--saying to her as he left, 'a ce
soir done, mille sacres tonnerres de nong de Dew!'--he left the
happiest woman in the whole Latin Quarter behind him: she had
confessed and been forgiven.

And with shame and repentance and confession and forgiveness had come
a strange new feeling--that of a dawning self-respect.

Hitherto, for Trilby, self-respect had meant little more than the mere
cleanliness of her body, in which she had always revelled; alas! it
was one of the conditions of her humble calling. It now meant another
kind of cleanliness, and she would luxuriate in it for evermore; and
the dreadful past--never to be forgotten by her--should be so lived
down as in time, perhaps, to be forgotten by others.

The dinner that evening was a memorable one for Trilby. After she had
washed up the knives and forks and plates and dishes, and put them by,
she sat and sewed. She wouldn't even smoke her cigarette, it reminded
her so of things and scenes she now hated. No more cigarettes for
Trilby O'Ferrall.

They all talked of Little Billee. She heard about the way he had been
brought up, about his mother and sister, the people he had always
lived among. She also heard (and her heart alternately rose and sank
as she listened) what his future was likely to be, and how rare his
genius was, and how great--if his friends were to be trusted. Fame and
Fortune would soon be his--such fame and fortune as fall to the lot of
very few--unless anything should happen to spoil his promise and mar
his prospects In life, and ruin a splendid career; and the rising of
the heart was all for him, the sinking for herself. How could she ever
hope to be even the friend of such a man? Might she ever hope to be
his servant--his faithful, humble servant?

Little Billee spent a month at Barbizon, and when he came back it was
with such a brown face that his friends hardly knew him; and he
brought with him such studies as made his friends 'sit up.'

The crushing sense of their own hopeless inferiority was lost in
wonder at his work, in love and enthusiasm for the workman.

Their Little Billee, so young and tender, so weak of body, so strong
of purpose, so warm of heart, so light of hand, so keen and quick and
piercing of brain and eye, was their master, to be stuck on a pedestal
and looked up to and bowed down to, to be watched and warded and
worshipped for evermore.

When Trilby came in from her work at six, and he shook hands with her
and said 'Hullo, Trilby!' her face turned pale to the lips, her under
lip quivered, and she gazed down at him (for she was among the tallest
of her sex) with such a moist, hungry, wide-eyed look of humble
craving adoration that the Laird felt his worst fears were realised:
and the look little Billee sent up in return filled the manly bosom of
Taffy with an equal apprehension.

Then they all four went and dined together at le pere Trin's, and
Trilby went back to her blanchisserie defin.

Next day Little Billee took his work to show Carrel, and Carrel
invited him to come and finish his picture 'The Pitcher Goes to the
Well' at his own private studio--an unheard-of favour, which the boy
accepted with a thrill of proud gratitude and affectionate reverence.

So little was seen for some time of Little Billee at the studio in the
Place St. Anatole des Arts, and little of Trilby; a blanchisseuse de
fin has not many minutes to spare from her irons. But they often met
at dinner. And on Sunday mornings Trilby came to repair the Laird's
linen and darn his socks and look after his little comforts, as usual,
and spend a happy day. And on Sunday afternoons the studio would be as
lively as ever, with the fencing and boxing, the piano-playing and
fiddling--all as it used to be.

And week by week the friends noticed a gradual and subtle change in
Trilby. She was no longer slangy in French, unless it were now and
then by a slip of the tongue, no longer so facetious and droll, and
yet she seemed even happier than she had ever seemed before.

Also, she grew thinner, especially in the face, where the bones of her
cheeks and jaws began to show themselves, and these bones were
constructed on such right principles (as were those of her brow and
chin and the bridge of her nose) that the improvement was astonishing,
almost inexplicable.

Also, she lost her freckles as the summer waned and she herself went
less into the open air. And she let her hair grow, and made of it a
small knot at the back of her head, and showed her little flat ears,
which were charming, and just in the right place, very far back and
rather high; Little Billee could not have placed them better himself.
Also, her mouth, always too large, took on a firmer and sweeter
outline, and her big British teeth were so white and regular that even
Frenchmen forgave them their British bigness. And a new soft
brightness came into her eyes that no one had ever seen there before.
They were stars, just twin gray stars--or rather planets just thrown
off by some new sun, for the steady mellow light they gave out was not
entirely their own.

Favourite types of beauty change with each succeeding generation.
These were the days of Buckner's aristocratic Album beauties, with
lofty foreheads, oval faces, little aquiline noses, heart-shaped
little mouths, soft dimpled chins, drooping shoulders, and long side
ringlets that fell over them--the Lady Arabellas and the Lady
Clementinas, Musidoras and Medoras! A type that will perhaps come back
to us some day. May the present scribe be dead!

Trilby's type would be indefinately more admired now than in the
fifties. Her photograph would be in the shopwindows. Sir Edward Burne-
Jones--if I may make so bold as to say so--would perhaps have marked
her for his own, in spite of her almost too exuberant joyousness and
irrepressible vitality. Rossetti might have evolved another new
formula from her; Sir John Millais another old one of the kind that is
always new and never sates nor palls--like Clyde, let us say--ever old
and ever new as love itself. Trilby's type was in singular contrast to
the type Gavarni had made so popular in the Latin Quarter at the
period we are writing of, so that those who fell so readily under her
charm were rather apt to wonder why. Moreover, she was thought much
too tall for her sex, and her day, and her station in life, and
especially for the country she lived in. She hardly looked up to a
bold gendarme! and a bold gendarme was nearly as tall as a dragon de
la garde, who was nearly as tall as an average English policeman. Not
that she was a giantess, by any means. She was about as tall as Miss
Ellen Terry--and that is a charming height, I think.

One day Taffy remarked to the Laird: 'Hang it! I'm blest if Trilby
isn't the handsomest woman I know! She looks like a grande dame
masquerading as a grisette--almost like a joyful saint at times. She's
lovely! By Jove! I couldn't stand her hugging me as she does you!
There'd be a tragedy--say the slaughter of Little Billee.'

'Ah! Taffy, my boy,' rejoined the Laird, 'when those long sisterly
arms are round my neck it isn't me she's hugging.'

'And then,' said Taffy, 'what a trump she is! Why, she's as upright
and straight and honourable as a man! And what she says to one about
one's self is always so pleasant to hear! That's Irish, I suppose.
And, what's more, it's always true.'

'Ah, that's Scotch!' said the Laird, and tried to wink at Little
Billee, but Little Billee wasn't there.

Even Svengali perceived the strange metamorphosis. 'Ach, Drilpy,' he
would say, on a Sunday-afternoon, 'how beautiful you are! It drives me
mad! I adore you. I like you thinner; you have such beautiful bones!
Why do you not answer my letters? What! you do not read them? You burn
them? And yet I--Donnerwetter! I forgot! The grisettes of the Quartier
Latin have not learned how to read or write; they have only learned
how to dance the cancan with the dirty little pig-dog monkeys they
call men. Sacrement! We will teach the little pig-dog monkeys to dance
something else some day, we Germans. We will make music for them to
dance to! Bourn! bourn! Better than the waiter at the Cafe de la
Rotonde, hein? And the grisettes of the Quartier Latin shall pour us
out your little white wine--fotre betit fin plane, as your pig-dog
monkey of a poet says, your rotten verfluchter De Musset, "who has got
such a splendid future behind him!" Bah! What do you know of Monsieur
Alfred de Musset? We have got a poet too, my Drilpy. His name is
Heinrich Heine. If he's still alive, he lives in Paris, in a little
street off the Champs Elysees. He lies in bed all day long, and only
sees out of one eye, like the Countess Hahn-Hahn, ha! ha! He adores
French grisettes. He married one. Her name is Mathilde, and she has
got sussen fussen, like you. He would adore you too, for your
beautiful bones; he would like to count them one by one, for he is
very playful, like me. And, ach! what a beautiful skeleton you will
make! And very soon, too, because you do not smile on your madly-
loving Svengali. You burn his letters without reading them! You shall
have a nice little mahogany glass case all to yourself in the museum
of the Ecole de Medecine, and Svengali shall come in his new fur-lined
coat, smoking his big cigar of the Havana, and push the dirty carabins
out of the way, and look through the holes of your eyes into your
stupid empty skull, and up the nostrils of your high, bony sounding-
board of a nose without either a tip or a lip to it, and into the roof
of your big mouth, with your thirty-two big English teeth, and between
your big ribs into your big chest, where the big leather lungs used to
be, and say, "Ach! what a pity she had no more music in her than a big
tom-cat!" And then he will look all down your bones to your poor
crumbling feet, and say, "Ach! what a fool she was not to answer
Svengali's letters!" and the dirty carabins shall--'

'Shut up, you sacred fool, or I'll precious soon spoil your skeleton
for you.'

Thus the short-tempered Taffy, who had been listening.

Then Svengali, scowling, would play Chopin's funeral march more
divinely than ever; and where the pretty soft part comes in, he would
whisper to Trilby, 'That is Svengali coming to look at you in your
little mahogany glass case!'

And here let me say that these vicious imaginations of Svengali's,
which look so tame in English print, sounded much more ghastly in
French, pronounced with a Hebrew-German accent, and uttered in his
hoarse, rasping, nasal, throaty rook's caw, his big yellow teeth
baring themselves in a mongrel canine snarl, his heavy upper eyelids
drooping over his insolent black eyes.

Besides which, as he played the lovely melody he would go through a
ghoulish pantomime, as though he were taking stock of the different
bones in her skeleton with greedy but discriminating approval. And
when he came down to the feet, he was almost droll in the intensity of
his terrible realism. But Trilby did not appreciate his exquisite
fooling, and felt cold all over.

He seemed to her a dread powerful demon, who, but for Taffy (who alone
could hold him in check), oppressed and weighed on her like an
incubus--and she dreamed of him oftener than she dreamed of Taffy, the
Laird, or even Little Billee!

Thus pleasantly and smoothly, and without much change or adventure,
things went on till Christmas-time.

Little Billee seldom spoke of Trilby, or Trilby of him. Work went on
every morning at the studio in the Place St. Anatole des Arts, and
pictures were begun and finished--little pictures that didn't take
long to paint--the Laird's Spanish bull-fighting scenes, in which the
bull never appeared, and which he sent to his native Dundee and sold
there; Taffy's tragic little dramas of life in the slums of Paris---
starvings, drownings--suicides by charcoal and poison--which he sent
everywhere, but did not sell.

Little Billee was painting all this time at Carrel's studio--his
private one--and seemed preoccupied and happy when they all met at
meal-time, and less talkative even than usual.

He had always been the least talkative of the three; more prone to
listen, and no doubt to think the more.

In the afternoon people came and went as usual, and boxed and fenced
and did gymnastic feats, and felt Taffy's biceps, which by this time
equalled Mr. Sandow's!

Some of these people were very pleasant and remarkable, and have
become famous since then in England, France, America--or have died, or
married, and come to grief or glory in other ways. It is the Ballad of
the Bouillabaisse all over again!

It might be worth while my trying to sketch some of the more
noteworthy, now that my story is slowing for a while--like a French
train when the engine-driver sees a long curved tunnel in front of
him, as I do--and no light at the other end!

My humble attempts at characterisation might be useful as memoires
pour servir to future biographers. Besides, there are other reasons,
as the reader will soon discover.

There was Durien, for instance--Trilby's especial French adorer, pour
le ban motif a son of the people, a splendid sculptor, a very fine
character in every way--so perfect, indeed, that there is less to say
about him than any of the others--modest, earnest, simple, frugal,
chaste, and of untiring industry; living for his art, and perhaps also
a little for Trilby, whom he would have been only too glad to marry.
He was Pygmalion; she was his Galatea--a Galatea whose marble heart
would never beat for him!

Durien's house is now the finest in the Pare Monceau; his wife and
daughters are the best-dressed women in Paris, and he one of the
happiest of men; but he will never quite forget poor Galatea: 'La
belle aux pieds d'albatre--aux deux talons de rose!' Then there was
Vincent, a Yankee medical student, who could both work and play.

He is now one of the greatest oculists in the world, and Europeans
cross the Atlantic to consult him. He can still play, and when he
crosses the Atlantic himself for that purpose he has to travel
incognito like a royalty, lest his play should be marred by work. And
his daughters are so beautiful and accomplished that British dukes
have sighed after them in vain. Indeed, these fair young ladies spend
their autumn holiday in refusing the British aristocracy. We are told
so in the society papers, and I can quite believe it. Love is not
always blind; and if he is, Vincent is the man to cure him.

In those days he prescribed for us all round, and punched and
stethoscoped us, and looked at our tongues for love, and told us what
to eat, drink, and avoid, and even where to go for it.

For instance: late one night Little Billee woke up in a cold sweat,
and thought himself a dying man--he had felt seedy all day and taken
no food; so he dressed and dragged himself to Vincent's hotel, and
woke him up, and said, 'Oh, Vincent, Vincent! I'm a dying man!' and
all but fainted on his bed. Vincent felt him all over with the
greatest care, and asked him many questions. Then, looking at his
watch, he delivered himself thus: 'Humph! 3.30! rather late--but
still--look here, Little Billee--do you know the Halle, on the other
side of the water, where they sell vegetables?'

'Oh yes! yes! What vegetable shall I--'

'Listen! On the north side are two restaurants--Bordier and Baratte.
They remain open all night. Now go straight off to one of those tuck
shops, and tuck in as big a supper as you possibly can. Some people
prefer Baratte. I prefer Bordier myself. Perhaps you'd better try
Bordier first and Baratte after. At all events, lose no time; so off
you go!'

Thus he saved Little Billee from an early grave.

Then there was the Greek, a boy of only sixteen, but six feet high,
and looking ten years older than he was, and able to smoke even
stronger tobacco than Taffy himself, and colour pipes divinely; he was
a great favourite in the Place St. Anatole, for his bonhommie, his
niceness, his warm geniality. He was the capitalist of this select
circle (and nobly lavish of his capital). He went by the name of
Poluphloisboiospaleapologos Petrilopetrolicoconose--for so he was
christened by the Laird--because his real name was thought much too
long; and much too lovely for the Quartier Latin, and reminded one too
much of the Isles of Greece--where burning Sappho loved and sang.

What was he learning in the Latin Quarter? French? He spoke French
like a native! Nobody knows. But when his Paris friends transferred
their Bohemia to London, where were they ever made happier and more at
home than in his lordly parental abode--or fed with nicer things?

That abode is now his, and lordlier than ever, as becomes the dwelling
of a millionaire and city magnate; and its gray-bearded owner is as
genial, as jolly, and as hospitable as in the old Paris days, but he
no longer colours pipes.

Then there was Carnegie, fresh from Balliol, redolent of the Varsity.
He intended himself then for the diplomatic service, and came to Paris
to learn French as it is spoke; and spent most of his time with his
fashionable English friends on the right side of the river, and the
rest with Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee on the left. Perhaps
that is why he has not become an ambassador. He is now only a rural
dean, and speaks the worst French I know, and speaks it wherever and
whenever he can.

It serves him right, I think.

He was fond of lords, and knew some (at least, he gave one that
impression), and often talked of them, and dressed so beautifully that
even Little Billee was abashed in his presence. Only Taffy, in his
threadbare, out-at-elbow shooting-jacket and cricket-cap, and the
Laird, in his tattered straw hat and Taffy's old overcoat down to his
heels, dared to walk arm-in-arm with him--nay, insisted on doing so---
as they listened to the band in the Luxembourg Gardens.

And his whiskers were even longer and thicker and more golden than
Taffy's own. But the mere sight of a boxing-glove made him sick.

Then there was the yellow-haired Antony, a Swiss--the idle apprentice,
le roi des truands, as we called him--to whom everything was forgiven,
as to Francois Villon, a cause de ses gentillesses--surely, for all
his reprehensible pranks, the gentlest and most lovable creature that
ever lived in Bohemia, or out of it.

Always in debt, like Svengali, for he had no more notion of the value
of money than a humming-bird, and gave away in reckless generosity to
friends what in strictness belonged to his endless creditors; like
Svengali, humorous, witty, and a most exquisite and original artist,
and also somewhat eccentric in his attire (though scrupulously clean),
so that people would stare at him as he walked along--a thing that
always gave him dire offence! But, unlike Svengali, full of delicacy,
refinement, and distinction of mind and manner, void of any self-
conceit; and, in spite of the irregularities of his life, the very
soul of truth and honour, as gentle as he was chivalrous and brave;
the warmest, staunchest, sincerest, most unselfish friend in the
world; and, as long as his purse was full, the best and drollest boon
companion in the world--but that was not for ever!

When the money was gone, then would Antony hie him to some beggarly
attic in some lost Parisian slum, and write his own epitaph in lovely
French or German verse or even English (for he was an astounding
linguist); and telling himself that he was forsaken by family,
friends, and mistress alike, look out of his casement over the Paris
chimney-pots for the last time, and listen once more to 'the harmonies
of nature,' as he called it, and 'aspire towards the infinite,' and
bewail 'the cruel deceptions of his life,' and finally lay himself
down to the of sheer starvation.

And as he lay and waited for his release, that was so long in coming,
he would beguile the weary hours by mumbling a crust 'watered with his
own salt tears,' and decorating his epitaph with fanciful designs of
the most exquisite humour, pathos, and beauty; these early illustrated
epitaphs of the young Antony, of which there still exist a goodly
number, are now priceless, as all collectors know all over the world.

Fainter and fainter would he grow, and finally, on the third day or
thereabouts, a remittance would reach him from some long-suffering
sister or aunt in far Lausanne; or else the fickle mistress or
faithless friend (who had been looking for him all over Paris) would
discover his hiding-place, the beautiful epitaph would be walked off
in triumph to le pere Marcas in the Rue du Ghette and sold for twenty,
fifty, a hundred francs; and then vogue la galere! and back again to
Bohemia, dear Bohemia and all its joys, as long as the money
lasted...e poi, da capo!

And now that his name is a household word in two hemispheres, and he
himself an honour and a glory to the land he has adopted as his own,
he loves to remember all this, and look back from the lofty pinnacle
on which he sits perched up aloft to the impecunious days of his idle
apprenticeship--le ban temps oil Von etait si malheureux!

And with all that Quixotic dignity of his, so famous is he as a wit
that when he jokes (and he is always joking), people laugh first, and
then ask what he was joking about, and you can make your own mild
funniments raise a roar by merely prefacing them 'as Antony once
said!'

The present scribe has often done 'so. 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 identity) 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 theCrusaders 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, redhaired, and well-favoured, he was a most eager,
earnest, and painstaking young enthusiast, of precocious culture, who
read improving books, and did not share in the amusements 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 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 worship one god at a time. It was
either Michael Angelo, Phidias, Paul Veronese, Tintoret, Raphael, or
Titian--never a modern--moderns didn't exist! And so thoroughgoing was
he in his worship, 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 Signer Tosti, who has not
precisely founded himself on Handel--can even scream with laughter at
a comic song--even a nigger 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 assured 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 pawn 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
platitude, 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.

Both of these worthies had met Taffy in the Crimea, and frequented the
studios in the Quartier Latin, where they adored (and were adored by)
the grisettes and models, especially Trilby.

Both of them were distinguished for being the worst subjects (les plus
mauvais garnements) of their respective regiments; yet both were
special favourites not only with their fellow-rankers, but with those
in command, from their colonels downward.

Both were in the habit of being promoted to the rank of corporal or
brigadier, and degraded to the rank of private next day for general
misconduct, the result of a too exuberant delight in their promotion.

Neither of them knew fear, envy, malice, temper, or low spirits; ever
said or did an ill-natured thing; ever even thought one; ever had an
enemy but himself. Both had the best or the worst manners going,
according to their company, whose manners they reflected; they were
true chameleons!

Both were always ready to share their last ten-sou piece (not that
they ever seemed to have one) with each other or anybody else, or
anybody else's last ten-sou piece with you; to offer you a friend's
cigar; to invite you to dine with any friend they had; to fight with
you, or for you, at a moment's notice. And they made up for all the
anxiety, tribulation, and sorrow they caused at home by the endless
fun and amusement they gave to all outside.

It was a pretty dance they led; but our three friends of the Place St.
Anatole (who hadn't got to pay the pipers) loved them both, especially
Dodor.

One fine Sunday afternoon Little Billee found himself studying life
and character in that most delightful and festive scene la Fete de St.
Cloud, and met Dodor and l'Zouzou there, who hailed him with delight,
saying:

'Nous aliens joliment jubiler, nom d'une pipe!' and insisted on his
joining in their amusements and paying for them--roundabouts, swings,
the giant, the dwarf, the strong man, the fat woman--to whom they made
love and were taken too seriously, and turned out--the menagerie of
wild beasts, whom they teased and aggravated till the police had to
Interfere. Also alfresco dances, where their cancan step was of the
wildest and most unbridled character, till a sous-offkier or a
gendarme came in sight, and then they danced quite mincingly and
demurely, en maitre d'ecole, as they called it, to the huge delight of
an immense and ever-increasing crowd, and the disgust of all truly
respectable men.

They also insisted on Little Billee's walking between them, arm-in-
arm, and talking to them in English whenever they saw coming towards
them a respectable English family with daughters. It was the dragoon's
delight to get himself stared at by fair daughters of Albion for
speaking as good English as themselves--a rare accomplishment in a
French trooper--and Zouzou's happiness to be thought English too,
though the only English he knew was the phrase, 'I will not! I will
not!' which he had picked up in the Crimea, and repeated over and over
again when he came within ear-shot of a pretty English girl.

Little Billee was not happy in these circumstances. He was no snob.
But he was a respectably-brought-up young Briton of the higher middle
class, and it was not quite pleasant for him to be seen (by fair
country-women of his own) walking arm-in-arm on a Sunday afternoon
with a couple of French private soldiers, and uncommonly rowdy ones at
that.

Later, they came back to Paris together on the top of an omnibus,
among a very proletarian crowd; and there the two facetious warriors
immediately made themselves pleasant all round and became very
popular, especially with the women and children; but not, I regret to
say, through the propriety, refinement, and discretion of their
behaviour. Little Billee resolved that he would not go a-pleasuring
with them any more.

However, they stuck to him through thick and thin, and insisted on
escorting him all the way back to the Quartier Latin by the Pont de la
Concorde and the Rue de Lille in the Faubourg St. Germain.

Little Billee loved the Faubourg St. Germain, especially the Rue de
Lille. He was fond of gazing at the magnificent old mansions, the
hotels of the old French noblesse, or rather the outside walls
thereof, the grand sculptured portals with the armorial bearings and
the splendid old historic names above them--Hotel de This, Hotel de
That, Rohan-Chabot, Montmorency, La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, La Tour
d'Auvergne.

He would forget himself in romantic dreams of past and forgotten
French chivalry which these glorious names called up; for he knew a
little of French history, loving to read Froissart and Saint Simon and
the genial Brantome.

Halting opposite one of the finest and oldest of all these gateways,
his especial favourite, labelled 'Hotel de la Rochemarte' in letters
of faded gold over a ducal coronet and a huge escutcheon of stone, he
began to descant upon its architectural beauties and noble proportions
to l'Zouzou.

'Parbleu!' said l'Zouzou, 'connu, farceur! why, I was born there, on
the 6th of March 1834, at 5.30 in the morning. Lucky day for France--
hein?'

'Born there? what do you mean--in the porter's lodge?'

At this juncture the two great gates rolled back, a liveried Suisse
appeared, and an open carriage and pair came out, and in it were two
elderly ladies and a younger one.

To Little Billee's indignation, the two incorrigible warriors made the
military salute, and the three ladies bowed stiffly and gravely.

And then (to Little Billee's horror this time) one of them happened to
look back, and Zouzou actually kissed his hand to her.

'Do you know that lady?' asked Little Billee, very sternly.

'Pat bleu! si je la connais! Why, it's my mother! Isn't she nice?
She's rather cross with me just now.'

'Your mother!

Why, what do you mean? What on earth would your mother be doing in
that big carriage and at that big house?'

'Parbleu, farceur!

She lives there!'

'Lives there? Why, who and what is she, your mother?'

'The Duchesse de la Rochemartel, parbleu! and that's my sister; and
that's my aunt, Princesse de Chevagne-Bauffremont! She's the
"patronne" of that chic equipage. She's a millionaire, my aunt
Chevagne!'

'Well--I-never! What's your name, then?'

'Oh, my name! Hang it--let me see! Well--Gontran--Xavier--Francois--
Marie--Joseph d'Amaury de Brissac de Roncesvaulx de la Rochemartel-
Boissegur, at your service!' 'Quite correct!' said Dodor; Tenfant
ditvrai!' 'Well--I--never! And what's your name, Dodor?' 'Oh! I'm only
a humble individual, and answer to the one-horse name of Theodore
Rigolot de Lafarce. But Zouzou's an awful swell, you know--his
brother's the Duke!'

Little Billee was no snob. But he was a respectably-brought-up young
Briton of the higher middle class, and these revelations, which he
could not but believe, astounded him so that he could hardly speak.
Much as he flattered himself that he scorned the bloated aristocracy,
titles are titles--even French tides!--and when it comes to dukes and
princesses who live in houses like the Hotel de la Rochemartel...!

It's enough to take a respectably-brought-up young Briton's breath
away.

When he saw Taffy that evening, he exclaimed: 'I say, Zouzou's
mother's a duchess!'

'Yes--the Duchesse de la Rochemartel-Boissegur.'

'You never told me!'

'You never asked me. It's one of the greatest names in France. They're
very poor, I believe.'

'Poor! You should see the house they live in!'

'I've been there, to dinner; and the dinner wasn't very good. They let
a great part of it, and live mostly in the country. The Duke is
Zouzou's brother; very unlike Zouzou; he's consumptive and unmarried,
and the most respectable man in Paris. Zouzou will be the Duke some
day.'

'And Dodor--he's a swell, too, I suppose--he says he's de something or
other!'

'Yes--Rigolot de Lafarce. I've no doubt he descends from the Crusaders
too; the name seems to favour it, anyhow; and such lots of them do in
this country. His mother was English, and bore the worthy name of
Brown. He was at school in England; that's why he speaks English so
well--and behaves so badly, perhaps! He's got a very beautiful sister,
married to a man in the 60th Rifles--Jack Reeve, a son of Lord
Reevely's; a selfish sort of chap. I don't suppose he gets on very
well with his brother-in-law. Poor Dodor! His sister's about the only
living thing he cares for--except Zouzou.'

I wonder if the bland and genial Monsieur Theodore--'notre Sieur
Theodore'--now junior partner in the great haberdashery firm of
'Passefil et Rigolot,' on the Boulevard des Capucines, and a pillar of
the English chapel in the Rue Marboeuf, is very hard on his employes
and employees if they are a little late at their counters on a Monday
morning?

I wonder if that stuck-up, stingy, stodgy, communards-hooting, church-
going, time-serving, place-hunting, pious-eyed, pompous old prig,
martinet, and philistine, Monsieur le Marechal-Duc de la Rochemartel-
Boissegur, ever tells Madame la Marechale-Duchesse (ne'e Hunks, of
Chicago) how once upon a time Dodor and he--

We will tell no tales out of school.

The present scribe is no snob. He is a respectably-brought-up old
Briton of the higher middle class--at least, he flatters himself so.
And he writes for just such old philistines as himself, who date from
a time when titles were not thought so cheap as to-day. Alas! all
reverence for all that is high and time-honoured and beautiful seems
at a discount.

So he has kept his blackguard ducal Zouave for the bouquet of this
little show--the final bonne bouche in his Bohemian menu---that he may
make it palatable to those who only look upon the good old. Quartier
Latin (now no more to speak of) as a very low, common, vulgar quarter
indeed, deservedly swept away, where misters the students (shocking
bounders and cads) had nothing better to do, day and night, than mount
up to a horrid place called the thatched house--la chaumiere--

'Pour y danser le cancan

Ou le Robert Macaire--

Toujours--toujours--toujours--

La nuit comme le jour . ..

Et youp! youp! youp!

Tra la la la la ... la la la!'

Christmas was drawing near.

There were days when the whole Quartier Latin would veil its
iniquities under fogs almost worthy of the Thames Valley between
London Bridge and Westminster, and out of the studio window the
prospect was a dreary blank. No Morgue! no towers of Notre Dame! not
even the chimney-pots over the way--not even the little mediaeval toy
turret at the corner of the Rue Vieille des Trois Mauvais Ladres,
Little Billee's delight!

The stove had to be crammed till its sides grew a dull deep red before
one's fingers could hold a brush or squeeze a bladder; one had to box
or fence at nine in the morning, that one might recover from the cold
bath, and get warm for the rest of the day!

Taffy and the Laird grew pensive and dreamy, child-like and bland; and
when they talked it was generally about Christmas at home in Merry
England and the distant Land of Cakes, and how good it was to be there
at such a time--hunting, shooting, curling, and endless carouse!

It was Ho! for the jolly West Riding, and Hey! for the bonnets of
Bonnie Dundee, till they grew quite homesick, and wanted to start by
the very next train.

They didn't do anything so foolish. They wrote over to friends in
London for the biggest Turkey, the biggest plum-pudding, that could be
got for love or money, with mince-pies, and holly and mistletoe, and
sturdy, short, thick English sausages; half a Stilton cheese, and a
sirloin of beef--two sirloins, in case one should not be enough.

For they meant to have a Homeric feast in the studio on Christmas
Day--Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee--and invite all the
delightful chums I have been trying to describe; and that is just why
I tried to describe them--Durien, Vincent, Antony, Lorrimer, Carnegie,
Petrolicoconose, I'Zouzou, and Dodor!

The cooking and waiting should be done by Trilby, her friend Angele
Boisse, M. et Mme. Vinard, and such little Vinards as could be trusted
with glass and crockery and mince-pies; and if that was not enough,
they would also cook themselves, and wait upon each other.

When dinner should be over, supper was to follow with scarcely any
interval to speak of; and to partake of this other guests should be
bidden--Svengali and Gecko, and perhaps one or two more. No ladies'.

For, as the unsusceptible Laird expressed it, in the language of a
gillie he had once met at a servant's dance in a Highland country-
house, 'Them wimmen spiles the ball!'

Elaborate cards of invitation were sent out, in the designing and
ornamentation of which the Laird and Taffy exhausted all their fancy
(Little Billee had no time).

Wines and spirits and English beers were procured at great cost from
M. E. Delevingne's, in the Rue St. Honore, and liqueurs of every
description--chartreuse, curaroa, ratafia de cassis, and anisette; no
expense was spared.

Also, truffled galantines of turkey, tongues, hams, rillettes de
Tours, pates de foie gras, frontage d'ltalie (which has nothing to do
with cheese), saucissons d'Arles et de Lyon, with and without garlic,
cold jellies peppery and salt--everything that French charcutiers and
their wives can make out of French pigs, or any other animal whatever,
beast, bird, or fowl (even cats and rats), for the supper; and sweet
jellies, and cakes, and sweetmeats, and confections of all kinds, from
the famous pastry-cook at the corner of the Rue Castiglione. Mouths
went watering all day long in joyful anticipation They water somewhat
sadly now at the mere remembrance of these delicious things--the mere
immediate sight or scent of which in these degenerate latter days
would no longer avail to promote any such delectable secretion. Helas!
ahime! ach weh! ay de mi! eheu! o'l--in point of fact, alas!

That is the very exclamation I wanted.

Christmas Eve came round. The pieces of resistance and plum-pudding
and mince-pies had not yet arrived from London--but there was plenty
of time.

Les trois Angliches dined at le pere Trin's, as usual, and played
billiards and dominoes at the Cafe du Luxembourg, and possessed their
souls in patience till it was time to go and hear the midnight mass at
the Madeleine, where Roucouly, the great baritone of the Opera
Comique, was retained to sing Adam's famous Noel.

The whole Quartier seemed alive with the reveillon. It was a clear,
frosty night, with a splendid moon just past the full, and most
exhilarating was the walk along the quays on the Rive Gauche, over the
Pont de la Concorde and across the Place thereof, and up the thronged
Rue de la Madeleine to the massive Parthenaic place of worship that
always has such a pagan, worldly look of smug and prosperous
modernity.

They struggled manfully, and found standing and kneeling room among
that fervent crowd, and heard the impressive service with mixed
feelings, as became true Britons of very advanced liberal and
religious opinions; not with the unmixed contempt of the proper
British Orthodox (who were there in full force, one may be sure).

But their susceptible hearts soon melted at the beautiful music, and
in mere sensuous attendrissement they were quickly in unison with all
the rest.

For as the clock struck twelve out pealed the organ, and up rose the
finest voice in France:

'Minuit, Chretiens! c'est l'heure solennelle

Ou l'Homme-Dieu descendit parmi nous!'

And a wave of religious emotion rolled over Little Billee and
submerged him; swept him off his little legs, swept him out of his
little self, drowned him in a great seething surge of love--love of
his kind, love of love, love of life, love of death, love of all that
is and ever was and ever will be--a very large order indeed, even for
Little Billee.

And it seemed to him that he stretched out his arms for love to one
figure especially beloved beyond all the rest--one figure erect on
high with arms outstretched to him, in more than common fellowship of
need; not the sorrowful figure crowned with thorns, for it was in the
likeness of a woman; but never that of the Virgin Mother of Our Lord.

It was Trilby, Trilby, Trilby! a poor fallen sinner and waif all but
lost amid the scum of the most corrupt city on earth. Trilby weak and
mortal like himself, and in woeful want of pardon! and in her gray
dove-like eyes he saw the shining of so great a love that he was
abashed; for well he knew that all that love was his, and would be his
for ever, come what would or could.

'Peuple, debout! Chante ta delivrance!

Noel! Noel! Void le Redempteur!'

So sang and rang and pealed and echoed the big, deep, metallic
baritone bass--above the organ, above the incense, above everything
else in the world--till the very universe seemed to shake with the
rolling thunder of that great message of love and forgiveness!

Thus at least felt Little Billee, whose way it was to magnify and
exaggerate all things under the subtle stimulus of sound, and the
singing human voice had especially strange power to penetrate into his
inmost depths--even the voice of man!

And what voice but the deepest and gravest and grandest there is can
give wordy utterance to such a message as that, the epitome, the
abstract, the very essence of all collective humanity's wisdom at its
best!

Little Billee reached the Hotel Corneille that night in a very exalted
frame of mind indeed; the loftiest, lowliest mood of all.

Now see what sport we are of trivial, base, ignoble earthly things!

Sitting on the doorstep, and smoking two cigars at once he found
Ribot, one of his fellow-lodgers, whose room was just under his own.
Ribot was so tipsy that he could not ring. But he could still sing,
and did so at the top of his voice. It was not the Noel of Adam that
he sang. He had not spent his reveillon in any church.

With the help of a sleepy waiter, Little Billee got the bacchanalian
into his room and lit his candle for him, and, disengaging himself
from his maudlin embraces, left him to wallow in solitude.

As he lay awake in his bed, trying to recall the deep and high
emotions of the evening, he heard the tipsy hog below tumbling about
his room and still trying to sing his senseless ditty:

'Aliens, Gycere!

Rougis mon verre

Du jus divin dont mon coeur est toujours jaloux...

Et puis a table.

Bacchante aimable! Enivrons-nous (hie)

Les g'glougloux sont des rendezvous!...'

Then the song ceased for a while, and soon there were other sounds, as
on a Channel steamer. Glougloux indeed!

Then the fear arose in Little Billee's mind lest the drunken beast
should set fire to his bedroom curtains. All heavenly visions were
chased away for the night...

Our hero, half crazed with fear, disgust, and irritation, lay wide
awake, his nostrils on the watch for the smell of burning chintz or
muslin, and wondered how an educated man--for Ribot was a law-student
could ever make such a filthy beast of himself as that! It was a
scandal--a disgrace; it was not to be borne; there should be no
forgiveness for such as Ribot--not even on Christmas Day! He would
complain to Madame Paul, the patronne; he would have Ribot turned out
into the street; he would leave the hotel himself the very next
morning! At last he fell asleep, thinking of all he would do; and
thus, ridiculously and ignominiously for Little Billee, ended the
reveillon.

Next morning he complained to Madame Paul; and though he did not give
her warning, nor even insist on the expulsion of Ribot (who, as he
heard with a hard heart, was bien malade ce matin), he expressed
himself very severely on the conduct of that gentleman, and on the
dangers from fire that might arise from a tipsy man being trusted
alone in a small bedroom with chintz curtains and a lighted candle. If
it hadn't been for himself, he told her, Ribot would have slept on the
doorstep, and serve him right! He was really grand in his virtuous
indignation, in spite of his imperfect French; and Madame Paul was
deeply contrite for her peccant lodger, and profuse in her apologies;
and Little Billee began his twenty-first Christmas Day like a Pharisee
thanking his star that he was not as Ribot!
 
 

PART FOURTH

'Felicite passee
Qui ne peux revenir.
Tourment de ma pensee.
Que n'ay-je, en te perdant, perdu le souvenir!'

MID-DAY HAD STRUCK. The expected hamper had not turned up in the Place
St. Anatole des Arts.

All Madame Vinard's kitchen battery was in readiness; Trilby and
Madame Angele Boisse were in the studio, their sleeves turned up, and
ready to begin.

At twelve the trois Angliches and the two fair blanchisseuses sat down
to lunch in a very anxious frame of mind, and finished a pate de foie
gras and two bottles of Burgundy between them, such was their
disquietude.

The guests had been invited for six o'clock.

Most elaborately they laid the cloth on the table they had borrowed
from the Hotel de Seine, and settled who was to sit next to whom, and
then unsettled it, and quarrelled over it--Trilby, as was her wont in
such matters, assuming an authority that did not rightly belong to
her, and of course getting her own way in the end.

And that, as the Laird remarked, was her confounded Trilby-ness.

Two o'clock--three--four--but no hamper! Darkness had almost set in.
It was simply maddening. They knelt on the divan, with their elbows on
the windowsill, and watched the street-lamps popping into life along
the quays--and looked out through the gathering dusk for the van from
the Chemin de Fer du Nord--and gloomily thought of the Morgue, which
they could still make out across the river.

At length the Laird and Trilby went off in a cab to the station--a
long drive--and, lo! before they came back the long-expected hamper
arrived, at six o'clock.

And with it Durien, Vincent, Antony, Lorrimer, Carnegie,
Petrolicoconose, Dodor, and l'Zouzou--the last two in uniform, as
usual.

And suddenly the studio, which had been so silent, dark, and dull,
with Taffy and Little Billee sitting hopeless and despondent round the
stove, became a scene of the noisiest, busiest, and cheerfullest
animation. The three big lamps were lit, and all the Chinese lanterns.
The pieces of resistance and the pudding were whisked off by Trilby,
Angele, and Madame Vinard to other regions--the porter's lodge and
Durien's studio (which had been lent for the purpose); and every one
was pressed into the preparations for the banquet. There was plenty
for idle hands to do. Sausages to be fried for the turkey, stuffing
made, and sauces, salads mixed, and punch--holly hung in festoons all
round and about--a thousand things. Everybody was so clever and good-
humoured that nobody got in anybody's way--not even Carnegie, who was
in evening dress (to the Laird's delight). So they made him do the
scullion's work--cleaning, rinsing, peeling, etc.

The cooking of the dinner was almost better fun than the eating of it.
And though there were so many cooks, not even the broth was spoiled
(cockaleekie, from a receipt of the Laird's).

It was ten o'clock before they sat down to that most memorable repast.

Zouzou and Dodor, who had been the most useful and energetic of all
its cooks, apparently quite forgot they were due at their respective
barracks at that very moment; they had only been able to obtain la
permission de dix heures. If they remembered it, the certainty that
next day Zouzou would be reduced to the ranks for the fifth time, and
Dodor confined to his barracks for a month, did not trouble them in
the least.

The waiting was as good as the cooking. The handsome, quick,
authoritative Madame Vinard was in a dozen places at once, and openly
prompted, rebuked, and bully-ragged her husband into a proper
smartness. The pretty little Madame Angele moved about as deftly and
as quietly as a mouse; which of course did not prevent them both from
genially joining in the general conversation whenever it wandered into
French.

Trilby, tall, graceful, and stately, and also swift of action though
more like Juno or Diana than Hebe, devoted herself more especially to
her own particular favourites--Durien, Taffy, the Laird, Little
Billee--and Dodor and Zouzou, whom she loved, and tutoye'd en bonne
canwrade as she served them with all there was of the choicest.

The two little Vinards did their little best--they scrupulously
respected the mince-pies, and only broke two bottles of oil and one of
Harvey sauce, which made their mother furious. To console them, the
Laird took one of them on each knee and gave them of his share of
plum-pudding and many other unaccustomed good things, so bad for their
little French turn turns.

The genteel Carnegie had never been at such a queer scene in his life.
It opened his mind--and Dodor and Zouzou, between whom he sat (the
Laird thought it would do him good to sit between a private soldier
and a humble corporal), taught him more French than he had learned
during the three months he had spent in Paris. It was a specialty of
theirs. It was more colloquial than what is generally used in
diplomatic circles, and stuck longer in the memory; but it hasn't
interfered with his preferment in the Church.

He quite unbent. He was the first to volunteer a song (without being
asked) when the pipes and cigars were lit, and after the usual toasts
had been drunk--Her Majesty's health, Tennyson, Thackeray, and
Dickens; and John Leech.

He sang, with a very cracked and rather hiccupy voice, his only song
(it seems)--an English one, of which the burden, he explained, was
French:

'Veeverler veeverler veeverler vec

Veeverler companyee!'

And Zouzou and Dodor complimented him so profusely on his French
accent that he was with difficulty prevented from singing it all over
again.

Then everybody sang in rotation.

The Laird, with a capital baritone, sang

'Hie diddle dee for the Lowlands low,'

which was encored.

Little Billee sang 'Little Billee.' Vincent sang.

'Old Joe kicking up behind and afore.

And the yaller gal a-kicking up behind old Joe.'

A. capital song, with words of quite a masterly scansion.

Antony sang 'Le Sire de Framboisy.' Enthusiastic encore.

Lorrimer inspired no doubt by the occasion, sang the 'Hallelujah
Chorus,' and accompanied himself on the piano, but failed to obtain an
encore.

Durien sang.

'Plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'un moment Chagrin d'amour dure toute la
vie.. .'

It was his favourite song, and is one of the beautiful songs of the
world, and he sang it very well--and it became popular in the Quartier
Latin ever after.

The Greek couldn't sing, and very wisely didn't.

Zouzou sang capitally a capital song in praise of le vin a quat' sous!

Taffy, in a voice like a high wind (and with a very good imitation of
the Yorkshire brogue), sang a Somersetshire hunting ditty, ending:

'Of this 'ere song should I be axed the reason for to show.

I don't exactly know, I don't exactly know!

But all my fancy dwells upon Nancy.

And I sing Tally-ho!'

It is a quite super-excellent ditty, and haunts my memory to this day;
and one felt sure that Nancy was a dear and a sweet, wherever she
lived, and when. So Taffy was encored twice--once for her sake, once
for his own.

And finally, to the surprise of all, the bold dragoon sang (in
English) 'My Sister Dear,' out of Masaniello, with such pathos, and in
a voice so sweet and high and well in tune, that his audience felt
almost weepy in the midst of their jollification; and grew quite
sentimental, as Englishmen abroad are apt to do when they are rather
tipsy and hear pretty music, and think of their dear sisters across
the sea, or their friends' dear sisters.

Madame Vinard interrupted her Christmas dinner on the model-throne to
listen, and wept and wiped her eyes quite openly, and remarked to
Madame Boisse, who stood modestly close by: 'Il est gentil tout plein,
ce dragon! Mon Dieu! comme il chante bien! Il est Angliche aussi, il
parait. Us sont joliment bien eleves, tous ces Angliches--tous plus
gentils les uns que les autres! et quant a Monsieur Litrebili, on lui
donnerait le bon Dieu sans confession!' And Madame Boisse agreed.

Then Svengali and Gecko came, and the table had to be laid and
decorated anew, for it was supper-time.

Supper was even jollier than dinner, which had taken off the keen edge
of the appetites, so that every one talked at once--the true test of a
successful supper--except when Antony told some of his experiences of
Bohemia; for instance, how, after staying at home all day for a month
to avoid his creditors, he became reckless one Sunday morning, and
went to the Bains Deligny, and jumped into a deep part by mistake, and
was saved from a watery grave by a bold swimmer, who turned out to be
his bootmaker, Satory, to whom he owed sixty francs---of all his duns
the one he dreaded the most, and who didn't let him go in a hurry.

Whereupon Svengali remarked that he also owed sixty francs to Satory--
'Mais comme che ne me baigne chamais, che n'ai rien a craindre!'

Whereupon there was such a laugh that Svengali felt he had scored off
Antony at last, and had a prettier wit. He flattered himself that he'd
got the laugh of Antony this time.

And after supper Svengali and Gecko made such lovely music that
everybody was sobered and athirst again, and the punchbowl, wreathed
with holly and mistletoe, was placed in the middle of the table, and
clean glasses set all round it.

Then Dodor and l'Zouzou stood up to dance with Trilby and Madame
Angele, and executed a series of cancan steps, which, though they were
so inimitably droll that they had each and all to be encored, were
such that not one of them need have brought the blush of shame to the
cheek of modesty.

Then the Laird danced a sword-dance over two T-squares and broke them
both. And Taffy, baring his mighty arms to the admiring gaze of all,
did dumb-bell exercises, with Little Billee for a dumb-bell, and all
but dropped him into the punch-bowl; and tried to cut a pewter ladle
in two with Dodor's sabre, and sent it through the window; and this
made him cross, so that he abused French sabres, and said they were
made of worse pewter than even French ladles; and the Laird
sententiously opined that they managed these things better in England,
and winked at Little Billee.

Then they played at 'cock-fighting,' with their wrists tied across
their shins, and a broomstick thrust in between; thus manacled, you
are placed opposite your antagonist, and try to upset him with your
feet, and he you. It is a very good game. The cuirassier and the
Zouave playing at this got so angry, and were so irresistibly funny a
sight, that the shouts of laughter could be heard on the other side of
the river, so that a sergent-de-ville came in and civilly requested
them not to make so much noise. They were disturbing the whole
Quartier, he said, and there was quite a rassem blement outside. So
they made him tipsy, and also another policeman, who came to look
after his comrade, and yet another; and these guardians of the peace
of Paris were trussed and made to play at cock-fighting, and were
still funnier than the two soldiers, and laughed louder and made more
noise than any one else, so that Madame Vinard had to remonstrate with
them, till they got too tipsy to speak, and fell fast asleep, and were
laid next to each other behind the stove.

The fin-de-siecle reader, disgusted at the thought of such an orgy as
I have been trying to describe, must remember that it happened in the
fifties, when men calling themselves gentlemen, and being called so,
still wrenched off door-knockers and came back drunk from the Derby,
and even drank too much after dinner before joining the ladies, as is
all duly chronicled and set down in John Leech's immortal pictures of
life and character out of Punch.

Then M. and Mme. Vinard and Trilby and Angele Boisse bade the company
good-night, Trilby being the last of them to leave. Little Billee took
her to the top of the staircase, and there he said to her:

'Trilby, I have asked you nineteen times, and you have refused.
Trilby, once more, on Christmas night, for the twentieth time--will
you marry me? If not, I leave Paris to-morrow morning, and never come
back. I swear it on my word of honour!'

Trilby turned very pale, and leaned her back against the wall, and
covered her face with her hands.

Little Billee pulled them away.

'Answer me, Trilby!'

'God forgive me, yes!' said Trilby, and she ran downstairs, weeping.

It was now very late.

It soon became evident that Little Billee was in extraordinarily high
spirits--in an abnormal state of excitement.

He challenged Svengali to spar, and made his nose bleed, and
frightened him out of his sardonic wits. He performed wonderful and
quite unsuspected feats of strength. He swore eternal friendship to
Dodor and Zouzou, and filled their glasses again and again, and also
(in his innocence) his own, and trinqued with them many times running.
They were the last to leave (except the three helpless policemen); and
at about five or six in the morning, to his surprise, he found himself
walking between Dodor and Zouzou by a late windy moonlight in the Rue
Vieille des Trois Mauvais Ladres, now on one side of the frozen
gutter, now on the other, now in the middle of it, stopping them now
and then to tell them how jolly they were and how dearly he loved
them.

Presently his hat flew away, and went rolling and skipping and
bounding up the narrow street, and they discovered that as soon as
they let each other go to run after it, they all three sat down.

So Dodor and Little Billee remained sitting, with their arms round
each other's necks and their feet in the gutter while Zouzou went
after the hat on all fours, and caught it, and brought it back in his
mouth like a tipsy retriever. Little Billee wept for sheer love and
gratitude, and called him a carytoide (in English), and laughed loudly
at his own wit, which was quite thrown away on Zouzou! 'No man ever
had such dear, dear frenge! no man ever was so happy!'

After sitting for a while in love and amity, they managed to get up on
their feet again, each helping the other; and in some never-to-be-
remembered way they reached the Hotel Corneille.

There they sat Little Billee on the door-step and rang the bell, and
seeing some one coming up the Place de l'Odeon, and fearing he might
be a sergent-de-ville, they bid Little Billee a most affectionate but
hasty farewell, kissing him on both cheeks in French fashion, and
contrived to get themselves round the corner and out of sight.

Little Billee tried to sing Zouzou's drinking-song:

'Quoi de plus doux

Que les glougloux--

Les glougloux du vin a quat' sous. ..."

The stranger came up. Fortunately, it was no sergent-de-ville, but
Ribot, just back from a Christmas-tree and a little family dance at
his aunt's, Madame Kolb (the Alsatian banker's wife, in the Rue de la
Chaussee d'Antin).

Next morning poor Little Billee was dreadfully ill.

He had passed a terrible night. His bed had heaved like the ocean,
with oceanic results. He had forgotten to put out his candle, but
fortunately Ribot had blown it out for him, after Putting him to bed
and tucking him up like a real good Samaritan.

And next morning, when Madame Paul brought him a cup of tisane de
chiendent (which does not happen to mean a hair of the dog that bit
him), she was kind, but very severe on the dangers and disgrace of
intoxication, and talked to him like a mother.

'If it had not been for kind Monsieur Ribot' (she told him), 'the
doorstep would have been his portion; and who could say he didn't
deserve it? And then think of the danger of fire from a tipsy man all
alone in a small bedroom with chintz curtains and a lighted candle!'

'Ribot was kind enough to blow out my candle,' said Little Billee,
humbly.

'Ah, Dame!' said Madame Paul, with much meaning--'au moins il a bon
coeur, Monsieur Ribot!'

And the cruellest sung of all was when the good-natured and
incorrigibly festive Ribot came and sat by his bedside, and was kind
and tenderly sympathetic, and got him a pick-me-up from the chemist's
(unbeknown to Madame Paul).

'Credieu! vous vous etes cranement bien amuse, hier soir! quelle
bosse, hein! je pane que c'etait plus drole que chez ma tante Kolb!'

All of which, of course, it is unnecessary to translate; except,
perhaps, the word bosse, which stands for noce, which stands for a
'jolly good spree.'

In all his innocent little life Little Billee had never dreamed of
such humiliation as this--such ignominious depths of shame and misery
and remorse! He did not care to live. He had but one longing: that
Trilby, dear Trilby, kind Trilby, would come and pillow his head on
her beautiful white English bosom, and lay her soft, cool, tender hand
on his aching brow, and there let him go to sleep, and sleeping, die!

He slept and slept, with no better rest for his aching brow than the
pillow of his bed in the Hotel Corneille, and failed to the this time.
And when, after some forty-eight hours or so, he had quite slept off
the fumes of that memorable Christmas debauch, he found that a sad
thing had happened to him, and a strange!

It was as though a tarnishing breath had swept over the reminiscent
mirror of his mind and left a little film behind it, so that no past
thing he wished to see therein was reflected with quite the old
pristine clearness. As though the keen, quick, razor-like edge of his
power to reach and re-evoke the bygone charm and glamour and essence
of things had been blunted and coarsened. As though the bloom of that
special joy, the gift he unconsciously had of recalling past emotions
and sensations and situations, and making them actual once more by a
mere effort of the will, had been brushed away.

And he never recovered the full use of that most precious faculty, the
boon of youth and happy childhood, and which he had once possessed,
without knowing it, in such singular and exceptional completeness. He
was to lose other precious faculties of his over-rich and complex
nature--to be pruned and clipped and thinned--that his one supreme
faculty of painting might have elbow-room to reach its fullest, or
else you could never have seen the wood for the trees (or vice
versa---which is it?).

On New Year's Day Taffy and the Laird were at their work in the
studio, when there was a knock at the door, and Monsieur Vinard, cap
in hand, respectfully introduced a pair of visitors, an English lady
and gentleman.

The gentleman was a clergyman, small, thin, round-shouldered, with a
long neck; weak-eyed and dryly polite. The lady was middle-aged,
though still young-looking; very pretty, with gray hair; very well
dressed; very small, full of nervous energy, with tiny hands and feet.
It was Little Billee's mother; and the clergyman, the Rev. Thomas
Bagot, was her brother-in-law.

Their faces were full of trouble--so much so that the two painters did
not even apologise for the carelessness of their attire, or for the
odour of tobacco that filled the room. Little Billee's mother
recognised the two painters at a glance, from the sketches and
descriptions of which her son's letters were always full.

They all sat down.

After a moment's embarrassed silence, Mrs. Bagot exclaimed, addressing
Taffy: 'Mr. Wynne, we are in terrible distress of mind. I don't know
if my son has told you, but on Christmas day he engaged himself to be
married!'

'To--be--married!' exclaimed Taffy and the Laird, for whom this was
news indeed.

'Yes--to be married to a Miss Trilby O'Ferrall, who, from what he
implies, is in quite a different position in life from himself. Do you
know the lady, Mr. Wynne?'

'Oh yes! I know her very well indeed; we all know her.'

'Is she English?'

'She's an English subject, I believe.'

'Is she a Protestant or a Roman Catholic?' Inquired the clergyman.

'A--a--upon my word, I really don't know!'

'You know her very well indeed, and you don't--know--that, Mr. Wynne!'
exclaimed Mr. Bagot.

'Is she a lady, Mr. Wynne?' asked Mrs. Bagot, somewhat impatiently, as
if that were a much more important matter.

By this time the Laird had managed to basely desert his friend; had
got himself into his bedroom, and from thence, by another door, into
the street and away.

'A lady?' said Taffy; 'a--it so much depends upon what that word
exactly means, you know; things are so--a--so different here. Her
father was a gentleman, I believe--a Fellow of Trinity, Cambridge---
and a clergyman, if that means anything! ... he was unfortunate and
all that--a--intemperate, I fear, and not successful in life. He has
been dead six or seven years.' 'And her mother?'

I really know very little about her mother, except that she was very
handsome, I believe, and of inferior social rank to her husband. She's
also dead; she died soon after him.'

'What is the young lady, then? An English governess, or something of
that sort?'

'Oh no, no--a--nothing of that sort,' said Taffy (and inwardly, 'You
coward--you cad of a Scotch thief of a sneak of a Laird--to leave all
this to me!').

'What? Has she independent means of her own, then?'

'A--not that I know of; I should even say, decidedly not!'

'What is she, then? She's at least respectable, I hope?'

'At present she's a--a blancbisseuse de fin--that is considered
respectable here.'

'Why, that's a washerwoman, isn't it?'

'Well--rather better than that, perhaps--de fin, you know!--things are
so different in Paris! I don't think you'd say she was very much like
a washerwoman--to look at!'

'Is she so good-looking, then?'

'Oh yes; extremely so. You may well say that--very beautiful, indeed--
about that, at least, there is no doubt whatever!'

'And of unblemished character?'

Taffy, red and perspiring as if he were going through his Indian-club
exercise, was silent--and his face expressed a miserable perplexity.
But nothing could equal the anxious misery of those two maternal eyes,
so wistfully fixed on his.

After some seconds of a most painful stillness, the lady said, 'Can't
you--oh, can't you give me an answer, Mr. Wynne?'

'Oh, Mrs. Bagot, you have placed me in a terrible position! I--I love
your son just as if he were my own brother! This engagement is a
complete surprise to me--a most painful surprise! I'd thought of many
possible things, but never of that! I cannot--I really must not
conceal from you that it would be an unfortunate marriage for your
son--from a--a worldly point of view, you know--although both I and
M'Allister have a very deep and warm regard for poor Trilby
O'Ferrall---indeed, a great admiration and affection and respect. She
was once a model.'

'A model, Mr. Wynne? What sort of a model--there are models and
models, of course.'

'Well, a model of every sort, in every possible sense of the word--
head, hands, feet, everything!'

'A model for the figure?'

'Well--yes!'

'Oh, my God! my God! my God!' cried Mrs. Bagot--and she got up and
walked up and down the studio in a most terrible state of agitation,
her brother-in-law following her and begging her to control herself.
Her exclamations seemed to shock him, and she didn't seem to care.

'Oh! Mr. Wynne! Mr. Wynne! If you only knew what my son is to me--to
all of us--always has been! He has been with us all his life, till he
came to this wicked, accursed city! My poor husband would never hear
of his going to any school, for fear of all the harm he might learn
there. My son was as innocent and pure-minded as any girl, Mr. Wynne--
I could have trusted him anywhere--and that's why I gave way and
allowed him to come here, of all places in the world--all alone. Oh! I
should have come with him! Fool--fool--fool that I was! ...

'Oh, Mr. Wynne, he won't see either his mother or his uncle! I found a
letter from him at the hotel, saying he'd left Paris--and I don't even
know where he's gone!...Can't you, can't Mr. M'Allister do anything to
avert this miserable disaster? You don't know how he loves you both--
you should see his letters to me and to his sister! they are always
full of you!'

'Indeed, Mrs. Bagot--you can count on M'Allister and me for doing
everything in our power! But it is of no use our trying to influence
your son--I feel quite sure of that! It is to her we must make our
appeal.'

'Oh, Mr. Wynne! to a washerwoman--a figure model--and Heaven knows
what besides! and with such a chance as this!'

'Mrs. Bagot, you don't know her! She may have been all that. But
strange as it may seem to you--and seems to me, for that matter--she's
a--she's--upon my word of honour, I really think she's about the best
woman I ever met--the most unselfish--the most--'

'Ah! She's a beautiful woman--I can well see that!'

'She has a beautiful nature, Mrs. Bagot--you may believe me or not as
you like--and it is to that I shall make my appeal, as your son's
friend, who has his interests at heart. And let me tell you that
deeply as I grieve for you in your present distress, my grief and
concern for her are far greater!'

'What! grief for her if she marries my son!'

'No, indeed--but if she refuses to marry him. She may not do so, of
course--but my instinct tells me she will!'

'Oh! Mr. Wynne, is that likely?'

'I will do my best to make it so--with such an utter trust in her
unselfish goodness of heart and her passionate affection for your son
as---'

'How do you know she has all this passionate affection for him?'

'Oh, M'Allister and I have long guessed it--though we never thought
this particular thing would come of it. I think, perhaps, that first
of all you ought to see her yourself--you would get quite a new idea
of what she really is--you would be surprised, I assure you.'

Mrs. Bagot shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and there was silence
for a minute or two.

And then, just as in a play, Trilby's 'Milk below!' was sounded at the
door, and Trilby came into the little antechamber, and seeing
strangers, was about to turn back. She was dressed as a grisette, in
her Sunday gown and pretty white cap (for it was New Year's Day), and
looking her very best.

Taffy called out, 'Come in, Trilby!'

And Trilby came into the studio.

As soon as she saw Mrs. Bagot's face she stopped short--erect, her
shoulders a little high, her mouth a little open, her eyes wide with
fright--and pale to the lips--a pathetic, yet commanding, magnificent,
and most distinguished apparition, in spite of her humble attire.

The little lady got up and walked straight to her, and looked up into
her face, that seemed to tower so. Trilby breathed hard.

At length Mrs. Bagot said, in her high accents, 'You are Miss Trilby
O'Ferrall?'

'Oh yes--yes--I am Trilby O'Ferrall, and you are Mrs. Bagot; I can see
that!'

A new tone had come into her large, deep, soft voice, so tragic, so
touching, so strangely in accord with her whole aspect just then--so
strangely in accord with the whole situation--that Taffy felt his
cheeks and lips turn cold, and his big spine thrill and tickle all
down his back.

'Oh yes; you are very, very beautiful--there's no doubt about that!
You wish to marry my son?'

'I've refused to marry him nineteen times--for his own sake; he will
tell you so himself. I am not the right person for him to marry. I
know that. On Christmas night he asked me for the twentieth time; he
swore he would leave Paris next day for ever if I refused him. I
hadn't the courage. I was weak, you see! It was a dreadful mistake.'

'Are you so fond of him?'

'Fond of him? Aren't you?'

'I'm his mother, my good girl!'

To this Trilby seemed to have nothing to say.

'You have just said yourself you are not a fit wife for him. If you
are so fond of him, will you ruin him by marrying him; drag him down;
prevent him from getting on in life; separate him from his sister, his
family, his friends?'

Trilby turned her miserable eyes to Taffy's miserable face, and said,
'Will it really be all that, Taffy?'.

'Oh, Trilby, things have got all wrong, and can't be righted! I'm
afraid it might be so. Dear Trilby--I can't tell you what I feel--but
I can't tell you lies, you know!'

'Oh no--Taffy--you don't tell lies!'

Then Trilby began to tremble very much, and Taffy tried to make her
sit down, but she wouldn't. Mrs. Bagot looked up into her face,
herself breathless with keen suspense and cruel anxiety--almost
imploring.

Trilby looked down at Mrs. Bagot very kindly, put out her shaking
hand, and said: 'Good-bye, Mrs. Bagot. I will not marry your son. I
promise you. I will never see him again.'

Mrs. Bagot caught and clasped her hand and tried to kiss it, and said:
'Don't go yet, my dear good girl. I want to talk to you. I want to
tell you how deeply I--'

'Good-bye, Mrs. Bagot,' said Trilby, once more; and disengaging her
hand, she walked swiftly out of the room.

Mrs. Bagot seemed stupefied, and only half content with her quick
triumph.

'She will not marry your son, Mrs. Bagot. I only wish to God she'd
marry me!

'Oh, Mr. Wynne!' said Mrs. Bagot, and burst into tears.

'Ah!' exclaimed the clergyman, with a feebly satirical smile and a
little cough and sniff that were not sympathetic, 'now if that could
be arranged--and I've no doubt there wouldn't be much opposition on
the part of the lady' (here he made a little complimentary bow), 'it
would be a very desirable thing all round!'

'It's tremendously good of you, I'm sure--to interest yourself in my
humble affairs,' said Taffy. 'Look here, sir--I'm not a great genius
like your nephew--and it doesn't much matter to any one but myself
what I make of my life--but I can assure you that if Trilby's heart
were set on me as it is on him, I would gladly cast in my lot with
hers for life. She's one in a thousand. She's the one sinner that
repenteth, you know?'

'Ah, yes--to be sure!--to be sure! I know all about that; still, facts
are facts, and the world 'is the world, and we've got to live in it,'
said Mr. Bagot, whose satirical smile had died away under the gleam of
Taffy's choleric blue eye.

Then said the good Taffy, frowning down on the parson (who looked mean
and foolish, as people can sometimes do even with right on their
side): 'And now, Mr. Bagot--I can't tell you how very keenly I have
suffered during this--a--this most painful interview--on account of my
very deep regard for Trilby O'Ferrall. I congratulate you and your
sister-in-law on its complete success. I also feel very deeply for
your nephew. I'm not sure that he has not lost more than he will gain
by--a--by the--a--the success of this--a--this interview, in short!'

Taffy's eloquence was exhausted, and his quick temper was getting the
better of him.

Then Mrs. Bagot, drying her eyes, came and took his hand in a very
charming and simple manner, and said: 'Mr. Wynne, I think I know what
you are feeling just now. You must try and make some allowance for us.
You will, I am sure, when we are gone, and you have had time to think
a little. As for that noble and beautiful girl, I only wish that she
were such that my son could marry her--in her past life, I mean. It is
not her humble rank that would frighten me; pray believe that I am
quite sincere in this--and don't think too hardly of your friend's
mother. Think of all I shall have to go through with my poor son--who
is deeply in love--and no wonder! and who has won the love of such a
woman as that! and who cannot see at present how fatal to him such a
marriage would be. I can see all the charm and believe in all the
goodness, in spite of all. And, oh, how beautiful she is, and what a
voice! All that counts for so much, doesn't it? I cannot tell you how
I grieve for her. I can make no amends--who could, for such a thing?
There are no amends, and I shall not even try. I will only write and
tell her all I think and feel. You will forgive us, won't you?'

And in the quick, impulsive warmth and grace and sincerity of her
manner as she said all this, Mrs. Bagot was so absurdly like Little
Billee that it touched big Taffy's heart, and he would have forgiven
anything, and there was nothing to forgive.

'Oh, Mrs. Bagot, there's no question of forgiveness. Good heavens! it
is all so unfortunate, you know! Nobody's to blame, that I can see.
Good-bye, Mrs. Bagot; good-bye, sir,' and so saying, he saw them down
to their remise, in which sat a singularly pretty young lady of
seventeen or so, pale and anxious, and so like Little Billee that it
was quite funny, and touched big Taffy's heart again.

When Trilby went out into the courtyard in the Place St. Anatole des
Arts, she saw Miss Bagot looking out of the carriage window, and in
the young lady's face, as she caught her eye, an expression of sweet
surprise and sympathetic admiration, with lifted eyebrows and parted
lips--just such a look as she had often got from Little Billee! She
knew her for his sister at once. It was a sharp pang.

She turned away, saying to herself: 'Oh no; I will not separate him
from his sister, his family, his friends! That would never do! That's
settled, anyhow!'

Feeling a little dazed, and wishing to think, she turned up the Rue
Vieille des Mauvais Ladres, which was always deserted at this hour. It
was empty, but for a solitary figure sitting on a post, with its legs
dangling, its hands in its trousers-pockets, an inverted pipe in its
mouth, a tattered straw hat on the back of its head, and a long gray
coat down to its heels. It was the Laird.

As soon as he saw her he jumped off his post and came to her, saying:
'Oh, Trilby--what's it all about? I couldn't stand it! I ran away!
Little Billee's mother's there!'

'Yes, Sandy dear, I've just seen her.'

'Well, what's up?'

'I've promised her never to see Little Billee any more. I was foolish
enough to promise to marry him. I refused many times these last three
months, and then he said he'd leave Paris and never come back, and so,
like a fool, I gave way. I've offered to live with him and take care
of him and be his servant--to be everything he wished but his wife!
But he wouldn't hear of it. Dear, dear Little Billee! he's an angel--
and I'll take precious good care no harm shall ever come to him
through me! I shall leave this hateful place and go and live in the
country: I suppose I must manage to get through life somehow.... Days
are so long--aren't they! and there's such a lot of 'em! I know of
some poor people who were once very fond of me, and I could live with
them and help them and keep myself. The difficulty is about Jeannot. I
thought it all out before it came to this. I was well prepared, you
see.

She smiled in a forlorn sort of way, with her upper lip drawn tight
against her teeth, as if some one were pulling her back by the lobes
of her ears.

'Oh! but, Trilby--what shall we do without you? Taffy and I, you know!
You've become one of us!'

'Now, how good and kind of you to say that!' exclaimed poor Trilby,
her eyes filling. 'Why, that's just all I lived for, till all this
happened. But it can't be any more now, can it? Everything is changed
for me--the very sky seems different. Ah! Durien's little song---
"Plaisir d'amour--chagrin d'amour!" it's all quite true, isn't it? I
shall start immediately, and take Jeannot with me, I think.'

'But where do you think of going?'

'Ah! I mayn't tell you that, Sandy dear--not for a long time! Think of
all the trouble there'd be. Well, there's no time to be lost. I must
take the bull by the horns.'

She tried to laugh, and took him by his big side whiskers and kissed
him on the eyes and mouth, and her tears fell on his face.

Then, feeling unable to speak, she nodded farewell, and walked quickly
up the narrow winding street. When she came to the first bend she
turned round and waved her hand, and kissed it two or three times, and
then disappeared.

The Laird stared for several minutes up the empty thoroughfare---
wretched, full of sorrow and compassion. Then he filled himself
another pipe and lit it, and hitched himself on to another post, and
sat there dangling his legs and kicking his heels, and waited for the
Bagots' cab to depart, that he might go up and face the righteous
wrath of Taffy like a man, and bear up against his bitter reproaches
for cowardice and desertion before the foe.

Next morning Taffy received two letters: one, a very long one, was
from Mrs. Bagot. He read it twice over, and was forced to acknowledge
that it was a very good letter--the letter of a clever, warm-hearted
woman, but a woman also whose son was to her as the very apple of her
eye. One felt she was ready to flay her dearest friend alive in order
to make Little Billee a pair of gloves out of the skin, if he wanted a
pair; but one also felt she would be genuinely sorry for the friend.
Taffy's own mother had been a little like that, and he missed her
every day of his life.

Full justice was done by Mrs. Bagot to all Trilby's qualities of head
and heart and person; but at the same time she pointed out, with all
the cunning and ingeniously casuistic logic of her sex, when it takes
to special pleading (even when it has right on its side), what the
consequences of such a marriage must inevitably be in a few years---
even sooner! The quick disenchantment, the lifelong regret, on both
sides!

He could not have found a word to controvert her arguments, save
perhaps in his own private belief that Trilby and Little Billee were
both exceptional people; and how could he hope to know Little Billee's
nature better than the boy's own mother!

And if he had been the boy's elder brother in blood, as he already was
in heart and affection, would he, should he, could he have given his
fraternal sanction to such a match?

Both as his friend and his brother he felt it was out of the question.

The other letter was from Trilby, in her bold, careless handwriting,
that sprawled all over the page, and her occasionally imperfect
spelling. It ran thus:--

MY DEAR, DEAR TAFFY--

This is to say good-bye. I'm going away, to put an end to all this
misery, for which nobody's to blame but myself.

'The very moment after I'd said yes to Little Billee I knew perfectly
well what a stupid fool I was, and I've been ashamed of myself ever
since. I had a miserable week, I can tell you. I knew how it would all
turn out.

'I am dreadfully unhappy, but not half so unhappy as if I married him
and he were ever to regret it and be ashamed of me; and of course he
would, really, even if he didn't show it--good and kind as he is---an
angel!

'Besides of course I could never be a lady--how could I?--though I
ought to have been one, I suppose. But everything seems to have gone
wrong with me, though I never found it out before--and it can't be
righted!

'Poor papa!

'I am going away with Jeannot. I've been neglecting him shamefully. I
mean to make up for it all now.

'You mustn't try and find out where I am going; I know you won't if I
beg you, nor any one else. It would make everything so much harder for
me.

'Angele knows; she has promised me not to tell. I should like to have
a line from you very much. If you send it to her she will send it on
to me.

'Dear Taffy, next to Little Billee, I love you and the Laird better
than any one else in the whole world. I've never known real happiness
till I met you. You have changed me into another person--you and Sandy
and Little Billee.

'Oh, it has been a jolly time, though it didn't last long. It will
have to do for me for life. So good-bye. I shall never, never forget;
and remain, with dearest love, your ever faithful and most
affectionate friend.

'TRILBY O'FERRALL.

'P.S.--When it has all blown over and settled again, if it ever does,
I shall come back to Paris, perhaps, and see you again some day.'

The good Taffy pondered deeply over this letter--read it half a dozen
times at least; and then he kissed it, and put it back into its
envelope and locked it up.

He knew what very deep anguish underlay this somewhat trivial
expression of her sorrow.

He guessed how Trilby, so childishly impulsive and demonstrative in
the ordinary intercourse of friendship, would be more reticent than
most women in such a case as this.

He wrote to her warmly, affectionately, at great length, and sent the
letter as she had told him.

The Laird also wrote a long letter full of tenderly-worded friendship
and sincere regard. Both expressed their hope and belief that they
would soon see her again, when the first bitterness of her grief would
be over, and that the old pleasant relations would be renewed.

And then, feeling wretched, they went and silently lunched together at
the Cafe de l'Odeon, where the omelets were good and the wine wasn't
blue.

Late that evening they sat together in the studio, reading. They found
they could not talk to each other very readily without Little Billee
to listen--three's company sometimes and two's none!

Suddenly there was a tremendous getting up the dark stairs outside in
a violent hurry, and Little Billee burst into the room like a small
whirlwind--haggard, out of breath, almost speechless at first with
excitement.

'Trilby! where is she?...what's become of her?...She's run away...oh!
She's written me such a letter!...We were to have been married ... at
the Embassy...my mother...she's been meddling; and that cursed old ass
... that beast...my uncle!...They've been here! I know all about it.
... Why didn't you stick up for her? ...'

'I did ... as well as I could. Sandy couldn't stand it, and cut.'

'You stuck up for her...you--why, you agreed with my mother that she
oughtn't to marry me--you--you false friend--you!...Why, she's an
angel--far too good for the likes of me...you know she is. As ... as
for her social position and all that, what degrading rot! Her father
was as much a gentleman as mine...besides...what the devil do I care
for her father?...it's her I want---her--her--her, I tell you ... I
can't live without her ... I must have her back--I must have her back
... do you hear? We were to have lived together at Barbizon ... all
our lives--and I was to have painted stunning pictures...like those
other fellows there. Who cares for their social position, I should
like to know .. . or that of their wives? Damn social
position!...we've often said so--over and over again. An artist's life
should be away from the world above all that meanness and paltriness
... all in his work. Social position, indeed! Over and over again
we've said what fetid, bestial rot it all was--a thing to make one
sick and shut one's self away from the world... Why say one thing and
act another?...Love comes before all--love levels all---love and art
... and beauty--before such beauty as Trilby's rank doesn't exist.
Such rank as mine, too! Good God! I'll never paint another stroke till
I've got her back...never, never, never, I tell you--I can't--I
won't!...'

And so the poor boy went on, tearing and raving about in his rampage,
knocking over chairs and easels, stammering and shrieking, mad with
excitement.

They tried to reason with him, to make him listen, to point out that
it was not her social position alone that unfitted her to be his wife
and the mother of his children, etc.

It was no good. He grew more and more uncontrollable, became almost
unintelligible, he stammered so--a pitiable sight and pitiable to
hear.

'Oh! oh! good heavens! are you so precious immaculate, you two, that
you should throw stones at poor Trilby! What a shame, what a hideous
shame it is that there should be one law for the woman and another for
the man!...poor weak women--poor, soft, affectionate things that
beasts of men are always running after, and pestering, and ruining,
and trampling under foot... Oh! oh! it makes me sick--it makes me
sick!' And finally he gasped and screamed and fell down in a fit on
the floor.

The doctor was sent for; Taffy went in a cab to the Hotel de Lille et
d'Albion to fetch his mother; and poor Little Billee, quite
unconscious, was undressed by Sandy and Madame Vinard and put into the
Laird's bed.

The doctor came, and not long after Mrs. Bagot and her daughter. It
was a serious case. Another doctor was called in. Beds were got and
made up in the studio for the two grief-stricken ladies, and thus
closed the eve of what was to have been poor Little Billee's wedding-
day, it seems.

Little Billee's attack appears to have been a kind of epileptic
seizure. It ended in brain fever and other complications--a long and
tedious illness. It was many weeks before he was out of danger, and
his convalescence was long and tedious too.

His nature seemed changed. He lay languid and listless--never even
mentioned Trilby, except once to ask if she had come back, and if any
one knew where she was, and if she had been written to.

She had not, it appears. Mrs. Bagot had thought it was better not, and
Taffy and the Laird agreed with her that no good could come of
writing.

Mrs. Bagot felt bitterly against the woman who had been the cause of
all this trouble, and bitterly against herself for her injustice. It
was an unhappy time for everybody.

There was more unhappiness still to come.

One day in February Madame Angele Boisse called on Taffy and the Laird
in the temporary studio where they worked. She was in terrible
tribulation.

Trilby's little brother had died of scarlet fever and was buried, and
Trilby had left her hiding-place the day after the funeral and had
never come back, and this was a week ago. She and Jeannot had been
living at a village called Vibraye, in La Sarthe, lodging with some
poor people she knew--she washing and working with her needle till her
brother fell ill.

She had never left his bedside for a moment, night or day, and when he
died her grief was so terrible that people thought she would go out of
her mind; and the day after he was buried she was not to be found
anywhere--she had disappeared, taking nothing with her, not even her
clothes--simply vanished and left no sign, no message of any kind.

All the ponds had been searched--all the wells, and the small stream
that flows through Vibraye--and the old forest.

Taffy went to Vibraye, cross-examined everybody he could, communicated
with the Paris police, but with no result; and every afternoon, with a
beating heart, he went to the Morgue. .. .

The news was of course kept from Little Billee. There was no
difficulty about this. He never asked a question, hardly ever spoke.

When he first got up and was carried into the studio he asked for his
picture 'The Pitcher Goes to the Well,' and looked at it for a while,
and then shrugged his shoulders and laughed--a miserable sort of
laugh, painful to hear and see--the laugh of a cold old man, who
laughs so as not to cry! Then he looked at his mother and sister and
saw the sad havoc that grief and anxiety had wrought in them.

It seemed to him, as in a bad dream, that he had been mad for many
years--a cause of endless sickening terror and distress; and that his
poor weak wandering wits had come back at last, bringing in their
train cruel remorse, and the remembrance of all the patient love and
kindness that had been lavished on him; for many, many years! His
sweet sister---his dear, long-suffering mother! what had really
happened to make them look like this?

And taking them both in his feeble arms, he fell aweeping, quite
desperately and for a long time.

And when his weeping-fit was over, when he had quite wept himself out,
he fell asleep.

And when he awoke he was conscious that another sad thing had happened
to him, and that for some mysterious cause his power of loving had not
come back with his wandering wits--had been left behind--and it seemed
to him that it was gone for ever and ever--would never come back
again--not even his love for his mother and sister, not even his love
for Trilby--where all that had once been was a void, a gap, a
blankness. . ..

Truly, if Trilby had suffered much, she had also been the innocent
cause of terrible suffering. Poor Mrs. Bagot, in her heart, could not
forgive her.

I feel this is getting to be quite a sad story, and that it is high
time to cut this part of it short.

As the warmer weather came, and Little Billee got stronger, the studio
became more lively. The ladies' beds were removed to another studio on
the next landing, which was vacant, and the friends came to see Little
Billee, and make life more easy for him and his mother and sister.

As for Taffy and the Laird, they had already long been to Mrs. Bagot
as a pair of crutches, without whose invaluable help she could never
have held herself upright to pick her way in all this maze of trouble.

Then M. Carrel came every day to chat with his favourite pupil and
gladden Mrs. Bagot's heart. And also Durien, Carnegie,
Petrolicoconose, Vincent, Antony, Lorrimer, Dodor, and l'Zouzou; Mrs.
Bagot thought the last two irresistible, when she had once been
satisfied that they were 'gentlemen,' in spite of appearances. And,
indeed, they showed themselves to great advantage; and though they
were so much the opposite to Little Billee in everything, she felt
almost maternal towards them, and gave them innocent, good, motherly
advice, which they swallowed avec attendrissement, not even stealing a
look at each other. And they held Mrs. Bagot's wool, and listened to
Miss Bagot's sacred music with upturned pious eyes, and mealy mouths
that butter wouldn't melt in!

It is good to be a soldier and a detrimental; you touch the hearts of
women and charm them old and young, high or low (excepting, perhaps, a
few worldly mothers of marriageable daughters). They take the sticking
of your tongue in the cheek for the wearing of your heart on the
sleeve.

Indeed, good women all over the world and ever since it began, have
loved to be bamboozled by these genial, roistering daredevils, who
haven't got a penny to bless themselves with (which is so touching),
and are supposed to carry their lives in their hands, even in piping
times of peace. Nay, even a few rare bad women sometimes; such women
as the best and wisest of us are often ready to sell our souls for!

'A lightsome eye,--a soldier's mien.

A feather of the blue.

A doublet of the Lincoln green---

No more of me you knew.

My love!

No more of me you knew...'

As if that wasn't enough, and to spare!

Little Billee could hardly realise that these two polite and gentle
and sympathetic sons of Mars were the lively grigs who had made
themselves so pleasant all round, and in such a singular manner, on
the top of that St. Cloud omnibus; and he admired how they added
hypocrisy to their other crimes!

Svengali had gone back to Germany, it seemed with his pockets full of
napoleons and big Havana cigars, and wrapped in an immense fur-lined
coat, which he meant to wear all through the summer. But little Gecko
often came with his violin and made lovely music, and that seemed to
do Little Billee more good than anything else.

It made him realise in his brain all the love he could no longer feel
in his heart. The sweet melodic phrase, rendered by a master, was as
wholesome, refreshing balm to him while it lasted--as manna in the
wilderness. It was the one good thing within his reach, never to be
taken from him as long as his ear-drums remained and he could hear a
master play.

Poor Gecko treated the two English ladies de bos 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 Comedie
Francaise once or twice; and on Sundays, now and then, to the English
chapel in the Rue Marboeuf. 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 bye, and the big studio window was open at the top and let in a
pleasant breeze from the north-west, just as when our little story
began--a railway omnibus drew up at the porte cochere in the Place St.
Anatole des Arts, and carried away to the station of the Chemin de Per
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 colour
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 good-bye 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 Cafe de l'Odeon, 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 per 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 debut 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 last year at Christie's (more than thirty-
six years after it was painted) for three thousand pounds.

Thirty-six years! That goes a long way to redeem even three thousand
pounds of all their cumulative vulgarity.

'The Pitcher' is now in the National Gallery, with that other canvas
by the same hand, 'The Moon-Dial.' There they hang together for all
who care to see them, his first and his last--the blossom and the
fruit.

He had not long to live himself, and it was his good fortune, so rare
among those whose work is probably destined to live for ever, that he
succeeded at his first go off.

And his success was of the best and most flattering kind. It began
high up, where it should, among the masters of his own craft. But his
fame filtered quickly down to those immediately beneath, and through
these to wider circles. And there was quite enough of opposition and
vilification and coarse abuse of him to clear it of any suspicion of
cheapness or evanescence. What better antiseptic can there be than the
philistine's deep hate? what sweeter, fresher, wholesomer music than
the sound of his voice when he doth so furiously rage?

Yes! That is 'good production'--as Svengali would have said--'C'est un
cri du coeur.'

And then, when popular acclaim brings the great dealers and the big
cheques, up rises the printed howl of the duffer, the disappointed
one, the 'wounded thing with an angry cry'--the prosperous and happy
bagman that should have been, who has given up all for art, and finds
he can't paint and make himself a name, after all, and never will, so
falls to writing about those who can--and what writing!

To write in hissing dispraise of our more successful fellow-craftsman,
and of those who admire him--that is not a clean or pretty trade. It
seems, alas! an easy one, and it gives pleasure to so many. It does
not even want good grammar. But it pays--well enough even to start and
run a magazine with, instead of scholarship, and taste, and talent!
humour, sense, wit, and wisdom! It is something like the purveying of
pornographic pictures: some of us look at them and laugh, and even
buy. To be a purchaser is bad enough; but to be the purveyor thereof--
ugh!

A poor devil of a cracked soprano (are there such people still?) who
has been turned out of the Pope's choir because he can't sing in tune,
after all!--think of him yelling and squeaking his treble rage at
Santley--Sims Reeves--Lablache!

Poor, lost, beardless nondescript! why not fly to other climes, where
at least thou might'st hide from us thy woeful crack, and keep thy
miserable secret to thyself. Are there no harems still left in
Stamboul for the likes of thee to sweep and clean, no women's beds to
make and slops to empty, and doors and windows to bar--and tales to
carry, and the pasha's confidence and favour and protection to win?
Even that is a better trade than pandering for hire to the basest
instinct of all--the dirty pleasure we feel (some of us) in seeing mud
and dead cats and rotten eggs flung at those we cannot but admire--and
secretly envy!

All of which eloquence means that Little Billee was pitched into right
and left, as well as overpraised. And it all rolled off him like water
off a duck's back, both praise and blame.

It was a happy summer for Mrs. Bagot, a sweet compensation for all the
anguish of the winter that had gone before, with her two beloved
children together under her wing, and all the world (for her) ringing
with the praise of her boy, the apple of her eye, so providentially
rescued from the very jaws of death, and from other dangers almost as
terrible to her fiercely jealous maternal heart.

And his affection for her seemed to grow with his returning health;
but, alas! he was never again to be quite the same light-hearted,
innocent, expansive lad he had been before that fatal year spent in
Paris.

One chapter of his life was closed, never to be reopened, never to be
spoken of again by him to her, by her to him. She could neither
forgive nor forget. She could but be silent.

Otherwise he was pleasant and sweet to live with, and everything was
done to make his life at home as sweet and pleasant as a loving mother
could--as could a most charming sister--and others' sisters who were
charming too, and much disposed to worship at the shrine of this young
celebrity, who woke up one morning in their little village to find
himself famous, and bore his blushing honours so meekly. And among
them the vicar's daughter, his sister's friend and co-teacher at the
Sunday-school, 'a simple, pure, and pious maiden of gentle birth,'
everything he once thought a young lady should be; and her name it was
Alice, and she was sweet, and her hair was brown--as brown! . ..

And if he no longer found the simple country pleasures, the junketings
and pic-nics, the garden-parties and innocent little musical evenings,
quite so exciting as of old, he never showed it.

Indeed, there was much that he did not show, and that his mother and
sister tried in vain to guess--many things.

And among them one thing that constantly preoccupied and distressed
him--the numbness of his affections. He could be as easily
demonstrative to his mother and sister as though nothing had ever
happened to him--from the mere force of a sweet old habit--even more
so, out of sheer gratitude and compunction.

But alas! he felt that in his heart he could no longer care for them
in the least!--nor for Taffy, nor the Laird, nor for himself; not even
for Trilby, of whom he constantly thought, but without emotion; and of
whose strange disappearance he had been told, and the story had been
confirmed in all its details by Angele Boisse, to whom he had written.

It was as though some part of his brain where his affections were
seated had been paralysed, while all the rest of it was as keen and as
active as ever. He felt like some poor live bird or beast or reptile,
a part of whose cerebrum (or cerebellum, or whatever it is) had been
dug out by the vivisector for experimental purposes; and the strongest
emotional feeling he seemed capable of was his anxiety and alarm about
this curious symptom, and his concern as to whether he ought to
mention it or not.

He did not do so, for fear of causing distress, hoping that it would
pass away in time, and redoubled his caresses to his mother and
sister, and clung to them more than ever; and became more considerate
of others in thought and manner, word, and deed than he had ever been
before, as though by constantly assuming the virtue he had no longer
he would gradually coax it back again. There was no trouble he would
not take to give pleasure to the humblest.

Also, his vanity about himself had become as nothing, and he missed it
almost as much as his affection.

Yet he told himself over and over again that he was a great artist,
and that he would spare no pains to make himself a greater, But that
was no merit of his own.

2+2 =4, also 2x2 = 4, that peculiarity was no reason why 4 should be
conceited; for what was 4 but a result, either way?

Well, he was like 4--just an inevitable result of circumstances over
which he had no control--a mere product or sum; and though he meant to
make himself as big a 4 as he could (to cultivate his peculiar
fourness), he could no longer feel the old conceit and self-
complacency; and they had been a joy, and it was hard to do without
them.

At the bottom of it all was a vague, disquieting unhappiness, a
constant fidget.

And it seemed to him, and much to his distress, that such mild
unhappiness would be the greatest he could ever feel henceforward--but
that, such as it was, it would never leave him, and that his moral
existence would be for evermore one long gray gloomy blank--the
glimmer of twilight--never glad, confident morning again!

So much for Little Billee's convalescence.

Then one day in the late autumn he spread his wings and flew away to
London, which was very ready with open arms to welcome William Bagot,
the already famous painter, alias Little Billee!
 
 

PART FIFTH

Little Billee
An Interlude

'Then the mortal coldness of the soul like death itself comes down;

It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own;

That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears.

And, though the eye may sparkle yet, 'tis where the ice appears.

'Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast.

Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest:

Tis but as ivy leaves around a ruined turret wreathe.

All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and gray beneath.'

WHEN TAFFY AND the Laird went back to the studio in the Place St.
Anatole des Arts, and resumed their ordinary life there, it was with a
sense of desolation and dull bereavement beyond anything they could
have imagined; and this did not seem to lessen as the time wore on.

They realised for the first time how keen and penetrating and
unintermittent had been the charm of those two central figures--Trilby
and Little Billee--and how hard it was to live without them, after
such intimacy as had been theirs.

'Oh, it has been a jolly time, though it didn't last long!' So Trilby
had written in her farewell letter to Taffy; and these words were true
for Taffy and the Laird as well as for her.

And that is the worst of those dear people who have charm: they are so
terrible to do without, when once you have got accustomed to them and
all their ways.

And when, besides being charming, they are simple, clever,
affectionate, constant, and sincere, like Trilby and Little Billee!'
Then the lamentable hole their disappearance makes is not to be filled
up! And when they are full of genius, like Little Billee--and like
Trilby, funny without being vulgar! For so she always seemed to the
Laird and Taffy, even in French (in spite of her Gallic audacities of
thought, speech, and gesture).

All seemed to have suffered change. The very boxing and fencing were
gone through perfunctorily, for mere health's sake; and a thin layer
of adipose deposit began to soften the outlines of the hills and dales
on Taffy's mighty forearm.

Dodor and l'Zouzou no longer came so often, now that the charming
Little Billee and his charming mother and still more charming sister
had gone away--nor Carnegie, nor Antony, nor Lorrimer, nor Vincent,
nor the Greek. Gecko never came at all. Even Svengali was missed,
little as he had been liked. It is a dismal and sulky-looking piece of
furniture, a grand piano that nobody ever plays--with all its sound
and its souvenirs locked up inside--a kind of mausoleum! a lop-sided
coffin, trestles and all! So it went back to London by the 'little
quickness,' just as it had come!

Thus Taffy and the Laird grew quite sad and mopy, and lunched at the
Cafe de l'Odeon every day--till the goodness of the omelets palled,
and the redness of the wine there got on their nerves and into their
heads and faces, and made them sleepy till dinner-time. And then,
waking up, they dressed respectably, and dined expensively, 'like
gentlemen,' in the Palais Royal, or the Passage Choiseul, or the
Passage des Panoramas--for three francs, three francs fifty, even five
francs a head, and half a franc to the waiter!--and went to the
theatre almost every night, on that side of the water--and more often
than not they took a cab home, each smoking a Panatellas, which costs
twenty-five centimes--five sous--2 '/2d.!

Then they feebly drifted into quite decent society--like Lorrimer and
Carnegie--with dress-coats and white ties on, and their hair parted in
the middle and down the back of the head, and brought over the ears in
a bunch at each side, as was the English fashion in those days; and
subscribed to Galignani's Messenger; and had themselves proposed and
seconded for the Cercle Anglais in the Rue Sainte-n'y Touche, a circle
of British philistines of the very deepest dye; and went to hear
divine service on Sunday mornings in Rue Marboeuf!

Indeed, by the end of the summer they had sunk into such depths of
demoralisation that they felt they must really have a change; and
decided on giving up the studio in the Place St. Anatole des Arts, and
leaving Paris for good; and going to settle for the winter in
Dusseldorf, which is a very pleasant place for English painters who do
not wish to overwork themselves--as the Laird well knew, having spent
a year there.

It ended in Taffy's going to Antwerp for the Kermesse, to paint the
Flemish drunkard of our time just as he really is; and the Laird s
going to Spain, so that he might study toreadors from the life.

I may as well state here that the Laird's toreador pictures, which had
had quite a vogue in Scotland as long as he had been content to paint
diem in the Place St. Anatole des Arts, quite ceased to please (or
sell) after he had been to Seville and Madrid; so he took to painting
Roman cardinals and Neapolitan pifferari from the depths of his
consciousness--and was so successful that he made up his mind he would
never spoil his market by going to Italy!

So he went and painted his cardinals and his pifferari in Algiers, and
Taffy joined him there, and painted Algerian Jews--just as they really
are (and didn't sell them); and then they spent a year in Munich, and
then a year in Dusseldorf, and a winter in Cairo, and so on.

And all this time, Taffy, who took everything au grand serieux---
especially the claims and obligations of friendship--corresponded
regularly with Little Billee, who wrote him long and amusing letters
back again, and had plenty to say about his life in London--which was
a series of triumphs, artistic and social--and you would have thought
from his letters, modest though they were, that no happier young man,
or more elate, was to be found anywhere in the world.

It was a good time in England, just then, for young artists of
promise; a time of evolution, revolution, change, and development--of
the founding of new schools and the crumbling away of old ones--a keen
struggle for existence--a surviving of the fit--a preparation, let us
hope, for the ultimate survival of the fittest.

And among the many glories of this particular period two names stand
out very conspicuously--for the immediate and (so far) lasting fame
their bearers achieved, and the wide influence they exerted, and
continue to exert still.

The world will not easily forget Frederic Walker and William Bagot,
those two singularly gifted boys, whom it soon became the fashion to
bracket together, to compare and to contrast, as one compares and
contrasts Thackeray and Dickens, Carlyle and Macaulay, Tennyson and
Browning--a futile though pleasant practice, of which the temptations
seem irresistible!

Yet why compare the lily and the rose?

These two young masters had the genius and the luck to be the
progenitors of much of the best art work that has been done in England
during the last thirty years, in oils, in water colour, in black and
white.

They were both essentially English and of their own time; both
absolutely original, receiving their impressions straight from nature
itself; uninfluenced by any school, ancient or modern, they founded
schools instead of following any, and each was a law unto himself, and
a law-giver unto many others. Both were equally great in whatever they
attempted--landscape, figures, birds, beasts, or fishes. Who does not
remember the fishmonger's shop, by F. Walker, or W. Bagot's little
piebald piglings, and their venerable black mother, and their immense
fat wallowing pink papa? An ineffable charm of poetry and refinement,
of pathos and sympathy and delicate humour combined, an incomparable
ease and grace and felicity of workmanship belong to each; and yet in
their work are they not as wide apart as the poles; each complete in
himself and yet a complement to the other?

And, oddly enough, they were both singularly alike in aspect--both
small and slight, though beautifully made, with tiny hands and feet;
always arrayed as the lilies of the field, for all they toiled and
spun so arduously; both had regularly-featured faces of a noble cast
and most winning character; both had the best and simplest manners in
the world, and a way of getting themselves much and quickly and
permanently liked....

Que la terre leur soit legere!

And who can say that the fame of one is greater than the other's!

Their pinnacles are twin, I venture to believe--of just an equal
height and width and thickness, like their bodies in this life; but
unlike their frail bodies in one respect: no taller pinnacles are to
be seen, methinks, in all the garden of the deathless dead painters of
our time, and none more built to last!

But it is not with the art of Little Billee, nor with his fame as a
painter, that we are chiefly concerned in this unpretending little
tale, except in so far as they have some bearing on his character and
his fate.

I should like to know the detailed history of the Englishman's first
love, and how he lost his innocence!'

'Ask him!'

'Ask him yourself!'

Thus Papelard and Bouchardy, on the morning of Little Billee's first
appearance at Carrel's studio, in the Rue des Potirons St. Michel.

And that is the question the present scribe is doing his little best
to answer.

A good-looking, famous, well-bred, and well-dressed youth finds that
London society opens its doors very readily; he hasn't long to knock;
and it would be difficult to find a youth more fortunately situated,
handsomer, more famous, better dressed or better bred, more seemingly
happy and successful, with more attractive qualities and more
condonable faults, than Little Billee, as Taffy and the Laird found
him when they came to London after their four or five years in foreign
parts--their Wanderjahr.

He had a fine studio and a handsome suite of rooms in Fitzroy Square.
Beautiful specimens of his unfinished work, endless studies, hung on
his studio walls. Everything else was as nice as it could be---the
furniture, the bibelots, and bric-a-brac, the artistic foreign and
Eastern knick-knacks and draperies and hangings and curtains and
rugs---the semi-grand piano by Collard and Collard.

That immortal canvas, the 'Moon-Dial' (just begun, and already
commissioned by Moses Lyon, the famous picture-dealer), lay on his
easel.

No man worked harder and with teeth more clinched than Little Billee
when he was at work--none rested or played more discreetly when it was
time to rest or play.

The glass on his mantelpiece was full of cards of invitation,
reminders, pretty mauve and pink and lilac scented notes; nor were
coronets wanting on many of these hospitable little missives. He had
quite overcome his fancied aversion for bloated dukes and lords and
the rest (we all do sooner or later, if things go well with us);
especially for their wives and sisters and daughters and female
cousins; even their mothers and aunts. In point of fact, and in spite
of his tender years, he was in some danger (for his art) of developing
into that type so adored by sympathetic women who haven't got much to
do: the friend, the tame cat, the platonic lover (with many loves)--
the squire of dames, the trusty one, of whom husbands and brothers
have no fear!---the delicate, harmless dilettante of Eros--the dainty
shepherd who dwells 'dans le pays du tendre!'--and stops there!

The woman flatters and the man confides--and there is no danger
whatever, I'm told--and I'm glad!

One man loves his fiddle (or, alas! his neighbour's sometimes) for all
the melodies he can wake from it--it is but a selfish love!

Another, who is no fiddler, may love a fiddle too; for its symmetry,
its neatness, its colour--its delicate grainings, the lovely lines and
curves of its back and front--for its own sake, so to speak. He may
have a whole galleryful of fiddles to love in this innocent way--a
harem!--and yet not know a single note of music, or even care to hear
one. He will dust them and stroke them, and take them down and try to
put them in tune--pizzicato!--and put them back again, and call them
ever such sweet little pet exotic names: viol, viola, viola d'amore,
viol di gamba, violino mio! and breathe his little troubles into them,
and they will give back inaudible little murmurs in sympathetic
response, like a damp AEolian harp; but he will never draw a bow
across the strings, nor wake a single chord--or discord!

And who shall say he is not wise in his generation? It is but an old-
fashioned philistine notion that fiddles were only made to be played
on--the fiddles themselves are beginning to resent it; and rightly, I
wot!

In this harmless fashion Little Billee was friends with more than one
fine lady de par le monde.

Indeed, he had been reproached by his more bohemian brothers of the
brush for being something of a tuft-hunter--most unjustly. But nothing
gives such keen offence to our unsuccessful brother, bohemian or
bourgeois, as our sudden intimacy with the so-called great, the little
lords and ladies of this little world! Not even our fame and success,
and all the joy and pride they bring us, are so hard to condone--so
embittering, so humiliating, to the jealous fraternal heart.

Alas! poor humanity--that the mere countenance of our betters (if they
are our betters!) should be thought so priceless a boon, so consummate
an achievement, so crowning a glory, as all that!

'A dirty bit of orange-peel.

The stump of a cigar--

Once trod on by a princely heel.

How beautiful they are!'

Little Billee was no tuft-hunter--he was the tuft-hunted, or had been.
No one of his kind was ever more persistently, resolutely, hospitably
harried than this young 'hare with many friends' by people of rank and
fashion.

And at first he thought them most charming; as they so often are,
these graceful, gracious, gay, good-natured stoics and barbarians,
whose manners are as easy and simple as their morals--but how much
better!--and who, at least, have this charm, that they can wallow in
untold gold (when they happen to possess it) without ever seeming to
stink of the same: yes, they bear wealth gracefully--and the want of
it more gracefully still! and these are pretty accomplishments that
have yet to be learned by our new aristocracy of the shop and
counting-house, Jew or Gentile, which is everywhere elbowing its
irresistible way to the top and front of everything, both here and
abroad.

Then he discovered that, much as you might be with them, you could
never be of them, unless perchance you managed to hook on by marrying
one of their ugly ducklings--their failures--their remnants! and even
then life isn't all beer and skittles for a rank outsider, I'm told!
Then he discovered that he didn't want to be of them in the least;
especially at such a cost as that! and that to be very much with them
was apt to pall, like everything else!

Also, he found that they were very mixed--good, bad, and indifferent;
and not always very dainty or select in their predilections, since
they took unto their bosoms such queer outsiders (just for the sake of
being amused a little while) that their capricious favour ceased to be
an honour and a glory--if it ever was! And then, their fickleness!

Indeed, he found, or thought he found, that they could be just as
clever, as liberal, as polite or refined--as narrow, insolent,
swaggering, coarse, and vulgar--as handsome, as ugly--as graceful, as
ungainly--as modest or conceited, as any other upper class of the
community--and indeed some lower ones!

Beautiful young women, who had been taught how to paint pretty little
landscapes (with an ivy-mantled ruin in the middle distance), talked
technically of painting to him, de pair a pair, as though they were
quite on the same artistic level, and didn't mind admitting it in
spite of the social gulf between.

Hideous old frumps (osseous or obese, yet with unduly bared necks and
shoulders that made him sick) patronised him and gave him good advice,
and told him to emulate Mr. Buckner both in his genius and his
manners--since Mr. Buckner was the only 'gentleman' who ever painted
for hire; and they promised him, in time, an equal success!

Here and there some sweet old darling specially enslaved him by her
kindness, grace, knowledge of life, and tender womanly sympathy, like
the dowager Lady Chiselhurst--or some sweet young one, like the lovely
Duchess of Towers, by her beauty, wit, good-humour, and sisterly
interest in all he did, and who in some vague, distant manner
constantly reminded him of Trilby, although she was such a great and
fashionable lady!

But just such darlings, old or young, were to be found, with still
higher ideals, in less exalted spheres; and were easier of access with
no impassable gulf between--spheres where there was no patronising,
nothing but deference and warm appreciation and delicate flattery,
from men and women alike--and where the aged Venuses, whose prime was
of the days of Waterloo, went with their historical remains duly
shrouded, like ivy-mantled ruins (and in the middle distance!).

So he actually grew tired of the great before they had time to tire of
him--incredible as it may seem, and against nature; and this saved him
many a heart-burning; and he ceased to be seen at fashionable drums or
gatherings of any kind, except in one or two houses where he was
especially liked and made welcome for his own sake; such as Lord
Chiselhurst's in Piccadilly, where the 'Moon-Dial' found a home for a
few years before going to its last home and final resting-place in the
National Gallery (R.I.P.); or Baron Stoppenheim's in Cavendish Square,
where many lovely little water-colours signed W. B. occupied places of
honour on gorgeously-gilded walls; or the gorgeously-gilded bachelor
rooms of Mr. Moses Lyon, the picture-dealer in Upper Conduit Street--
for Little Billee (I much grieve to say it of a hero of romance) was
an excellent man of business. That infinitesimal dose of the good old
Oriental blood kept him straight, and not only made him stick to his
last through thick and thin but also to those whose foot his last was
found to match (for he couldn't or wouldn't alter his last). He loved
to make as much money as he could, that he might spend it royally in
pretty gifts to his mother and sister, whom it was his pleasure to
load in this way, and whose circumstances had been very much altered
by his quick success. There was never a more generous son or brother
than Little Billee of the clouded heart, that couldn't love any
longer!

As a set-off to all these splendours, it was also his pleasure now and
again to study London life at its lower den--the easiest end of all.
Whitechapel, the Minories, the Docks, Ratcliffe Highway, Rotherhithe,
soon got to know him well, and he found much to interest him and much
to like among their denizens, and made as many friends there among
ship-carpenters, excisemen, longshoremen, jack-tars, and what not, as
in Bayswater and Belgravia (or Bloomsbury).

He was especially fond of frequenting sing-songs, or 'free-and-
easies,' where good hard-working fellows met of an evening to relax
and smoke and drink and sing, round a table well loaded with steaming
tumblers and pewter pots, at one end of which sits Mr. Chairman in all
his glory, and at the other 'Mr. Vice.' They are open to any one who
can afford a pipe, a screw of tobacco, and a pint of beer, and who is
willing to do his best and sing a song.

No introduction is needed; as soon as any one has seated himself and
made himself comfortable, Mr. Chairman taps the table with his long
clay pipe, begs for silence, and says to his vis-a-vis: 'Mr. Vice, it
strikes me as the gen'l'man as is just come in 'as got a singing face.
Per'aps, Mr. Vice, you'll be so very kind as juster harsk the
aforesaid gentl'man to oblige us with a 'armony.'

Mr. Vice then puts it to the new-comer, who, thus appealed to,
simulates a modest surprise, and finally professes his willingness,
like Mr. Barkis; then, clearing his throat a good many times, looks up
to the ceiling, and after one or two unsuccessful starts in different
keys, bravely sings 'Kathleen Mavourneen,' let us say--perhaps in a
touchingly sweet tenor voice:

'Kathleen Mavourneen, the gry dawn is brykin.

The 'orn of the 'unter is 'card on the 'ill. . .'

And Little Billee didn't mind the dropping of all these aitches if the
voice was sympathetic and well in tune, and the sentiment simple,
tender, and sincere.

Or else, with a good rolling jingo bass, it was.

"earts o' hoak are our ships; 'earts o' hoak are our men;

And we'll fight and we'll conkwer agen and agen!'

And no imperfection of accent, in Little Billee's estimation,
subtracted one jot from the manly British pluck that found expression
in these noble sentiments, nor added one tittle to their swaggering,
blatant, and idiotically aggressive vulgarity!

Well, the song finishes with general applause all round. Then the
chairman says, 'Your 'ealth and song, sir!' And drinks, and all do the
same.

Then Mr. Vice asks, 'What shall we 'ave the pleasure of saying, sir,
after that very nice 'armony?'

And the blushing vocalist, if he knows the ropes, replies, 'A roast
leg o' mutton in Newgate, and nobody 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 snares 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 'ear's. 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 nobody 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 knifeboard of an omnibus as on the box-seat of a nobleman'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 breadth 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 class--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 class so genial and sympathetic as our own, in the long
run even if it be but the criminal class! 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 endeavour; 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 gratitude 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 honours.

And of all these notable London houses none was pleasanter than that
of Cornelys, the great sculptor, and Little Billee was such a
favourite 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 apoulet 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
forgathering 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 shiftless, feckless, futile
duffer was the Laird; and how greedy they both were, and how red and
coarse their ears and gills and cheeks grew as they fed, and how shiny
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---
110 bigger, by the side of the Herculean Taffy or the burly Laird of
Cockpen, than sixpennorth o' halfpence: 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 shell 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 ad-!

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!

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 enten-due,
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!'

There were to be more coincidences that night; it never rains them but
it pours!

So our three friends finished their coffee and liqueured up, and went
to Cornelys's three in a hansom--

'Like Mars.

A-smokin' their poipes and cigyars.'

Sir Louis Cornelys, as everybody knows, lives in a palace on Campden
Hill, a house of many windows; and whichever window he looks out of,
he sees his own garden and very little else. In spite of his eighty
years, he works as hard as ever, and his hand has lost but little of
its cunning. But he no longer gives those splendid parties that made
him almost as famous a host as he was an artist.

When his beautiful wife died he shut himself up from the world; and
now he never stirs out of his house and grounds except to fulfil his
duties at the Royal Academy, and dine once a year with the Queen.

It was very different in the early sixties. There was no pleasanter or
more festive house than his in London, winter or summer--no lordlier
host than he--no more irresistible hostesses than Lady Cornelys and
her lovely daughters; and if ever music had a right to call itself
divine, it was there you heard it--on late Saturday, nights during the
London season--when the foreign birds of song came over to reap their
harvest in London Town.

It was on one of the most brilliant of these Saturday nights that
Taffy and the Laird, chaperoned by Little Billee, made their debut at
Mechelen Lodge, and were received at the door of the immense music-
room by a tall, powerful man with splendid eyes and a gray beard, and
a small velvet cap on his head--and by a Greek matron so beautiful and
stately and magnificently attired that they felt inclined to sink them
on their bended knees as in the presence of some overwhelming Eastern
royalty--and were only prevented from doing so, perhaps, by the
simple, sweet, and cordial graciousness of her welcome.

And whom should they be shaking hands with next but Antony, Lorrimer,
and the Greek--each with a beard and moustache of nearly five years'
growth!

But they had no time for much exuberant greeting, for there was a
sudden piano crash--and then an immediate silence, as though for pins
to drop--and Signer Giuglini and the wondrous maiden Adelina Patti
sang the 'Miserere' out of Signor Verdi's most famous opera--to the
delight of all but a few very superior ones who had just read
Mendelssohn's letters (or misread them) and despised Italian music,
and thought cheaply of 'mere virtuosity,' either vocal or
instrumental.

When this was over, Little Billee pointed out all the lions to his
friends--from the Prime Minister down to the present scribe--who was
right glad to meet them again and talk of auld lang syne, and present
them to the daughters of the house and other charming ladies.

Then Roucouly, the great French baritone, sang Durien's favourite
song--

Plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'un moment;

Chagrin d'amour dure toute la vie...'

with quite a little drawing-room voice--but quite as divinely as he
had sung 'Noel, noel,' at the Madeleine in full blast one certain
Christmas Eve our three friends remembered well.

Then there was a violin solo by young Joachim, then as now the
greatest violinist of his time; and a solo on the pianoforte by Madame
Schumann, his only peeress! and these came as a wholesome check to the
levity of those for whom all music is but an agreeable pastime, a mere
emotional delight, in which the intellect has no part; and also as a
well-deserved humiliation to all virtuosi who play so charmingly that
they make their listeners forget the master who invented the music in
the lesser master who interprets it!

For these two--man and woman--the highest of their kind, never let you
forget it was Sebastian Bach they were playing--playing in absolute
perfection, in absolute forgetfulness of themselves--so that if you
weren't up to Bach, you didn't have a very good time!

But if you were (or wished it to be understood or thought you were),
you seized your opportunity and you scored; and by the earnestness of
your rapt and tranced immobility, and the stony, gorgon-like intensity
of your gaze, you rebuked the frivolous--as you had rebuked them
before by the listlessness and carelessness of your bored resignation
to the Signorina Patti's trills and fiorit-ures, or M. Roucouly's
pretty little French mannerisms.

And what added so much to the charm of this delightful concert was
that the guests were not packed together sardine-wise, as they are at
most concerts; they were comparatively few and well chosen, and could
get up and walk about and talk to their friends between the pieces,
and wander off into other rooms and look at endless beautiful things,
and stroll in the lovely grounds, by moon or star or Chinese-lantern
light.

And there the frivolous could sit and chat and laugh and flirt when
Bach was being played inside; and the earnest wander up and down
together in soul-communion, through darkened walks and groves and
alleys where the sound of French or Italian warblings could not reach
them, and talk in earnest tones of the great Zola, or Guy de
Maupassant and Pierre Loti, and exult in beautiful English over the
inferiority of English literature, English art, English music, English
everything else.

For these high-minded ones who can only bear the sight of classical
pictures and the sound of classical music do not necessarily read
classical books in any language--no Shakespeares or Dantes or Molieres
or Goethes for them. They know a trick worth two of that!

And the mere fact that these three immortal French writers of light
books I have just named had never been heard of at this particular
period doesn't very much matter; they had cognate predecessors whose
names I happen to forget. Any stick will do to beat a dog with, and
history is always repeating itself.

Feydeau, or Flaubert, let us say--or for those who don't know French
and cultivate an innocent mind, Miss Austen (for to be dead and buried
is almost as good as to be French and immoral!)--and Sebastian Bach,
and Sandro Botticelli--that all the arts should be represented. These
names are rather discrepant, but they make very good sticks for dog-
beating; and with a thorough knowledge and appreciation of these (or
the semblance thereof), you were well equipped in those days to hold
your own among the elect of intellectual London circles, and snub the
philistine to rights.

Then, very late, a tall, good-looking, swarthy foreigner came in, with
a roll of music in his hands, and his entrance made quite a stir; you
heard all round, 'Here's Glorioli,' or 'Ecco Glorioli,' or 'Voici
Glorioli,' till Glorioli got on your nerves. And beautiful ladies,
ambassadresses, female celebrities of all kinds, fluttered up to him
and cajoled and fawned;--as Svengali would have said, 'Prinzessen,
Comtessen, Serene English Altessen!'--and they soon forgot their
Highness and their Serenity!

For with very little pressing Glorioli stood up on the platform, with
his accompanist by his side at the piano, and in his hands a sheet of
music, at which he never looked. He looked at the beautiful ladies,
and ogled and smiled; and from his scarcely-parted, moist, thick,
bearded lips, which he always licked before singing, there issued the
most ravishing sounds that had ever been heard from throat of man or
woman or boy! He could sing both high and low and soft and loud, and
the frivolous were bewitched, as was only to be expected; but even the
earnestest of all, caught, surprised, rapt, astounded, shaken,
tickled, teased, harrowed, tortured, tantalised, aggravated, seduced,
demoralised, degraded, corrupted into mere naturalness, forgot to
dissemble their delight.

And Sebastian Bach (the especially adored of all really great
musicians, and also, alas! of many priggish outsiders who don't know a
single note and can't remember a single tune) was well forgotten for
the night; and who were more enthusiastic than the two great players
who had been playing Bach that evening? For these, at all events, were
broad and catholic and sincere, and knew what was beautiful, whatever
its kind.

It was but a simple little song that Glorioli sang, as light and
pretty as it could well be, almost worthy of the words it was written
to, and the words are De Musset's; and I love them so much I cannot
resist the temptation of setting them down here, for the mere sensuous
delight of writing them, as though I had just composed them myself:

'Bonjour Suzon, ma fleur des bois!
Es-tu toujours la plus jolie?
Je reviens, tel que tu me vois.
D'un grand voyage en Italie!
Du paradis j'ai fait le tour--
J'ai fait des vers--j'ai fait l'amour...
Mais que t'importe!
Je passe devant ta maison:
Ouvre ta porte!
Bonjour, Suzon!
'Je t'ai vue au temps des lilas.
Ton coeur joyeux venait d'eclore
Et tu disais: "Je ne veux pas.
Je ne veux pas qu'on m'aime encore."
Qu'as-tu fait depuis mon depart?
Qui part trop tot revient trop tard.
Mais que m'importe?
Je passe devant ta maison:
Ouvre ta porte!
Bonjour Suzon!'

And when it began, and while it lasted, and after it was over, one
felt really sorry for all the other singers. And nobody sang any more
that night; for Glorioli was tired, and wouldn't sing again, and none
were bold enough or disinterested enough to sing after him.

Some of my readers may remember that meteoric bird of song, who,
though a mere amateur, would condescend to sing for a hundred guineas
in the saloons of the great (as Monsieur Jourdain sold cloth); who
would sing still better for love and glory in the studios of his
friends.

For Glorioli--the biggest, handsomest, and most distinguished-looking
Jew that ever was one of the Sephardim (one of the Seraphim!)--hailed
from Spain, where he was junior partner in the great firm of Morales,
Perales, Gonzales, and Glorioli, wine merchants, Malaga. He travelled
for his own firm; his wine was good, and he sold much of it in
England. But his voice would bring him far more gold in the month he
spent here; for his wines have been equalled--if it be not libellous
to say so--but there was no voice like his anywhere in the world, and
no more finished singer.

Anyhow his voice got into Little Billee's head more than any wine, and
the boy could talk of nothing else for days and weeks; and was so
exuberant in his expressions of delight and gratitude that the great
singer took a real fancy to him (especially when he was told that this
fervent boyish admirer was one of the greatest of English painters);
and as a mark of his esteem, privately confided to him after supper
that every century two human nightingales were born--only two! a male
and a female; and that he, Glorioli, was the representative 'male
rossignol of this soi-disant dix-neuvieme siecle.'

'I can well believe that! And the female, your mate that should be---
la rossignolle, if there is such a word?' inquired Little Billee.

'Ah! mon ami... it was Alboni, till la petite Adelina Patti came out a
year or two ago; and now it is La Svengali.'

'La Svengali?'

'Oui, mon fy! You will hear her some day--et vous m'en direz des
nouvelles!'

'Why, you don't mean to say that she's got a better voice than Madame
Alboni?'

'Mon ami, an apple is an excellent thing--until you have tried a
peach! Her voice to that of Alboni is as a peach to an apple--I give
you my word of honour! but bah! the voice is a detail. It's what she
does with it--it's incredible! it gives one cold all down the back! it
drives you mad! it makes you weep hot tears by the spoonful! Ah! the
tear, mon fy! tenez! I can draw everything but that! Ca n'est pas dans
mes cordes! I can only madden with love! But La Svengali!...And then,
in the middle of it all, prrrout!...she makes you laugh! Ah! le beau
rire! faire rire avec des larmes plein les yeux--voila qui me passe!
.. . Mon ami, when I heard her it made me swear that even I would
never try to sing any more--it seemed too absurd! and I kept my word
for a month at least--and you know, je sais ce que je vaux, moi!'

'You are talking of La Svengali, I bet,' said Signer Spartia.

'Oui, parbleu! You have heard her?'

'Yes--at Vienna last winter,' rejoined the greatest singing-master in
the world. 'J'en suis fou! helas! I thought I could teach a woman how
to sing, till I heard that blackguard Svengali's pupil-He has married
her, they say?'

'That blackguard Svengali!' exclaimed Little Billee...'why, that must
be a Svengali I knew in Paris--a famous pianist! a friend of mine!'

'That's the man! also une fameuse crapule (sauf vot' respect); his
real name is Adler; his mother was a Polish singer; and he was a pupil
at the Leipsic Conservatorio. But he's an immense artist, and a great
singing-master, to teach a woman like that! and such a woman! belle
comme un ange--mais bete comme un pot. I tried to talk to her--all she
can say is "ja wohl," or "doch," or "nein," or "soh!" not a word of
English or French or Italian, though she sings them, oh! but divinely!
It is "il bel canto" come back to the world after a hundred years. .
..'

'But what voice is it?' asked Little Billee.

'Every voice a mortal woman can have--three octaves--four! and of such
a quality that people who can't tell one tune from another cry with
pleasure at the mere sound of it directly they hear her; just like
anybody else. Everything that Paganini could do with his violin, she
does with her voice only better--and what a voice! un vrai baume!'

'Now I don't mind petting zat you are schbeaking of La Sfen-cali,'
said Herr Kreutzer, the famous composer, joining in. 'Quelle
merfeille, hein? I heard her in St. Betersburg, at ze Vinter Balace.
Ze vomen all vent mat, and pulled off zeir bearls and tia-monts and
kave zem to her--vent town on zeir knees and gried and gissed her
hants. She tit not say vun vort! She tit not efen schmile! Ze men
schnifelled in ze gorners, and looked at ze bic-tures, and
tissempled--efen I, Johann Kreutzer! efen ze Emperor?'

'You're joking,' said Little Billee.

'My vrent, I neffer choke ven I talk apout zinging. You vill hear her
zum tay yourzellof, and you vill acree viz me zat zere are two classes
of beoble who zing. In ze vun class, La Sfencali; in ze ozzer, all ze
ozzer zingers!'

'And does she sing good music?'

'I ton't know. All music is koot ven she zings it. I forket ze zong; I
can only sink of ze zinger. Any koot zinger can zing a peautiful zong
and kif bleasure, I zubboce! But I voot zooner hear La Sfencali zing a
scale zan anypotty else zing ze most peautiful zong in ze vorldt--efen
vun of my own! Zat is berhaps how zung ze crate Italian zingers of ze
last century. It vas a lost art, and she has found it; and she must
haf pecun to zing pefore she pecan to sch-peak---or else she voot not
haf hat ze time to learn all zat she knows, for she is not yet zirty!
She zings in Paris in Ogdoper, Gott sei dank! and gums here after
Christmas to zing at Trury Lane. Chullien kifs her ten sousand
bounts!'

'I wonder, now? Why, that must be the woman I heard at Warsaw two
years ago--or three,' said young Lord Widow. 'It was at Count
Siloszech's. He'd heard her sing in the streets, with a tall black-
bearded ruffian, who accompanied her on a guitar, and a little
fiddling gypsy fellow. She was a handsome woman, with hair down to her
knees, but stupid as an owl. She sang at Siloszech's, and all the
fellows went mad and gave her their watches and diamond studs and gold
scarf-pins. By gad! I never heard or saw anything like it. I don't
know much about music myself couldn't tell "God save the Queen" from
"Pop goes the Weasel," if the people didn't get up and stand and take
their hats off; but I was as mad as the rest--why, I gave her a little
German-silver vinaigrette I'd just bought for my wife; hanged if I
didn't--and I was only just married, you know! It's the peculiar twang
of her voice, I suppose!'

And hearing all this, Little Billee made up his mind that life had
still something in store for him, since he would some day hear La
Svengali. Anyhow, he wouldn't shoot himself till then!

Thus the night wore itself away. The Prinzessen, Comtessen, and Serene
English Altessen (and other ladies of less exalted rank) departed home
in cabs and carriages; and hostess and daughters went to bed. Late
sitters of the ruder sex supped again, and smoked and chatted and
listened to comic songs and recitations by celebrated actors. Noble
dukes hobnobbed with low comedians; world-famous painters and
sculptors sat at the feet of Hebrew capitalists and aitchless
millionaires. Judges, cabinet ministers, eminent physicians and
warriors and philosophers saw Sunday morning steal over Campden Hill
and through the many windows of Mechelen Lodge, and listened to the
pipe of half-awakened birds, and smelt the freshness of the dark
summer dawn. And as Taffy and the Laird walked home to the Old Hummums
by daylight, they felt that last night was ages ago, and that since
then they had forgathered with 'much there was of the best in London.'
And then they reflected that 'much there was of the best in London'
were still strangers to them--except by reputation--for there had not
been time for many introductions: and this had made them feel a little
out of it; and they found they hadn't had such a very good time after
all. And there were no cabs. And they were tired, and their boots were
tight.

And the last they had seen of Little Billee before leaving was a
glimpse of their old friend in a corner of Lady Cornelys's boudoir,
gravely playing cup and ball with Fred Walker for sixpences--both so
rapt in the game that they were unconscious of anything else, and both
playing so well (with either hand) that they might have been
professional champions!

And that saturnine young sawbones, Jakes Talboys (now Sir Jakes, and
one of the most genial of Her Majesty's physicians), who, sometimes
after supper and champagne, was given to thoughtful, sympathetic, and
acute observation of his fellow-men, remarked to the Laird in a
whisper that was almost convivial:--

'Rather an enviable pair! Their united ages amount to forty-eight or
so, their united weights to about fifteen stone, and they couldn't
carry you or me between them. But if you were to roll all the other
brains that have been under this roof to-night into one, you wouldn't
reach the sum of their united genius. ... I wonder which of the two is
the most unhappy!'

The season over, the song-birds flown, summer on the wane, his
picture, the 'Moon-Dial,' sent to Moses Lyon's (the picture-dealer in
Conduit Street), Little Billee felt the time had come to go and see
his mother and sister in Devonshire, and make the sun shine twice as
brightly for them during a month or so, and the dew fall softer!

So one fine August morning found him at the Great Western Station---
the nicest station in all London, I think--except the stations that
book you to France and far away.

It always seems so pleasant to be going west! Little Billee loved that
station, and often went there for a mere stroll, to watch the people
starting on their westward way, following the sun towards Heaven knows
what joys or sorrows, and envy them their sorrows or their joys--any
sorrows or joys that were not merely physical, like a chocolate drop
or a pretty tune, a bad smell or a toothache.

And as he took a seat in a second-class carriage (it would be third in
these democratic days), south corner, back to the engine, with Silas
Marner, and Darwin's Origin of Species (which he was reading for the
third time), and Punch and other literature of a lighter kind to
beguile him on his journey, he felt rather bitterly how happy he could
be if the little spot, or knot, or blot, or clot which paralysed that
convolution of his brain where he kept his affections could but be
conjured away!

The dearest mother, the dearest sister in the world, in the dearest
little seaside village (or town) that ever was! and other dear
people---especially Alice, sweet Alice with hair so brown, his
sister's friend, the simple, pure, and pious maiden of his boyish
dreams: and himself, but for that wretched little kill-joy cerebral
occlusion, as sound, as healthy, as full of life and energy, as he had
ever been!

And when he wasn't reading Silas Marner, or looking out of window at
the flying landscape, and watching it revolve round its middle
distance (as it always seems to do), he was sympathetically taking
stock of his fellow-passengers, and mildly envying them, one after
another, indiscriminately!

A fat, old, wheezy philistine, with a bulbous nose and only one eye,
who had a plain, sickly daughter, to whom he seemed devoted, body and
soul; an old lady, who still wept furtively at recollections of the
parting with her grandchildren, which had taken place at the station
(they had borne up wonderfully, as grandchildren do); a consumptive
curate, on the opposite corner seat by the window, whose tender,
anxious wife (sitting by his side) seemed to have no thoughts in the
whole world but for him; and her patient eyes were his stars of
consolation, since he turned to look into them almost every minute,
and always seemed a little the happier for doing so. There is no
better star-gazing than that! So Little Billee gave her up his corner
seat, that the poor sufferer might have those stars where he could
look into them comfortably without turning his head.

Indeed (as was his wont with everybody), Little Billee made himself
useful and pleasant to his fellow-travellers in many ways--so many
that long before they had reached their respective journeys' ends they
had almost grown to love him as an old friend, and longed to know who
this singularly attractive and brilliant youth, this genial, dainty,
benevolent little princekin could possibly be, who was dressed so
fashionably, and yet went second class, and took such kind thought of
others; and they wondered at the happiness that must be his at merely
being alive, and told him more of their troubles in six hours than
they told many an old friend in a year.

But he told them nothing about himself--that self he was so sick of--
and left them to wonder.

And at his own journey's end, the farthest end of all, he found his
mother and sister waiting for him, in a beautiful little pony-
carriage--his last gift--and with them sweet Alice, and in her eyes,
for one brief moment, that unconscious look of love surprised which is
not to be forgotten for years and years and years--which can only be
seen by the eyes that meet it, and which, for the time it lasts (just
a flash), makes all women's eyes look exactly the same (I'm told): and
it seemed to Little Billee that, for the twentieth part of a second,
Alice had looked at him with Trilby's eyes; or his mother's, when that
he was a little tiny boy.

It all but gave him the thrill he thirsted for! Another twentieth part
of a second, perhaps, and his brain-trouble would have melted away;
and Little Billee would have come into his own again--the kingdom of
love!

A beautiful human eye! Any beautiful eye--a dog's, a deer's, a
donkey's, an owl's even! To think of all that it can look, and all
that it can see! all that it can even seem., sometimes! What a prince
among gems! what a star!

But a beautiful eye that lets the broad white light of infinite space
(so bewildering and garish and diffused) into one pure virgin heart,
to be filtered there! and lets it out again, duly warmed, softened,
concentrated, sublimated, focused to a point as in a precious stone,
that it may shed itself (a love-laden effulgence) into some stray
fellow-heart close by--through pupil and iris, entre quatre-z-yeux--
the very elixir of life!

Alas! that such a crown-jewel should ever lose its lustre and go
blind!

Not so blind or dim, however, but it can still see well enough to look
before and after, and inward and upward, and drown itself in tears,
and yet not die! And that's the dreadful pity of it. And this is a
quite uncalled-for digression; and I can't think why I should have
gone out of my way (at considerable pains) to invent it! In fact-

'Of this 'ere song, should I be axed the reason for to show.

I don't exactly know, I don't exactly know!

But all my family dwells upon Nancy.'

'How pretty Alice has grown, mother! quite lovely, I think! and so
nice; but she was always as nice as she could be!'

So observed Little Billee to his mother that evening as they sat in
the garden and watched the crescent moon sink to the Atlantic.

'Ah! my darling Willie! If you could only guess how happy you would
make your poor old mammy by growing fond of Alice... And Blanche, too!
what a joy for her!'

'Good heavens! mother...Alice is not for the like of me! She's for
some splendid young Devon squire, six foot high, and acred and
whiskered within an inch of his life!...'

'Ah, my darling Willie! you are not of those who ask for love in vain.
... If you only knew how she believes in you! She almost beats your
poor old mammy at that!'

And that night he dreamed of Alice--that he loved her as a sweet good
woman should be loved; and knew, even in his dream, that it was but a
dream; but, oh! it was good! and he managed not to wake; and it was a
night to be marked with a white stone! And (still in his dream) she
had kissed him, and healed him of his brain-trouble for ever. But when
he woke next morning, alas! his brain-trouble was with him still, and
he felt that no dream kiss would ever cure it--nothing but a real kiss
from Alice's own pure lips!

And he rose thinking of Alice, and dressed and breakfasted thinking of
her--and how fair she was, and how innocent, and how well and
carefully trained up the way she should go--the beau ideal of a
wife... Could she possibly care for a shrimp like himself?

For in his love of outward form he could not understand that any woman
who had eyes to see should ever quite condone the signs of physical
weakness in man, in favour of any mental gifts or graces whatsoever.

Little Greek that he was, he worshipped the athlete, and opined that
all women without exception--all English women especially--must see
with the same eyes as himself.

He had once been vain and weak enough to believe in Trilby's love
(with a Taffy standing by--a careless, unsusceptible Taffy, who was
like unto the gods of Olympus!)--and Trilby had given him up at a
word, a hint--for all his frantic clinging.

She would not have given up Taffy pour si pen, had Taffy but lifted a
little finger! It is always 'just whistle, and I'll come to you, my
lad!' with the likes of Taffy...but Taffy hadn't even whistled! Yet
still he kept thinking of Alice--and he felt he couldn't think of her
well enough till he went out for a stroll by himself on a sheep-
trimmed down. So he took his pipe and his Darwin, and out he strolled
into the early sunshine--up the green Red Lane, past the pretty
church, Alice's father's church--and there, at the gate, patiently
waiting for his mistress, sat Alice's dog--an old friend of his, whose
welcome was a very warm one.

Little Billee thought of Thackeray's lovely poem in Pendennis:

'She comes--she's here--she's past!

May heaven go with her! .. .'

Then he and the dog went on together to a little bench on the edge of
the cliff--within sight of Alice's bedroom window. It was called 'the
Honeymooners' Bench.'

'That look--that look--that look! Ah--but Trilby had looked like that,
too! And there are many Taffys in Devon!'

He sat himself down and smoked and gazed at the sea below, which the
sun (still in the east) had not yet filled with glare and robbed of
the lovely sapphire-blue, shot with purple and dark green, that comes
over it now and again of a morning on that most beautiful coast.

There was a fresh breeze from the west, and the long, slow billows
broke into creamier foam than ever, which reflected itself as a tender
white gleam in the blue concavities of their shining shoreward curves
as they came rolling in. The sky was all of turquoise but for the
smoke of a distant steamer--a long thin horizontal streak of dun--and
there were little brown or white sails here and there, dotting; and
the stately ships went on...

Little Billee tried hard to feel all this beauty with his heart as
well as his brain--as he had so often done when a boy--and cursed his
insensibility out loud for at least the thousand-and-first time.

Why couldn't these waves of air and water be turned into equivalent
waves of sound, that he might feel them through the only channel that
reached 'his emotions! That one joy was still left to him--but, alas!
alas! he was only a painter of pictures--and not a maker of music!

He recited 'Break, break, break,' to Alice's dog, who loved him and
looked up into his face with sapient, affectionate eyes--and whose
name, like that of so many dogs in fiction and so few in fact, was
simply Tray. For Little Billee was much given to monologues out loud,
and profuse quotations from his favourite bards.

Everybody quoted that particular poem either mentally or aloud when
they sat on that particular bench--except a few old-fashioned people,
who still said.

'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll!'

or people of the very highest culture, who only quoted the nascent
(and crescent) Robert Browning; or people of no culture at all, who
simply held their tongues--and only felt the more!

Tray listened silently.

'Ah Tray, the best thing but one to do with the sea is to paint it.
The next best thing to that is to bathe in it. The best of all is to
lie asleep at the bottom. How would you like that?

'"And on thy ribs the limpet sticks.

And in thy heart the scrawl shall play..."'

Tray's tail became as a wagging point of interrogation, and he turned
his head first on one side and then on the other--his eyes fixed on
Little Billee's, his face irresistible in its genial doggy
wistfulness.

'Tray, what a singularly good listener you are--and therefore what
singularly good manners you've got! I suppose all dogs have!' said
Little Billee; and then, in a very tender voice, he exclaimed.

'Alice, Alice, Alice!'

And Tray uttered a soft, cooing, nasal croon in his head register,
though he was a baritone dog by nature, with portentous, warlike
chest-notes of the jingo order.

'Tray, your mistress is a parson's daughter, and therefore twice as
much of a mystery as any other woman in this puzzling world!

'Tray, if my heart weren't stopped with wax, like the ears of the
companions of Ulysses when they rowed past the sirens--you've heard of
Ulysses, Tray? he loved a dog--if my heart weren't stopped with wax, I
should be deeply in love with your mistress; perhaps she would marry
me if I asked her--there's no accounting for tastes!--and I know
enough of myself to know that I should make her a good husband--that I
should make her happy--and I should make two other women happy
besides.

'As for myself personally, Tray, it doesn't very much matter. One good
woman would do as well as another, if she's equally good-looking. You
doubt it? Wait till you get a pimple inside your bump of--your bump
of--wherever you keep your fondnesses, Tray.

'For that's what's the matter with me--a pimple--just a little clot of
blood at the root of a nerve, and no bigger than a pin's point!

'That's a small thing to cause such a lot of wretchedness, and wreck a
fellow's life, isn't it? Oh, curse it, curse it, curse it--every day
and all day long.

'And just as small a thing will take it away, I'm told!

'Ah! grains of sand are small things--and so are diamonds! But diamond
or grain of sand, only Alice has got that small thing! Alice alone, in
all the world, has got the healing touch for me now; the hands, the
lips, the eyes! I know it--I feel it! I dreamed it last night! She
looked me well in the face, and took my hand--both hands---and kissed
me, eyes and mouth, and told me how she loved me. Ah! what a dream it
was! And my little clot melted away like a snowflake on the lips, and
I was my old self again, after many years--and all through that kiss
of a pure woman.

'I've never been kissed by a pure woman in my life--never! except by
my dear mother and sister; and mothers and sisters don't count, when
it comes to kissing.

'Ah! sweet physician that she is, and better than all! It will all
come back again with a rush, just as I dreamed, and we will have a
good time together, we three! .. .

'But your mistress is a parson's daughter, and believes everything
she's been taught from a child, just as you do--at least, I hope so.
And I like her for it--and you too.

'She has believed her father--will she ever believe me, who think so
differently? And if she does, will it be good for her?--and then,
where will her father come in?

'Oh! it's a bad thing to live and no longer believe and trust in your
father, Tray! to doubt either his honesty or his intelligence. For he
(with your mother to help) has taught you all the best he knows, if he
has been a good father--till some one else comes and teaches you
better--or worse!

'And then, what are you to believe of what good still remains of all
that early teaching--and how are you to sift the wheat from the
chaff?...

'Kneel undisturbed, fair saint! I, for one, will never seek to
undermine thy faith in any father, on earth or above it!

'Yes, there she kneels in her father's church, her pretty head bowed
over her clasped hands, her cloak and skirts falling in happy folds
about her: I see it all!

'And underneath, that poor, sweet, soft, pathetic thing of flesh and
blood, the eternal woman--great heart and slender brain--for ever
enslaved or enslaving, never self-sufficing, never free...that dear,
weak, delicate shape, so cherishable, so perishable, that I've had to
paint so often, and know so well by heart! and love...ah, how I love
it! Only painter-fellows and sculptor-fellows can ever quite know the
fulness of that pure love.

'There she kneels and pours forth her praise or plaint, meekly and
duly. Perhaps it's for me she's praying.

'Leave thou thy sister when she prays.'

'She believes her poor little prayer will be heard and answered
somewhere up aloft. The impossible will be done. She wants what she
wants so badly, and prays for it so hard.

'She believes--she believes--what doesn't she believe, Tray?

'The world was made in six days. It is just six thousand years old.
Once it all lay smothered under rain-water for many weeks, miles deep,
because there were so many wicked people about somewhere down in
Judea, where they didn't know everything! A costly kind of clearance!
And then there was Noah, who wasn't wicked, and his most respectable
family, and his ark--and Jonah and his whale--and Joshua and the sun,
and what not. I remember it all, you see, and, oh! such wonderful
things that have happened since! And there's everlasting agony for
those who don't believe as she does; and yet she is happy; and good,
and very kind; for the mere thought of any live creature in pain makes
her wretched!

'After all, if she believes in me, she'll believe in anything; let
her!

'Indeed, I'm not sure that it's not rather ungainly for a pretty woman
not to believe in all these good old cosmic taradiddles, as it is for
a pretty child not to believe in Little Red Riding-hood, and Jack and
the Beanstalk, and Morgiana and the Forty Thieves; we learn them at
our mother's knee, and how nice they are! Let us go on believing them
as long as we can, till the child grows up and the woman dies and it's
all found out.

'Yes, Tray, I will be dishonest for her dear sake. I will kneel by her
side if ever I have the happy chance, and ever after, night and
morning, and all day long on Sundays if she wants me to! What will I
not do for that one pretty woman who believes in me? I will respect
even that belief, and do my little best to keep it alive for ever. It
is much too precious an earthly boon for me to play ducks and drakes
with. .. .

'So much for Alice, Tray--your sweet mistress and mine.

'But then, there's Alice's papa--and that's another pair of sleeves,
as we say in France.

'Ought one ever to play at make-believe with a full-grown man for any
consideration whatever even though he be a parson, and a possible
father-in-law? There's a case of conscience for you!

'When I ask him for his daughter, as I must, and he asks me for my
profession of faith, as he will, what can I tell him? The truth?

(And now, I regret to say, the reticent Little Billee is going to show
his trusty four-footed friend the least attractive side of his many-
sided nature, its modernity, its dreary scepticism--his own unhappy
portion of la maladie du siecle)...

'But then, what will he say? What allowances will he make for a poor
little weak-kneed, well-meaning waif of a painter-fellow like me,
whose only choice lay between Mr. Darwin and the Pope of Rome, and who
has chosen once and for ever--and that long ago--before he'd ever even
heard of Mr. Darwin's name.

'Besides, why should he make allowances for me? I don't for him. I
think no more of a parson than he does of a painter-fellow--and that's
precious little, I'm afraid.

'What will he think of a man who says:

'"Look here! the God of your belief isn't mine and never will be---but
I love your daughter, and she loves me, and I'm the only man to make
her happy!"

'He's no Jephthah; he's made of flesh and blood, although he's a
parson--and loves his daughter as much as Shylock loved his.

'Tell me, Tray--thou that livest among parsons--what man, not being a
parson himself, can guess how a parson would think, an average parson,
confronted by such a poser as that?

'Does he, dare he, can he ever think straight or simply on any subject
as any other man thinks, hedged in as he is by so many limitations?

'He is as shrewd, vain, worldly, self-seeking, ambitious, jealous,
censorious, and all the rest, as you or I, Tray--for all his Christian
profession--and just as fond of his kith and kin!

'He is considered a gentleman--which perhaps you and I are not--unless
we happen to behave as such; it is a condition of his noble calling.
Perhaps it's in order to become a gendeman that he's become a parson!
It's about as short a royal road as any to that enviable distinction--
as short almost as Her Majesty's commission, and much safer, and much
less expensive--within reach of the sons of most fairly successful
butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers.

'While still a boy he has bound himself irrevocably to certain
beliefs, which he will be paid to preserve and preach and enforce
through life, and act up to through thick and thin--at all events in
the eyes of others--even his nearest and dearest--even the wife of his
bosom.

'They are his bread and butter, these beliefs--and a man mustn't
quarrel with his bread and butter. But a parson must quarrel with
those who don't believe as he tells them!

'Yet a few years' thinking and reading and experience of life, one
would suppose, might possibly just shake his faith a little (just as
though, instead of being parson, he had been tinker, tailor, soldier,
sailor, gentleman, apothecary, ploughboy, thief), and teach him that
many of these beliefs are simply childish--and some of them very
wicked indeed--and most immoral.

'It is very wicked and most immoral to believe, or affect to believe,
and tell others to believe, that the unseen, unspeakable, unthinkable
Immensity we're all part and parcel of, source of eternal, infinite,
indestructible life and light and might, is a kind of wrathful,
glorified, and self-glorifying ogre in human shape, with human
passions, and most inhuman hates--who suddenly made us out of nothing,
one fine day--just for a freak--and made us so badly that we fell the
next--and turned us adrift the day after--damned us from the very
beginning--ab ovo--ab ovo usque ad malum--ha, ha!--and ever since!
never gave us a chance!

'All-merciful Father, indeed! Why, the Prince of Darkness was an angel
in comparison (and a gentleman into the bargain).

'Just think of it, Tray--a finger in every little paltry pie--an eye
and an ear at every keyhole, even that of the larder, to catch us
tripping, and find out if we're praising loud enough, or grovelling
low enough, or fasting hard enough--poor God-forsaken worms!

'And if we're naughty and disobedient, everlasting torment for us;
torture of so hideous a kind that we wouldn't inflict it on the basest
criminal, not for one single moment!

'Or else, if we're good and do as we are bid, an eternity of bliss so
futile, so idle, and so tame that we couldn't stand it for a week, but
for thinking of its one horrible alternative, and of our poor brother
for ever and ever roasting away, and howling for the drop of water he
never gets.

'Everlasting flame, or everlasting dishonour--nothing between!

'Isn't it ludicrous as well as pitiful--a thing to make one snigger
through one's tears? Isn't it a grievous sin to believe in such things
as these, and go about teaching and preaching them, and being paid for
it--a sin to be heavily chastised, and a shame? What a legacy!

'They were shocking bad artists, those conceited, narrow-minded Jews,
those poor old doting monks and priests and bigots of the grewsome,
dark age of faith! They couldn't draw a bit--no perspective, no
anatomy, no chiaro-oscuro; and it's a woeful image they managed to
evolve for us out of the depths of their fathomless ignorance, in
their zeal to keep us off all the forbidden fruit we're all so fond
of, because we were built like that! And by whom? By our Maker, I
suppose (who also made the forbidden fruit, and made it very nice--and
put it so conveniently for you and me to see and smell and reach,
Tray--and sometimes even pick, alas!).

'And even at that it's a failure, this precious image! Only the very
foolish little birds are frightened into good behaviour. The naughty
ones laugh and wink at each other, and pull out its hair and beard
when nobody's looking, and build their nests out of the straw it's
stuffed with (the naughty little birds in black, especially), and pick
up what they want under its very nose, and thrive uncommonly well; and
the good ones fly away out of sight; and some day, perhaps, find a
home in some happy, useful fatherland far away where the Father isn't
a bit like this. Who knows?

'And I'm one of the good little birds, Tray--at least, I hope so. And
that unknown Father lives in me whether I will or no, and I love Him
whether He be or not, just because I can't help it, and with the best
and bravest love that can be--the perfect love that believeth no evil,
arid seeketh no reward, and casteth out fear. For I'm His father as
much as He's mine, since I've conceived the thought of Him after my
own fashion!

'And He lives in you too, Tray--you and all your kind. Yes, good dog,
you king of beasts, I see it in your eyes...

'Ah, bon Dieu Pere, le Dieu des bonnes gens! Oh! if we only knew for
certain, Tray! what martyrdom would we not endure, you and I, with a
happy smile and a grateful heart--for sheer love of such a father! How
little should we care for the things of this earth!

'But the poor parson?

'He must willy-nilly go on believing, or affecting to believe, just as
he is told, word for word, or else good-bye to his wife and children's
bread and butter, his own preferment, perhaps even his very
gentility--that gentility of which his Master thought so little, and
he and his are apt to think so much--with possibly the Archbishopric
of Canterbury at the end of it, the baton de marechal that lies in
every clerical knapsack.

'What a temptation! one is but human!

'So how can he be honest without believing certain things, to believe
which (without shame) one must be as simple as a little child; as, by
the way, he is so cleverly told to be in these matters, and so
cleverly tells us--and so seldom is himself on any other matter
whatever--his own interests, other people's affairs, the world, the
flesh, and the devil! And that's clever of him too...

'And if he chooses to be as simple as a little child, why shouldn't I
treat him as a little child, for his own good, and fool him to the top
of his little bent for his dear daughter's sake, that I may make her
happy, and thereby him too?

'And if he's not quite so simple as all that, and makes artful little
compromises with his conscience--for a good purpose, of course--why
shouldn't I make artful little compromises with mine, and for a better
purpose still, and try to get what I want in the way he does? I want
to marry his daughter far worse than he can ever want to live in a
palace, and ride in a carriage and pair with a mitre on the panels.

'If he cheats, why shouldn't I cheat too?

'If he cheats, he cheats everybody all round--the wide, wide world,
and something wider and higher still that can't be measured, something
in himself. I only cheat him!

'If he cheats, he cheats for the sake of very worldly things indeed--
tithes, honours, influence, power, authority, social consideration and
respect--not to speak of bread and butter! I only cheat for the love
of a lady fair--and cheating for cheating, I like my cheating best.

'So, whether he cheats or not, I'll--

'Confound it! what would old Taffy do in such a case, I wonder? ...

'Oh, bother! it's no good wondering what old Taffy would do. 'Taffy
never wants to marry anybody's daughter; he doesn't even want to paint
her! He only wants to paint his beastly ragamuffins and thieves and
drunkards, and be left alone.

'Besides, Taffy's as simple as a little child himself, and couldn't
fool any one, and wouldn't if he could--not even a parson. But if any
one tries to fool him, my eyes! don't he cut up rough, and call names,
and kick up a shindy, and even knock people down! That's the worst of
fellows like Taffy. They're too good for this world and too solemn.
They're impossible, and lack all sense of humour. In point of fact
Taffy's a gentleman--poor fellow! et puis voila!

'I'm not simple--worse luck; and I can't knock people down--I only
wish I could! I can only paint them! and not even that "as they really
are!"...Good old Taffy! .. . 'Faint heart never won fair lady! 'Oh,
happy, happy thought--I'll be brave and win! 'I can't knock people
down, or do doughty deeds, but I'll be brave in my own little way--the
only way I can.

'I'll simply lie through thick and thin--I must--I will--nobody need
ever be a bit the wiser! I can do more good by lying than by telling
the truth, and make more deserving people happy, including myself and
the sweetest girl alive--the end shall justify the means: that's my
excuse, my only excuse! and this lie of mine is on so stupendous a
scale that it will have to last me for life. It's my only one, but its
name is Lion! and I'll never tell another as long as I live.

'And now that I know what temptation really is, I'll never think any
harm of any parson any more .. . never, never, never!'

So the little man went on, as if he knew all about it, had found it
all out for himself, and nobody else had ever found it out before! and
I am not responsible for his ways of thinking (which are not
necessarily my own).

It must be remembered, in extenuation, that he was very young, and not
very wise: no philosopher, no scholar--just a painter of lovely
pictures; only that and nothing more. Also, that he was reading Mr.
Darwin's immortal book for the third time, and it was a little too
strong for him; also, that all this happened in the early sixties,
long ere Religion had made up her mind to meet Science half-way, and
hobnob and kiss and be friends. Alas! before such a lying down of the
lion and the lamb can ever come to pass, Religion will have to perform
a larger share of the journey than half, I fear!

Then, still carried away by the flood of his own eloquence (for he had
never had such an innings as this, nor such a listener), he again
apostrophised the dog Tray, who had been growing somewhat inattentive
(like the reader, perhaps), in language more beautiful than ever:

'Oh, to be like you, Tray--and secrete love and goodwill from morn
till night, from night till morning--like saliva, without effort! with
never a moment's cessation of flow, even in disgrace and humiliation!
How much better to love than to be loved--to love as you do, my
Tray---so warmly, so easily, so unremittingly--to forgive all wrongs
and neglect and injustice so quickly and so well--and forget a
kindness never! Lucky dog that you are!

'"Oh! could I feel as I have felt, or be as I have been.

Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished scene.

As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish tho' they be.

So 'midst this withered waste of life those tears would flow to me!"

'What do you think of those lines, Tray? I love them, because my
mother taught them to me when I was about your age--six years old, or
seven! and before the bard who wrote them had fallen; like Lucifer,
son of the morning! Have you ever heard of Lord Byron, Tray? He too,
like Ulysses, loved a dog, and many people think that's about the best
there is to be said of him nowadays! Poor Humpty Dumpty! Such a swell
as he once was! Not all the king's horses, nor all the--'

Here Tray jumped up suddenly and bolted--he saw some one else he was
fond of, and ran to meet him. It was the vicar, coming out of his
vicarage.

A very nice-looking vicar--fresh, clean, alert, well tanned by sun and
wind and weather--a youngish vicar still; tall, stout, gentlemanlike,
shrewd, kindly, worldly, a trifle pompous, and authoritative more than
a trifle; not much given to abstract speculation, and thinking fifty
times more of any sporting and orthodox young country squire, well-
inched and well-acred (and well-whiskered), than of all the painters
in Christendom.

'"When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war,"' thought Little
Billee; and he felt a little uncomfortable. Alice's father had never
loomed so big and impressive before, or so distressingly nice to look
at.

'Welcome, my Apelles, to your ain countree, which is growing quite
proud of you, I declare! Young Lord Archie Waring was saying only last
night that he wished he had half your talent! He's crazed about
painting, you know, and actually wants to be a painter himself. The
poor dear old marquis is quite sore about it!'

With this happy exordium the parson stopped and shook hands; and they
both stood for a while, looking seaward. The parson said the usual
things about the sea--its blueness, its grayness, its greenness, its
beauty, its sadness, its treachery.

'"Who shall put forth on thee.

Unfathomable sea!"'

'Who indeed!' answered Little Billee, quite agreeing. 'I vote we
don't, at all events.' So they turned inland.

The parson said the usual things about the land (from the country-
gentleman's point of view), and the talk began to flow quite
pleasantly, with quoting of the usual poets, and capping of quotations
in the usual way--for they had known each other many years, both here
and in London. Indeed, the vicar had once been Little Billee's tutor.

And thus, amicably, they entered a small wooded hollow. Then the
vicar, turning of a sudden his full blue gaze on the painter, asked,
sternly--

'What book's that you've got in your hand, Willie?'

'A--a--it's the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin. I'm very f-f-
fond of it. I'm reading it for the third time... It's very g-g-good.
It accounts for things, you know.'

Then, after a pause, and still more sternly---

'What place of worship do you most attend in London--especially of an
evening, William?'

Then stammered Little Billee, all self-control forsaking him--

'I d-d-don't attend any place of worship at all--morning, afternoon,
or evening. I've long given up going to church altogether. I can only
be frank with you; I'll tell you why...'

And as they walked along the talk drifted on to very momentous
subjects indeed, and led, unfortunately, to a serious falling out--for
which probably both were to blame--and closed in a distressful way at
the other end of the little wooded hollow--a way most sudden and
unexpected, and quite grievous to relate. When they emerged into the
open, the parson was quite white, and the painter crimson.

'Sir,' said the parson, squaring himself up to more than his full
height and breadth and dignity, his face big with righteous wrath, his
voice full of strong menace--'sir, you're--you're a--you're a thief,
sir, a thief! You're trying to rob me of my Saviour! Never you dare to
darken my door-step again!'

'Sir,' said Little Billee, with a bow, 'if it comes to calling names,
you're--you're a--no; you're Alice's father; and whatever else you are
besides, I'm another for trying to be honest with a parson; so good-
morning to you.'

And each walked off in an opposite direction, stiff as pokers; and
Tray stood between, looking first at one receding figure, then at the
other, disconsolate.

And thus Little Billee found out that he could no more lie than he
could fly. And so he did not marry sweet Alice after all, and no doubt
it was ordered for her good and his. But there was tribulation for
many days in the house of Bagot, and for many months in one tender,
pure, and pious bosom.

And the best and the worst of it all is that, not very many years
after, the good vicar--more fortunate than most clergymen who dabble
in stocks and shares--grew suddenly very rich through a lucky
speculation in Irish beer, and suddenly, also, took to thinking
seriously about things (as a man of business should)--more seriously
than he had ever thought before. So at least the story goes in North
Devon, and it is not so new as to be incredible. Little doubts grew
into big ones--big doubts resolved themselves into downright
negations. He quarrelled with his bishop; he quarrelled with his dean;
he even quarrelled with his 'poor dear old marquis,' who died before
there was time to make it up again. And finally he felt it his duty,
in conscience, to secede from a Church which had become too narrow to
hold him, and took himself and his belongings to London, where at
least he could breathe. But there he fell into a great disquiet, for
the long habit of feeling himself always en evidence--of being looked
up to and listened to without contradiction; of exercising influence
and authority in spiritual matters (and even temporal); of impressing
women, especially, with his commanding presence, his fine sonorous
voice, his lofty brow, so serious and smooth, his soft, big waving
hands, which soon lost their country tan--all this had grown as a
second nature to him, the breath of his nostrils, a necessity of his
life. So he rose to be the most popular Positivist preacher of his
day, and pretty broad at that.

But his dear daughter Alice, she stuck to the old faith, and married a
venerable High-Church archdeacon, who very cleverly clutched at and
caught her and saved her for himself just as she stood shivering on
the very brink of Rome; and they were neither happy nor unhappy
together---un menage bourgeois, ni beau ni laid, ni ban ni mauvais.
And thus, alas! the bond of religious sympathy, that counts for so
much In united families, no longer existed between father and
daughter, and the heart's division divided them. Ce que c'est que de
nous!...The pity of it!

And so no more of sweet Alice with hair so brown.
 
 

PART SIXTH

'Vraiment, la reine aupres d'elle etait laide
Quand, vers le soir.
Elle passait sur le'pont de Tolede
Un corset noir!
Un chapelet du temps de Charlemagne
Ornait son cou...
Le vent qui vient a trovers la montagne
Me rendrafou!
Dansez, chantez, villageois! la nuit tombe. .
Sabine, un jour.
A tout donne--sa beaute de colombe.
Et son amour--
Pour un anneau du Comte de Saldagne.
Pour un bijou...
Le vent qui vient it trovers la montagne
M'a rendufou!'

BEHOLD OUR THREE MUSKETEERS of the brush once more reunited in Paris,
famous, after long years.

In emulation of the good Dumas, we will call it 'cinq ans apres.' It
was a little more.

Taffy stands for Porthos and Athos rolled into one since he is big and
good-natured, and strong enough to 'assommer un homme d'un coup de
poing,' and also stately and solemn, of aristocratic and romantic
appearance, and not too fat--not too much ongbongpwang, as the Laird
called it--and also he does not dislike a bottle of wine, or even two,
and looks as if he had a history.

The Laird, of course, is D'Artagnan, since he sells his pictures well,
and by the time we are writing of has already become an Associate of
the Royal Academy; like Quentin Durward, this D'Artagnan was a
Scotsman:

'Ah, wasna he a Roguey, this piper of Dundee!'

And Little Billee, the dainty friend of duchesses, must stand for
Aramis, I fear! It will not do to push the simile too far; besides,
unlike the good Dumas, one has a conscience. One does not play ducks
and drakes with historical facts, or tamper with historical
personages. And if Athos, Porthos, and Co. are not historical by this
time, I should like to know who are!

Well, so are Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee--tout ce qu'ily a de
plus historique!

Our three friends, well groomed, frock-coated, shirt-collared within
an inch of their lives, duly scarfed and scarf-pinned, chimney-pot-
hatted, and most beautifully trousered, and balmorally booted, or
neatly spatted (or whatever was most correct at the time), are
breakfasting together on coffee, rolls, and butter at a little round
table in the huge courtyard of an immense caravanserai, paved with
asphalt, and covered in at the top with a glazed roof that admits the
sun and keeps out the rain--and the air.

A magnificent old man as big as Taffy, in black cloth coat and
breeches and black silk stockings, and a large metal chain round his
neck and chest, looks down like Jove from a broad flight of marble
steps--as though to welcome the coming guests, who arrive in cabs and
railway omnibuses through a huge archway on the boulevard; or to speed
those who part through a lesser archway opening on to a side street.

'Bon voyage, messieurs et dames!'

At countless other little tables other voyagers are breakfasting or
ordering breakfast; or, having breakfasted, are smoking and chatting
and looking about. It is a babel of tongues--the cheer-fullest,
busiest, merriest scene in the world, apparently the costly place of
rendezvous for all wealthy Europe and America; an atmosphere of
banknotes and gold.

Already Taffy has recognised (and been recognised by) half a dozen old
fellow-Crimeans, of unmistakable military aspect like himself; and
three canny Scotsmen have discreetly greeted the Laird; and as for
Little Billee, he is constantly jumping up from his breakfast and
running to this table or that, drawn by some irresistible British
smile of surprised and delighted female recognition: 'What, you here?
How nice! Come over to hear La Svengali, I suppose?'

At the top of the marble steps in a long terrace, with seats and
people sitting, from which tall glazed doors, elaborately carved and
gilded, give access to luxurious drawing-rooms, dining-rooms, reading-
rooms, lavatories, postal and telegraph offices; and all round and
about are huge square green boxes, out of which grow tropical and
exotic evergreens all the year round--with beautiful names that I have
forgotten. And leaning against these boxes are placards announcing
what theatrical or musical entertainments will take place in Paris
that day or night; and the biggest of these placards (and the most
fantastically decorated) informs the cosmopolite world that Madame
Svengali intends to make her first appearance in Paris that very
evening, at nine punctually, in the Cirque des Bashibazoucks, Rue St.
Honore!

Our friends had only arrived the previous night, but they had managed
to secure stalls a week beforehand. No places were any longer to be
got for love or money. Many people had come to Paris on purpose to
hear La Svengali--many famous musicians from England and everywhere
else--but they would have to wait many days.

The fame of her was like a rolling snow-ball that had been rolling all
over Europe for the last two years--wherever there was snow to be
picked up in the shape of golden ducats.

Their breakfast over, Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee, cigar in
mouth, arm-in-arm, the huge Taffy in the middle (comme autre-fois),
crossed the sunshiny boulevard into the shade, and went down the Rue
de la Paix, through the Place Vendome and the Rue Castiglione to the
Rue de Rivoli--quite leisurely, and with a tender midriff-warming
sensation of freedom and delight at almost every step.

Arrived at the corner pastrycook's, they finished the stumps of their
cigars as they looked at the well-remembered show in the window; then
they went in and had, Taffy a Madeleine, the Laird a Baba, and Little
Billee a Savarin--and each, I regret to say, a liqueur-glass of rhum
de l'ajamaique.

After this they sauntered through the Tuileries Gardens, and by the
quay to their favourite Pont des Arts, and looked up and down the
river--comme autrefois!

It is an enchanting prospect at any time and under any circumstances;
but on a beautiful morning in mid-October, when you haven't seen it
for five years, and are still young! and almost every stock and stone
that meets your eye, every sound, every scent, has some sweet and
subtle reminder for you--

Let the reader have no fear. I will not attempt to describe it. I
shouldn't know where to begin (nor when to leave off!).

Not but what many changes had been wrought; many old landmarks were
missing. And among them, as they found out a few minutes later, and
much to their chagrin, the good old Morgue!

They inquired of a gardien de la paix, who told them that a new
Morgue--'une bien jolie Morgue, ma foi!'--and much more commodious and
comfortable than the old one, had been built beyond Notre Dame, a
little to the right.

'Messieurs devraient voir ga--on y est tres bien!'

But Notre Dame herself was still there, and La Sainte Chapelle and Le
Pont Neuf, and the equestrian statue of Henri IV. C'est toujours ca!

And as they gazed and gazed, each framed unto himself, mentally, a
little picture of the Thames they had just left--and thought of
Waterloo Bridge, and St. Paul's, and London--but felt no home-sickness
whatever, no desire to go back in a hurry!

And looking down the river westward there was but little change.

On the left-hand side the terraces and garden of the Hotel de la
Rochemartel (the sculptured entrance of which was in the Rue de Lille)
still overtopped the neighbouring houses and shaded the quay with tall
trees, whose lightly-falling leaves yellowed the pavement for at least
a hundred yards of frontage--or backage, rather; for this was but the
rear of that stately palace.

'I wonder if l'Zouzou has come into his dukedom yet?' said Taffy.

And Taffy the realist, Taffy the modern of moderns, also said many
beautiful things about old historical French dukedoms; which, in spite
of their plentifulness, were so much more picturesque than English
ones, and constituted a far more poetical and romantic link with the
past; partly on account of their beautiful, high-sounding names.

'Amaury de Brissac de Roncesvaulx de la Rochemartel-Bois-segur! what a
generous mouthful! Why, the very sound of it is redolent of the
twelfth century! Not even Howard of Norfolk can beat that!'

For Taffy was getting sick of 'this ghastly thin-faced time of ours,'
as he sadly called it (quoting from a strange and very beautiful poem
called 'Faustine,' which had just appeared in the Spectator---and
which our three enthusiasts already knew by heart), and beginning to
love all things that were old and regal and rotten and forgotten and
of bad repute, and to long to paint them just as they really were.

'Ah! they managed these things better in France, especially in the
twelfth century, and even the thirteenth!' said the Laird. 'Still,
Howard of Norfolk isn't bad at a pinch--fote de myoof he continued,
winking at Little Billee. And they promised themselves that they would
leave cards on Zouzou, and if he wasn't a duke, invite him to dinner;
and also Dodor, if they could manage to find him.

Then along the quay and up the Rue de Seine, and by well-remembered
little mystic ways to the old studio in the Place St. Anatole des
Arts.

Here they found many changes. A row of new houses on the north side,
by Baron Haussmann--the well-named--a boulevard was being constructed
right through the place. But the old house had been respected; and
looking up, they saw the big north window of their good old abode
blindless and blank and black, but for a white placard in the middle
of it with the words: 'A louer. Un atelier, et une chambre a coucher.'

They entered the courtyard through the little door in the porte
cochere, and beheld Madame Vinard standing on the step of her loge,
her arms akimbo, giving orders to her husband--who was sawing logs for
firewood, as usual at that time of the year--and telling him he was
the most helpless log of the lot.

She gave them one look, threw up her arms, and rushed at them, saying,
'Ah, mon Dieu! les trois Angliches!'

And they could not have complained of any lack of warmth in her
greeting, or in Monsieur Vinard's.

'Ah! mais quel bonheur de vous revoir! Et comme vous avez bonne mine,
tous! Et Monsieur Litrebili, done! il a grandi!' etc., etc., 'Mais
vous allez boire la goutte avant tout--vite, Vinard! Le ratafia de
cassis que Monsieur Durien nous a envoye la semaine derniere!'

And they were taken into the loge and made free of it--welcomed like
prodigal sons; a fresh bottle of blackcurrant brandy was tapped, and
did duty for the fatted calf. It was an ovation, and made quite a stir
in the Quartier.

Le Retour des trois Angliches--cinq ans apres!

She told them all the news: about Bouchardy; Papelard; Jules Guinot,
who was now in the Ministere de la Guerre; Barizel, who had given up
the arts and gone into his father's business (umbrellas); Durien, who
had married six months ago, and had a superb atelier in the Rue
Taitbout, and was coining money; about her own family--Aglae, who was
going to be married to the son of the charbonnier at the corner of the
Rue de la Canicule--'un bon manage; bien solide!' Niniche, who was
studying the piano at the Conservatoire, and had won the silver medal;
Isidore, who, alas! had gone to the bad--'perdu par les femmes! un si
joli garcon, vous concevez! ca ne lui a pas porte bonheur, par
exemple!' And yet she was proud! and said his father would never have
had the pluck!

'A dix-huit ans, pensez done!'

'And that good Monsieur Carrel; he is dead, you know! Ah messieurs
savaient ga? Yes, he died at Dieppe, his natal town, during the
winter, from the consequences of an Indigestion--que voulez-vous! He
always had the stomach so feeble!...Ah, the beautiful interment,
messieurs! Five thousand people, in spite of the rain! Car il pleuvait
averse! And M. le Maire and his adjunct walking behind the hearse, and
the gendarmerie and the douaniers, and a battalion of the douzieme
chasseurs-a-pied, with their music, and all the sapper-pumpers, en
grande tenue with their beautiful brass helmets! All the town was
there, following: so there was nobody left to see the procession go
by! q'c'etait beau! Mon Dieu, q'c'etait beau! c'que j'ai pleure,
d'voir ca! n'est-ce-pas, Vinard?'

'Dame, oui, ma biche! j'crois bien! It might have been Monsieur le
Maire himself that one was interring in person!'

'Ah, ca! voyons, Vinard; thou'rt not going to compare the Maire of
Dieppe to a painter like Monsieur Carrel?'

'Certainly not, ma biche! But still, M. Carrel was a great man all the
same, in his way. Besides, I wasn't there--nor thou either, as to
that!'

'Mon Dieu! comme il est idiot, ce Vinard--of a stupidity to cut with a
knife! Why, thou might'st almost be a Mayor thyself, sacred imbecile
that thou art!'

And an animated discussion arose between husband and wife as to the
respective merits of a country mayor on one side and a famous painter
and a member of the Institute on the other, during which les trois
Angliches were left out in the cold. When Madame Vinard had
sufficiently routed her husband, which did not take very long, she
turned to them again, and told them that she had started a magasin de
bric-a-brac, Vous verrez ga!'

Yes, the studio had been to let for three months. Would they like to
see it? Here were the keys. They would, of course, prefer to see it by
themselves, alone; 'je comprends ca! et vous verrez ce que vous
verrez!' Then they must come and drink once more again the drop, and
inspect her magasin de bric-a-brac.

So they went up, all three, and let themselves into the old place
where they had been so happy--and one of them for a while so
miserable!

It was changed indeed.

Bare of all furniture, for one thing; shabby and unswept, with a
pathetic air of dilapidation, spoliation, desecration, and a musty,
shut-up smell; the window so dirty you could hardly see the new houses
opposite; the floor a disgrace!

All over the walls were caricatures in charcoal and white chalk, with
more or less incomprehensible legends; very vulgar and trivial and
coarse, some of them, and pointless for trois Angliches.

But among these (touching to relate) they found, under a square of
plate-glass that had been fixed on the wall by means of an oak frame,
Little Billee's old black-and-white-and-red chalk sketch of Trilby's
left foot, as fresh as if it had been done only yesterday! Over it was
written: 'Souvenir de la Grande Trilby, par W. B. (Litrebili).' And
beneath, carefully engrossed on imperishable parchment, and pasted on
the glass, the following stanzas:--

'Pauvre Trilby--la belle et bonne et chere!

Je suis son pied. Devine qui voudra

Quel tendre ami, la cherissant naguere.

Encadra d'elle (et d'un amour sincere)

Ce souvenir charmant qu'un caprice inspira--

Qu'un souffle emportera!

'J'etais jumeau: qu'est devenu mon frere?

Helas! Helas! L'Amournous egara.

L'Eternite nous unira, j'espere;

Et nous ferons comme autrefois la paire

Au fond d'un lit bien chaste oil mil ne troublera

Trilby--qui dormira.

'O tendre ami, sans nous qu'allez-vous faire?

La porte est close ou Trilby demeura.

Le Paradis est loin...et sur la terre

(Qui nous fut douce et lui sera legere)

Pour trouver nos pareils, si bien qu'on cherchera--

Beau chercher Ton aura!'

Taffy drew a long breath into his manly bosom, and kept it there as he
read this characteristic French doggerel (for so he chose to call this
touching little symphony in ere and ra). His huge frame thrilled with
tenderness and pity and fond remembrance, and he--said to himself
(letting out his breath):

'Dear, dear Trilby! Ah! if you had only cared for me, I wouldn't have
let you give me up--not for any one on earth. You were the mate for
me!'

And that, as the reader has guessed long ago, was big Taffy's
'history.'

The Laird was also deeply touched, and could not speak. Had he been in
love with Trilby, too? Had he ever been in love with any one?

He couldn't say. But he thought of Trilby's sweetness and
unselfishness, her gaiety, her innocent kissings and caressings, her
drollery and frolicsome grace, her way of filling whatever place she
was in with her presence, the charming sight and the genial sound of
her; and felt that no girl, no woman, no lady he had ever seen yet was
a match for this poor waif and stray, this long-legged, cancan-
dancing, Quartier Latin grisette, blanchisseuse de fin, 'and Heaven
knows what besides!'

'Hang it all!' he mentally ejaculated, 'I wish to goodness I'd married
her myself!'

Little Billee said nothing either. He felt unhappier than he had ever
once felt for five long years--to think that he could gaze on such a
memento as this, a thing so strongly personal to himself, with dry
eyes and a quiet pulse! and he unemotionally, dispassionately, wished
himself dead and buried for at least the thousand-and-first time!

All three possessed casts of Trilby's hands and feet, and photographs
of herself. But nothing so charmingly suggestive of Trilby as this
little masterpiece of a true artist, this happy fluke of a happy
moment. It was Trilbyness itself, as the Laird thought, and should not
be suffered to perish.

They took the keys back to Madame Vinard in silence. She said: 'Vous
avez vu--n'est-ce pas, messieurs?--le pied de Trilby! c'est bien
gentil! C'est Monsieur Durien qui a fait mettre le verre, quand vous
etes partis; et Monsieur Guinot qui a compose I'epitaphe. Pauvre
Trilby! qu'est-ce qu'elle est devenue! comme elle etait bonne fille,
hein? et si belle! et cornme elle etait vive elle etait vive elle
etait vive! Et comme elle vous aimait tous bien--et surtout Monsieur
Litrebili--n'est-ce pas?'

Then she insisted on giving them each another liqueur-glass of
Durien's ratafia de cassis, and took them to see her collection of
bric-a-brac across the yard, a gorgeous show, and explained everything
about it--how she had begun in quite a small way, but was making it a
big business.

'Voyez cette pendule! It is of the time of Louis Onze, who gave it
with his own hands to Madame de Pompadour. I bought it at a sale in---
'

'Combiang?' said the Laird.

'C'est cent-cinquante francs, monsieur--c'est bien bon marche--une
veritable occasion, et--'

'Je prong!' said the Laird, meaning 'I take it!'

Then she showed them a beautiful brocade gown 'which she had picked up
a bargain at--'

'Combiang?' said the Laird.

'Ah, ca, c'est trois cents francs, monsieur. Mais--'

'Je prong!' said the Laird.

'Et voici les souliers qui vont avec, et que--'

'Jepr-'

But here Taffy took the Laird by the arm and dragged him force out of
this too seductive siren's cave.

The Laird told her where to send his purchases, and with many
expressions of love and good-will on both sides, they tore themselves
away from Monsieur et Madame Vinard.

The Laird, however, rushed back for a minute, and hurriedly whispered
to Madame Vinard: 'Oh--er--le piay de Trilby--sur le mure, vous
savvy--avec le verre et toot le reste--coopy le mure--
comprenny?...Combiang?'

'Ah, monsieur!' said Madame Vinard--'c'est un peu difficile, vous
savez--couper un mur comme ca! On parlera au proprietaire si vous
voulez, et ca pourrait peutetre s'arranger, si c'est en bois!
seulement il fau--'

'Je prong!' said the Laird, and waved his hand in farewell.

They went up the Rue Vieille des Trois Mauvais Ladres, and found that
about twenty yards of a high wall had been pulled down--just at the
bend where the Laird had seen the last of Trilby, as she turned round
and kissed her hand to him--and they beheld, within, a quaint and
ancient long-neglected garden; a gray old garden, with tall, warty,
black-boled trees, and damp, green, mossy paths that lost themselves
under the brown and yellow leaves and mould and muck which had drifted
into heaps here and there, the accumulation of years--a queer old
faded pleasance, with wasted bowers and dilapidated carved stone
benches and weather-beaten discoloured marble statues--noseless,
armless, earless fauns and hama-dryads! And at the end of it, in a
tumbledown state of utter ruin, a still inhabited little house, with
shabby blinds and window-curtains, and broken window-panes mended with
brown paper--a Pavilion de Flore, that must have been quite beautiful
a hundred years ago--the once mysterious love-resort of long-buried
abbes with light hearts, and well-forgotten lords and ladies gay---
red-heeled, patched, powdered, frivolous, and shameless, but, oh! how
charming to the imagination of the nineteenth century! And right
through the ragged lawn (where lay, upset in the long dewy grass, a
broken doll's perambulator by a tattered Polichinelle) went a
desecrating track made by cart-wheels and horses' hoofs; and this, no
doubt, was to be a new street--perhaps, as Taffy suggested, 'La Rue
Neuve des Trois Mauvais Ladres!' (The new street of the three bad
lepers!).

'Ah, Taffy!' sententiously opined the Laird, with his usual wink at
Little Billee--'I've no doubt the old lepers were the best, bad as
they were!'

'I'm quite sure of it!' said Taffy, with sad and sober conviction and
a long-drawn sigh. 'I only wish I had a chance of painting one--just
as he really was!'

How often they had speculated on what lay hidden behind that lofty old
brick wall! and now this melancholy little peep into the once festive
past, the touching sight of this odd old poverty-stricken abode of
Heaven knows what present grief and desolation, which a few strikes of
the pickaxe had laid bare, seemed to chime in with their own gray mood
that had been so bright and sunny an hour ago; and they went on their
way quite dejectedly, for a stroll through the Luxembourg Gallery and
Gardens.

The same people seemed to be still copying the same pictures in the
long, quiet, genial room, so pleasantly smelling of oil-paint--Rosa
Bonheur's 'Labourage Nivernais,' Hebert's 'Malaria,' Couture's
'Decadent Romans.'

And in the formal dusty gardens were the same pioupious and zouzous
still walking with the same nounous, or sitting by their sides on
benches by formal ponds with gold and silver fish in them--and just
the same old couples petting the same toutous and loulous!

Then they thought they would go and lunch at le pere Trin's--die
Restaurant de la Couronne, in the Rue du Luxembourg--for the sake of
auld lang syne! But when they got there, the well-remembered fumes of
that humble refectory, which had once seemed not unappetising, turned
their stomachs. So they contented themselves with warmly greeting le
pere Trin, who was quite overjoyed to see diem again, and anxious to
turn the whole establishment topsy-turvy that he might entertain such
guests as they deserved.

Then the Laird suggested an omelet at the Cafe de l'Odeon. But Taffy
said, in his masterful way, 'Damn the Cafe de l'Odeon!' And hailing a
little open fly, they drove to Ledoyen's, or some such place, in the
Champs Elysees, where they feasted as became three prosperous Britons
out for a holiday in Paris--three irresponsible musketeers, lords of
themselves and Lutetia, beati possi-dentes!--and afterwards had
themselves driven in an open carriage and pair through the Bois de
Boulogne to the fete de St. Cloud (or what still remained of it, for
it lasts six weeks), the scene of so many of Dodor's and Zouzou's
exploits in past years, and found it more amusing than the Luxembourg
Gardens; the lively and irrepressible spirit of Dodor seemed to
pervade it still.

But it doesn't want the presence of a Dodor to make the blue-bloused
sons of the Gallic people (and its neatly-shod, white-capped
daughters) delightful to watch as they take their pleasure. And the
Laird (thinking perhaps of Hampstead Heath on an Easter Monday) must
not be blamed for once more quoting his favourite phrase--the pretty
little phrase with which the most humorous and least exemplary of
British parsons began his famous journey to France.

When they came back to the hotel to dress and dine, the Laird found he
wanted a pair of white gloves for the concert--'Oon pair de gong
blong,' as he called it--and they walked along the boulevards till
they came to a haberdasher's shop of very good and prosperous
appearance, and, going in, were received graciously by the 'patron,' a
portly little bourgeois, who waved them to a tall and aristocratic and
very well-dressed young commis behind the counter, saying, 'Une pake
de gants blancs pour monsieur.'

And what was the surprise of our three friends in recognising Dodor!

The gay Dodor, Dodor l'irresistible, quite unembarrassed by his
position, was exuberant in his delight at seeing them again, and
introduced them to the patron and his wife and daughter, Monsieur,
Madame, and Mademoiselle Passefil. And it soon became pretty evident
that, in spite of his humble employment in that house, he was a great
favourite in that family, and especially with mademoiselle.

Indeed, Monsieur Passefil invited our three heroes to stay and dine
then and there; but they compromised matters by asking Dodor to come
and dine with them at the hotel, and he accepted with alacrity.

Thanks to Dodor, the dinner was a very lively one, and they soon
forgot the regretful impressions of the day.

They learned that he hadn't got a penny in the world, and had left the
army, and had for two years kept the books at le pere Passefil's and
served his customers, and won his good opinion and his wife's, and
especially his daughter's; and that soon he was to be not only his
employer's partner, but his son-in-law; and that in spite of his
impecuniosity, he had managed to impress them with the fact that in
marrying a Rigolot de Lafarce she was making a very splendid match
indeed!

His brother-in-law, the Honourable Jack Reeve, had long cut him for a
bad lot. But his sister, after a while, had made up her mind that to
marry Mile. Passefil wasn't the worst he could do; at all events, it
would keep him out of England, and that was a comfort! And, passing
through Paris, she had actually called on the Passefil family, and
they had fallen prostrate before such splendour; and no wonder, for
Mrs. Jack Reeve was one of the most beautiful, elegant, and
fashionable women in London, the smartest of the smart.

'And how about l'Zouzou?' asked Little Billee. 'Ah, old Gontran! I
don't see much of him. We no longer quite move in the same circles,
you know; not that he's proud, or me either! but he's a sub-lieutenant
in the Guides--an officer! Besides, his brother's dead, and he's the
Due de la Rochemartel, and a special pet of the Empress; he makes her
laugh more than anybody! He's looking out for the biggest heiress he
can find, and he's pretty safe to catch her, with such a name as that!
In fact, they say he's caught her already--Miss Lavinia Hunks, of
Chicago. Twenty million dollars!--at least, so the Figaro says!'

Then he gave them news of other old friends; and they did not part
till it was time for them to go to the Cirque des Bashibazoucks, and
after they had arranged to dine with his future family on the
following day.

In the Rue St. Honore was a long double file of cabs and carriages
slowly moving along to the portals of that huge hall, Le Cirque des
Bashibazoucks. Is it there still, I wonder? I don't mind betting not!
Just at this period of the Second Empire there was a mania for
demolition and remolition (if there is such a word), and I have no
doubt my Parisian readers would search the Rue St. Honore for the
Salle des Bashibazoucks in vain!

Our friends were shown to their stalls, and looked round in surprise.
This was before the days of the Albert Hall, and they had never been
in such a big place of the kind before, or one so regal in aspect, so
gorgeously imperial with white and gold and crimson velvet, so
dazzling with light, so crammed with people from floor to roof, and
cramming itself still.

A platform carpeted with crimson cloth had been erected in front of
the gates where the horses had once used to come in, and their fair
riders, and the two jolly English clowns; and the beautiful nobleman
with the long frock-coat and brass buttons, and soft high boots, and
four-in-hand whip--la chambriere.

In front of this was a lower stand for the orchestra. The circus
itself was filled with stalls--stalks d'orchestre. A pair of crimson
curtains hid the entrance to the platform at the back, and by each of
these stood a small page, ready to draw it aside and admit the diva.

The entrance to the orchestra was by a small door under the platform,
and some thirty or forty chairs and music-stands, grouped around the
conductor's estrade, were waiting for the band.

Little Billee looked round, and recognised many countrymen and
countrywomen of his own--many great musical celebrities especially,
whom he had often met in London. Tiers upon tiers of people rose up
all round in a widening circle, and lost themselves in a dazy mist of
light at the top--it was like a picture by Martin! In the imperial box
were the English ambassador and his family, with an august British
personage sitting in the middle, in front, his broad blue ribbon
across his breast and his opera-glass to his royal eyes.

Little Billee had never felt so excited, so exhilarated by such a show
before, nor so full of eager anticipation. He looked at his programme,
and saw that the Hungarian band (the first that had yet appeared in
Western Europe, I believe) would play an overture of gypsy dances.
Then Madame Svengali would sing 'un air connu, sans accompagnement'
and afterwards other airs, including the 'Nussbaum' of Schumann (for
the first time in Paris, it seemed). Then a rest of ten minutes; then
more csardas; then the diva would sing 'Malbrouck s'en va-t'en
guerre,' of all things in the world! and finish up with 'un impromptu
de Chopin, sans paroles.'

Truly a somewhat incongruous bill of fare.

Close on the stroke of nine the musicians came in and took their
seats. They were dressed in the foreign hussar uniform that has now
become so familiar. The first violin had scarcely sat down before our
friends recognised in him their old friend Gecko.

Just as the clock struck, Svengali, in irreproachable evening dress,
tall and stout and quite splendid in appearance, notwithstanding his
long black mane (which had been curled), took his place at his desk.
Our friends would have known him at a glance, in spite of the
wonderful alteration time and prosperity had wrought in his outward
man.

He bowed right and left to the thunderous applause that greeted him,
gave his three little baton-taps, and the lovely music began at once.
We have grown accustomed to strains of this kind during the last
twenty years, but they were new then, and their strange seduction was
a surprise as well as an enchantment.

Besides, no such band as Svengali's had ever been heard; and in
listening to this overture the immense crowd almost forgot that was a
mere preparation for a great musical event, and tried to encore it.
But Svengali merely turned round and bowed--there were to be no
encores that night.

Then a moment of silence and breathless suspense--curiosity on tiptoe!

Then the two little page-boys each drew a silken rope, and the
curtains parted and looped themselves up on each side symmetrically;
and a tall female figure appeared, clad in what seemed like a
classical dress of cloth of gold, embroidered with garnets and
beetles' wings; her snowy arms and shoulders bare, a gold coronet of
stars on her head, her thick light brown hair tied behind and flowing
all down her back to nearly her knees, like those ladies in
hairdressers' shops who sit with their backs to the plate-glass window
to advertise the merits of some particular hair-wash.

She walked slowly down to the front, her hands hanging at her sides in
quite a simple fashion, and made a slight inclination of her head and
body towards the imperial box, and then to right and left. Her lips
and cheeks were rouged; her dark level eyebrows nearly met at the
bridge of her short high nose. Through her parted lips you could see
her large glistening white teeth; her gray eyes looked straight at
Svengali.

Her face was thin, and had a rather haggard expression, in spite of
its artificial freshness; but its contour was divine, and its
character so tender, so humble, so touchingly simple and sweet, that
one melted at the sight of her. No such magnificent or seductive
apparition has ever been seen before or since on any stage or
platform--not even Miss Ellen Terry as the priestess of Artemis in the
late laureate's play, The Cup.

The house rose at her as she came down to the front; and she bowed
again to right and left, and put her hand to her heart quite simply
and with a most winning natural gesture, an adorable gaucherie---like
a graceful and unconscious school-girl, quite innocent of stage
deportment. It was Trilby!

Trilby the tone-deaf, who couldn't sing one single note in tune!
Trilby, who couldn't tell a C from an F!!

What was going to happen?

Our three friends were almost turned to stone in the immensity of
their surprise.

Yet the big Taffy was trembling all over; the Laird's jaw had all but
fallen on to his chest; Little Billee was staring, staring his eyes
almost out of his head. There was something, to them, so strange and
uncanny about it all; so oppressive, so anxious, so momentous!

The applause had at last subsided. Trilby stood with her hands behind
her, one foot (the left one) on a little stool that had been left
there on purpose, her lips parted, her eyes on Svengali's, ready to
begin.

He gave his three beats, and the band struck a chord. Then, at another
beat from him, but in her direction, she began, without the slightest
appearance of effort, without any accompaniment whatever, he still
beating time--conducting her, in fact, just as if she had been an
orchestra herself:

'Au clair de la lune.

Mon ami Pierrot!

Prete-moi ta plume

Pour ecrire un mot.

Ma chandelle est morte ...

Je n'ai plus de feu!

Ouvre-moi ta porte

Pour l'amour de Dieu!'

This was the absurd old nursery rhyme with which La Svengali chose to
make her debut before the most critical audience in the world! She
sang it three times over--the same verse. There is but one.

The first time she sang it without any expression whatever--not the
slightest. Just the words, and the tune; in the middle of her voice,
and not loud at all; just as a child sings who is thinking of
something else; or just as a young French mother sings who is darning
socks by a cradle, and rocking her baby to sleep with her foot.

But her voice was so immense in its softness, richness, freshness,
that it seemed to be pouring itself out from all round; its intonation
absolutely, mathematically pure; one felt it to be not only faultless,
but infallible; and the seduction, the novelty of it, the strangely
sympathetic quality! How can one describe the quality of a peach or a
nectarine to those who have only known apples?

Until La Svengali appeared, the world had only known apples--
Catalanis, Jenny Linds, Crisis, Albonis, Pattis! The best apples that
can be, for sure--but still only apples!

If she had spread a pair of large white wings and gracefully fluttered
up to the roof and perched upon the chandelier, she could not have
produced a greater sensation. The like of that voice has never been
heard, nor ever will be again. A woman archangel might sing like that,
or some enchanted princess out of a fairy tale.

Little Billee had already dropped his face into his hands and hid his
eyes in his pocket-handkerchief; a big tear had fallen on to Taffy's
left whisker; the Laird was trying hard to keep his tears back.

She sang the verse a second time, with but little added expression and
no louder; but with a sort of breathy widening of her voice that made
it like a broad heavenly smile of universal motherhood turned into
sound. One felt all the genial gaiety and grace of impishness of
Pierrot and Columbine idealised into frolicsome beauty and holy
innocence, as though they were performing for the saints in
Paradise---a baby Columbine, with a cherub for clown! The dream of it
all came over you for a second or two--a revelation of some impossible
golden age--priceless--never to be forgotten! How oil earth did she do
it?

Little Billee had lost all control over himself, and was shaking with
his suppressed sobs--Little Billee, who hadn't shed a single tear for
five long years! Half the people in the house were in tears, but tears
of sheer delight, of delicate inner laughter.

Then she came back to earth, and saddened and veiled and darkened her
voice as she sang the verse for the third time; and it was a great and
sombre tragedy, too deep for any more tears; and somehow or other poor
Columbine, forlorn and betrayed and dying, out in the cold at
midnight--sinking down to hell, perhaps--was making her last frantic
appeal! It was no longer Pierrot and Columbine--it was Marguerite--it
was Faust! It was the most terrible and pathetic of all possible human
tragedies, but expressed with no--dramatic or histrionic exaggeration
of any sort; by mere tone, slight, subtle changes in the quality of
the sound--too quick and elusive to be taken count of, but to be felt
with, oh, what poignant sympathy!

When the song was over, the applause did not come immediately, and she
waited with her kind wide smile, as if she were well accustomed to
wait like this; and then the storm began, and grew and spread and
rattled and echoed--voice, hands, feet, sticks, umbrellas!--and down
came the bouquets, which the little pageboys picked up; and Trilby
bowed to front and right and left in her simple debonnaire fashion. It
was her usual triumph. It had never failed, whatever the audience,
whatever the country, whatever the song.

Little Billee didn't applaud. He sat with his head in his 'hands, his
shoulders still heaving. He believed himself to be fast asleep and in
a dream, and was trying his utmost not to wake; for a great happiness
was his. It was one of those nights to be marked with a white stone!

As the first bars of the song came pouring out of her parted lips
(whose shape he so well remembered), and her dove-like eyes looked
straight over Svengali's head, straight in his own direction--nay, at
him--something melted in his brain, and all his long-lost power of
loving came back with a rush.

It was like the sudden curing of a deafness that has been lasting for
years. The doctor blows through your nose into your Eustachian tube
with a little india-rubber machine; some obstacle gives way, there is
a snap in your head, and straightway you hear better than you had ever
heard in all your life, almost too well; and all your life is once
more changed for you!

At length he sat up again, in the middle of La Svengali's singing of
the 'Nussbaum,' and saw her; and saw the Laird sitting by him, and
Taffy, their eyes riveted on Trilby, and knew for certain that it was
no dream this time, and his joy was almost a pain!

She sang the 'Nussbaum' (to its heavenly accompaniment) as simply as
she had sung the previous song. Every separate note was a highly-
finished gem of sound, linked to the next by a magic bond. You did not
require to be a lover of music to fall beneath the spell of such a
voice as that; the mere melodic phrase had all but ceased to matter.
Her phrasing, consummate as it was, was as simple as a child's.

It was as if she said: 'See! what does the composer count for? Here is
about as beautiful a song as was ever written, with beautiful words to
match, and the words have been made French for you by one of your
smartest poets! But what do the words signify, any more than the tune,
or even the language? The "Nussbaum" is neither better nor worse than
"Mon ami Pierrot" when I am the singer; for I am Svengali; and you
shall hear nothing, see nothing, think of nothing, but Svengali,
Svengali, Svengali!'

It was the apotheosis of voice and virtuosity! It was 'il bel canto'
come back to earth after a hundred years--the bel canto of Vivarelli,
let us say, who sang the same song every night to the same King of
Spain for a quarter of a century, and was rewarded with a dukedom, and
wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.

And, indeed, here was this immense audience, made up of the most
cynically critical people in the world, and the most anti-German,
assisting with rapt ears and streaming eyes at the imagined spectacle
of a simple German damsel, a Madchen, a Fraulein, just verlobte---a
future Hausfrau--sitting under a walnut-tree in some suburban garden--
a Berlin!--and around her, her family and her friends, probably
drinking beer and smoking long porcelain pipes, and talking politics
or business, and cracking innocent elaborate old German jokes; with
bated breath, lest they should disturb her maiden dream of love! And
all as though it were a scene in Elysium, and the Fraulein a nymph of
many fountained Ida, and her people Olympian gods and goddesses.

And such, indeed, they were when Trilby sang of them!

After this, when the long, frantic applause had subsided, she made a
gracious bow to the royal British opera-glass (which had never left
her face), and sang 'Ben Bolt' in English!

And then Little Billee remembered there was such a person as Svengali
in the world, and recalled his little flexible flageolet!

'That is how I teach Gecko; that is how I teach la bedite Honorine;
that is how I teach il bel canto. ... It was lost, il bel canto--and I
found it in a dream--I, Svengali!'

And his old cosmic vision of the beauty and sadness of things, the
very heart of them, and their pathetic evanescence, came back with a
tenfold clearness--that heavenly glimpse beyond the veil! And with it
a crushing sense of his own infinitesimal significance by the side of
this glorious pair of artists, one of whom had been his friend and the
other his love--a love who had offered to be his humble mistress and
slave, not feeling herself good enough to be his wife!

It made him sick and faint to remember, and filled him with hot shame,
and then and there his love for Trilby became as that of a dog for its
master!

She sang once more--'Chanson de Printemps,' by Gounod (who was
present, and seemed very hysterical), and the first part of the
concert was over, and people had time to draw breath and talk over
this new wonder, this revelation of what the human voice could
achieve, and an immense hum filled the hall--astonishment, enthusiasm,
ecstatic delight!

But our three friends found little to say--for what they felt there
were as yet no words!

Taffy and the Laird looked at Little Billee, who seemed to be looking
inward at some transcendent dream of his own; with red eyes, and his
face all pale and drawn, and his nose very pink, and rather thicker
than usual; and the dream appeared to be out of the common blissful
though his eyes were swimming still, for his smile was almost idiotic
in its rapture!

The second part of the concert was still shorter than the first, and
created, if possible, a wilder enthusiasm.

Trilby only sang twice.

Her first song was 'Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre.'

She began it quite lightly and merrily, like a jolly march; in the
middle of her voice, which had not as yet revealed any exceptional
compass or range. People laughed quite frankly at the first verse:--

'Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre--

Mironton, mironton, Mirontaine!

Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre. ...

Ne sais quand reviendra!

Ne sais quand reviendra!

Ne sais quand reviendra!'

The mironton, mirontaine was the very essence of high martial resolve
and heroic self-confidence; one would have led a forlorn hope after
hearing it once!

'II reviendra-z a Paques---

Mironton, mironton, Mirontaine!

Il reviendra-z a Paques...

Ou ... a la Trinite!'

People still laughed, though the mironton, mirontaine, betrayed an
uncomfortable sense of the dawning of doubts and fears--vague
forebodings!

'La Trinite se passe---

Mironton, mironton, Mirontaine!

La Trinite se passe. .. .

Malbrouck ne revient pas!'

And here, especially in the mironton, mirontaine, a note of anxiety
revealed itself--so poignant, so acutely natural and human, that it
became a personal anxiety of one's own, causing the heart to beat, and
one's breath was short.

'Madame a sa tour monte--

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

Madame a sa tour monte.

Si haut qu'elle peut monter!'

Oh! How one's heart went with her! Anne! Sister Anne! Do you see
anything?

'Elle voit de loin son page---

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

Elle voit de loin son page.

Tout de noir habille!'

One is almost sick with the sense of impending calamity--it is all but
unbearable!

'Mon page--mon beau page!--

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

Mon page--mon beau page!

Quelle nouvelles apportez?'

And here Little Billee begins to weep again, and so does everybody
else! The mironton, mirontaine, is an agonised wail of suspense--poor
bereaved duchess!--poor Sarah Jennings! Did it all announce itself to
you just like that?

All this while the accompaniment had been quite simple just a few
obvious ordinary chords.

But now, quite suddenly, without a single modulation or note of
warning, down goes the tune a full major third from E to C--into the
graver depths of Trilby's great contralto--so solemn and ominous that
there is no more weeping, but the flesh creeps; the accompaniment
slows and elaborates itself; the march becomes a funeral march, with
muted strings, and quite slowly:

'Aux nouvelles que j'apporte--

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

Aux nouvelles que j'apporte.

Vos beaux yeux vont pleurer!'

Richer and richer grows the accompaniment. The mironton, mirontaine,
becomes a dirge!

'Quittez vos habits roses--

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

Quittez vos habits roses.

Et vos satins broches!'

Here the ding-donging of a big bell seems to mingle with the
score;...and very slowly, and so impressively that the news will ring
for ever in the ears and hearts of those who hear it from La
Svengali's lips:

'Le Sieur Malbrouck est mort--

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

Le Sieur--Malbrouck--est--mort!

Est mort--et enterre!'

And thus it ends quite abruptly!

And this heartrending tragedy, this great historical epic in two dozen
lines, at which some five or six thousand gay French people are
sniffling and mopping their eyes like so many Niobes, is just a common
old French comic song--a mere nursery ditty, like 'Little Bo-peep'---
to the tune.

'We won't go home till morning.

Till daylight doth appear.'

And after a second or two of silence (oppressive and impressive as
that which occurs at a burial when the handful of earth is being
dropped on the coffin lid) the audience bursts once more into madness;
and La Svengali, who accepts no encores, has to bow for nearly five
minutes, standing amid a sea of flowers....

Then comes her great and final performance. The orchestra swiftly
plays the first four bars of the bass in Chopin's Impromptu (A flat);
and suddenly, without words, as a light nymph catching the whirl of a
double skipping-rope, La Svengali breaks in, and vocalises that
astounding piece of music that so few pianists can even play: but no
pianist has ever played it like this; no piano has ever given out such
notes as these!

Every single phrase is a string of perfect gems, of purest ray serene,
strung together on a loose golden thread! The higher and shriller she
sings, the sweeter it is; higher and shriller than any woman had ever
sung before.

Waves of sweet and tender laughter, the very heart and essence of
innocent, high-spirited girlhood, alive to all that is simple and
joyous and elementary in nature--the freshness of the morning, the
ripple of the stream, the click of the mill, the lisp of the wind in
the trees, the song of the lark in the cloudless sky--the sun and the
dew, the scent of early flowers and summer woods and meadows--the
sight of birds and bees and butterflies and frolicsome young animals
at play--all the sights and scents and sounds that are the birthright
of happy children, happy savages in favoured climes--things within the
remembrance and the reach of most of us! All this, the memory and the
feel of it, are in Trilby's voice as she warbles that long, smooth,
lilting, dancing laugh, that shower of linked sweetness, that wondrous
song without words; and those who hear feel it all, and remember it
with her. It is irresistible; it forces itself on you; no words, no
pictures, could ever do the like! So that the tears that are shed out
of all these many French eyes are tears of pure, unmixed delight in
happy reminiscence! (Chopin, it is true, may have meant something
quite different--a hot-house, perhaps, with orchids and arum lilies
and tuberoses and hydrangeas--but all this is neither here nor there,
as the Laird would say in French.)

Then comes the slow movement, the sudden adagio, with its capricious
ornaments--the waking of the virgin heart, the stirring of the sap,
the dawn of love; its doubts and fears and questionings; and the
mellow, powerful, deep chest notes are like the pealing of great
golden bells, with a light little pearl shower tinkling round--drops
from the upper fringe of her grand voice as she shakes it.

Then back again the quick part, childhood once more, da capo, only
quicker! hurry, hurry! but distinct as ever. Loud and shrill and sweet
beyond compare--drowning the orchestra; of a piercing quality quite
ineffable; a joy there is no telling; a clear, purling, crystal stream
that gurgles and foams and bubbles along over sunlit stones; a wonder,
a world's delight!

And there is not a sign of effort, of difficulty overcome. All
through, Trilby smiles her broad, angelic smile; her lips well parted,
her big white teeth glistening as she gently jerks her head from side
to side in time to Svengali's baton, as if to shake the willing notes
out quicker and higher and shriller....

And in a minute or two it is all over, like the lovely bouquet of
fireworks at the end of the show, and she lets what remains of it the
out and away like the afterglow of fading Bengal fires--her voice
receding into the distance--coming back to you like an echo from all
round, from anywhere you please--quite soft--hardly more than a
breath; but such a breath! Then one last chromatically ascending
rocket, pianissimo, up to E in alt, and then darkness and silence!

And after a little pause the many-headed rises as one and waves its
hats and sticks and handkerchiefs, and stamps and shouts...'Vive La
Svengali! Vive La Svengali!'

Svengali steps on to the platform by his wife's side and kisses her
hand; and they both bow themselves backward through the curtains,
which fall, to rise again and again and again on this astounding pair!

Such was La Svengali's debut in Paris.

It had lasted little over an hour, one quarter of which at least, had
been spent in plaudits and courtesies!

The writer is no musician, alas! (as, no doubt, his musical readers
have found out by this) save in his thraldom to music of not too
severe a kind, and laments the clumsiness and inadequacy of this wild
(though somewhat ambitious) attempt to recall an impression received
more than thirty years ago; to revive the ever-blessed memory of that
unforgettable first night at the Cirque des Bashibazoucks.

Would that I could transcribe here Berlioz's famous series of twelve
articles, entitled 'La Svengali,' which were republished from La Lyre
Eolienne, and are now out of print!

Or Theophile Gautier's elaborate rhapsody, 'Madame Svengali---Ange ou
Femme?' in which he proves that one need not have a musical ear (he
hadn't) to be enslaved by such a voice as hers, any more than the eye
for beauty (this he had) to fall the victim of 'her celestial form and
face.' It is enough, he says, to be simply human!

I forget in which journal this eloquent tribute appeared; it is not to
be found in his collected works.

Or the intemperate thatribe by Herr Blagner (as I will christen him)
on the tyranny of the prima donna called 'Svengalismus'; in which he
attempts to show that mere virtuosity carried to such a pitch is mere
viciosity--base acrobatismus of the vocal chords, a hysteric appeal to
morbid Gallic 'sentimentalismus'; and that this monstrous development
of a phenomenal larynx, this degrading cultivation and practice of the
abnormalismus of a mere physical peculiarity, are death and
destruction to all true music; since they place Mozart and Beethoven,
and even himself, on a level with Bellini, Donizetti, Offenbach--any
Italian tune-tinkler, any ballad-monger of the hated Paris pavement!
and can make the highest music of all (even his own) go down with the
common French herd at the very first hearing, just as if it were some
idiotic refrain of the cafe chantant!

So much for Blagnerismus v. Svengalismus.

But I fear there is no space within the limits of this humble tale for
these masterpieces of technical musical criticism.

Besides, there are other reasons.

Our three heroes walked back to the boulevards, the only silent ones
amid the throng that poured through the Rue St. Honore, as the Cirque
des Bashibazoucks emptied itself of its over-excited audience.

They went arm-in-arm, as usual; but this time Little Billee was in the
middle. He wished to feel on each side of him the warm and genial
contact of his two beloved old friends. It seemed as if they had
suddenly been restored to him, after five long years of separation;
his heart was overflowing with affection for them, too full to speak
just yet! Overflowing, indeed, with the love of love, the love of
life, the love of death--the love of all that is, and ever was, and
ever will be! just as in his old way.

He could have hugged them both in the open street, before the whole
world; and the delight of it was that this was no dream; about that
there was no mistake. He was himself again at last, after five years,
and wide awake; and he owed it all to Trilby!

And what did he feel for Trilby? He couldn't tell yet. It was too vast
as yet to be measured; and, alas! it was weighted with such a burden
of sorrow and regret that he might well put off the thought of it a
little while longer, and gather in what bliss he might: like the man
whose hearing has been restored after long years, he would revel in
the mere physical delight of hearing for a space, and not go out of
his way as yet to listen for the bad news that was already in the air,
and would come to roost quite soon enough.

Taffy and the Laird were silent also; Trilby's voice was still in
their ears and hearts, her image in their eyes, and utter bewilderment
still oppressed them and kept them dumb.

It was a warm and balmy night, almost like midsummer; and they stopped
at the first cafe they met on the Boulevard de la Madeleine (comme
autrefois), and ordered bocks of beer, and sat at a little table on
the pavement, the only one unoccupied; for the cafe was already
crowded, the hum of lively talk was great, and 'La Svengali' was in
every mouth.

The Laird was the first to speak. He emptied his bock at a draught,
and called for another, and lit a cigar, and said, 'I don't believe it
was Trilby, after all!' It was the first time her name had been
mentioned between them that evening--and for five years!

'Good heavens!' said Taffy. 'Can you doubt it?'

'Oh yes! that was Trilby,' said Little Billee.

Then the Laird proceeded to explain that, putting aside the
impossibility of Trilby's ever being taught to sing in tune, and her
well-remembered loathing for Svengali, he had narrowly scanned her
face through his opera-glass, and found that in spite of a likeness
quite marvellous there were well-marked differences. Her-face was
narrower and longer, her eyes larger, and their expression not the
same; then she seemed taller and stouter, and her shoulders broader
and more drooping, and so forth.

But the others wouldn't hear of it, and voted him cracked, and
declared they even recognised the peculiar twang of her old speaking
voice in the voice she now sang with, especially when she sang low
down. And they all three fell to discussing the wonders of her
performance like everybody else all round; Little Billee leading, with
an eloquence and a seeming of technical musical knowledge that quite
impressed them, and made them feel happy and at ease; for they were
anxious for his sake about the effect this sudden and so unexpected
sight of her would have upon him after all that had passed.

He seemed transcendently happy and elate--incomprehensibly so, in
fact--and looked at them both with quite a new light in his eyes, as
if all the music he had heard had trebled not only his joy in being
alive, but his pleasure at being with them. Evidently he had quite
outgrown his old passion for her, and that was a comfort indeed!

But Little Billee knew better.

He knew that his old passion for her had all come back, and was so
overwhelming and immense that he could not feel it just yet, nor yet
the hideous pangs of a jealousy so consuming that it would burn up his
life. He gave himself another twenty-four hours.

But he had not to wait so long. He woke up after a short, uneasy sleep
that very night, to find that the flood was over him; and he realised
how hopelessly, desperately, wickedly, insanely he loved this woman,
who might have been his, but was now the wife of another man; a
greater than he, and one to whom she owed it that she was more
glorious than any other woman on earth--a queen among queens'--a
goddess! for what was any earthly throne compared to that she
established in the hearts and souls of all who came within the sight
and hearing of her; beautiful as she was besides--beautiful,
beautiful! And what must be her love for the man who had taught her
and trained her, and revealed her towering genius to herself and to
the world--a man resplendent also, handsome and tall and commanding--a
great artist from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot!

And the remembrance of them--hand in hand, master and pupil, husband
and wife--smiling and bowing in the face of all that splendid tumult
they had called forth and could quell, stung and tortured and maddened
him so that he could not lie still, but got up and raged and rampaged
up and down his hot, narrow, stuffy bedroom, and longed for his old
familiar brain-disease to come back and narcotise his trouble, and be
his friend, and stay with him till he died!

Where was he to fly for relief from such new memories as these, which
would never cease; and the old memories, and all the glamour and grace
of them that had been so suddenly called out of the grave? And how
could he escape, now that he felt the sight of her face and the sound
of her voice would be a craving--a daily want--like that of some poor
starving outcast for warmth and meat and drink?

And little innocent, pathetic, ineffable, well-remembered sweetness of
her changing face kept painting themselves on his retina; and
incomparable tones of this new thing, her voice, her Infinite voice,
went ringing in his head till he all but shrieked aloud in his agony.

And then the poisoned and delirious sweetness of those mad kisses.

'by hopeless fancy feigned

On lips that are for others'!

And then the grewsome physical jealousy, that miserable inheritance of
all artistic sons of Adam, that plague and torment of the dramatic,
plastic imagination, which can, idealise so well, and yet realise,
alas! so keenly. After three or four hours spent like this, he could
stand it no longer; madness was lying his way. So he hurried on a
garment, and went and knocked at Taffy's door.

'Good God! what's the matter with you?' exclaimed the good Taffy, as
Little Billee tumbled into his room, calling out:

'Oh, Taffy, Taffy, I've g-g-gone mad, I think!' And then, shivering
all over, and stammering incoherently, he tried to tell his friend
what was the matter with him, with great simplicity.

Taffy, in much alarm, slipped on his trousers and made Little Billee
get into his bed, and sat by his side holding his hand. He was greatly
perplexed, fearing the recurrence of another attack like that of five
years back. He didn't dare leave him for an instant to wake the Laird
and send for a doctor.

Suddenly Little Billee buried his face in the pillow and began to sob,
and some instinct told Taffy this was the best thing that could
happen. The boy had always been a highly-strung, emotional, over-
excitable, over-sensitive, and quite uncontrolled mammy's-darling, a
cry-baby sort of chap, who had never been to school. It was all a part
of his genius, and also a part of his charm. It would do him good once
more to have a good blub after five years! After a while Little Billee
grew quieter, and then suddenly he said: 'What a miserable ass you
must think me, what an unmanly duffer!'

'Why, my friend?'

'Why, for going on in this idiotic way. I really couldn't help it. I
went mad, I tell you. I've been walking up and down my room all night,
till everything seemed to go round.'

'So have I.'

'You? What for?'

'The very same reason.'

'What!'

'I was just as fond of Trilby as you were. Only she happened prefer
you.'

'What!' cried Little Billee again. 'You were fond of Trilby?'

'I believe you, my boy!'

'In love with her?'

'I believe you, my boy!'

'She never knew it, then!'

'Oh yes, she did.'

'She never told me, then!'

'Didn't she? That's like her. I told her, at all events. I asked her
to marry me.'

'Well--I am damned! When?'

'That day we took her to Meudon, with Jeannot, and dined at the garde
champetre's, and she danced the cancan with Sandy.'

'Well--I am.--And she refused you?'

'Apparently so.'

'Well, I--Why on earth did she refuse you?'

'Oh, I suppose she'd already begun to fancy you, my friend. Il y en a
toujours un autre!'

'Fancy me--prefer me--to you?'

'Well, yes. It does seem odd--eh, old fellow? But there's no
accounting for tastes, you know. She's built on such an ample scale
herself, I suppose, that she likes little 'uns--contrast, you see.
She's very maternal, I think. Besides, you're a smart little chap; and
you ain't half bad; and you've got brains and talent, and lots of
cheek, and all that. I'm rather a ponderous kind of party.'

'Well--I am damned!'

'C'est comme ca!

I took it lying down you see.'

'Does the Laird know?'

'No; and I don't want him to--nor anybody else.'

'Taffy, what a regular downright old trump you are!'

'Glad you think so; anyhow, we're both in the same boat, and we've got
to make the best of it. She's another man's wife, and probably she's
very fond of him. I'm sure she ought to be, cad as he is, after all
he's done for her. So there's an end of it.'

'Ah! there'll never be an end of it for me--never--never--oh, never,
my God! She would have married me but for my mother's meddling, and
that stupid old ass, my uncle. What a wife! Think of all she must have
in her heart and brain, only to sing like that! And, O Lord! how
beautiful she is--a goddess! Oh, the brow and cheek and chin, and the
way her head's put on! did you ever see anything like it? Oh, if only
I hadn't written and told my mother I was going to marry her! why, we
should have been man and wife for five years by this time--living at
Barbizon--painting away like mad! Oh, what a heavenly life! Oh, curse
all officious meddling with other people's affairs! Oh! oh! ... .'

'There you go again! What's the good? And where do I come in, my
friend? I should have been no better off, old fellow--worse than ever,
I think.'

Then there was a long silence.

At length Little Billee said:

'Taffy, I can't tell you what a trump you are. All I've ever thought
of you--and God knows that's enough--will be nothing to what I shall
always think of you after this .'

'All right, old chap!'

'And now I think I'm all right again, for a time--and I shall cut back
to bed. Good night! Thanks more than I can ever express!' And Little
Billee, restored to his balance, cut back to his own bed just as the
day was breaking.
 
 

PART SEVENTH

'The moon made thy lips pale, beloved.
The wind made thy bosom chill;
The night did shed
On thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.'

NEXT MORNING OUR THREE FRIENDS lay late abed, and breakfasted in their
rooms.

They had all three passed 'white nights'--even the Laird, who had
tossed about and pressed a sleepless pillow till dawn, so excited had
he been by the wonder of Trilby's reincarnation, so perplexed by his
own doubts as to whether it was really Trilby or not.

And certain haunting tones of her voice, that voice so cruelly sweet
(which clove the stillness with a clang so utterly new, so strangely
heart-piercing and seductive that the desire to hear it once more
became nostalgic--almost an ache!), certain bits and bars and phrases
of the music she had sung, unspeakable felicities and facilities of
execution; sudden exotic warmths, fragrances, tendernesses, graces,
depths, and breadths; quick changes from grave to gay, from rough to
smooth, from great metallic brazen clangours to soft golden suavities;
all the varied modes of sound we try so vainly to borrow from vocal
nature by means of wind and reed and string--all this new 'Trilbyness'
kept echoing in his brain all night (for he was of a nature deeply
musical), and sleep had been impossible to him.

'As when we dwell upon a word we know.

Repeating, till the word we know so well

Becomes a wonder, and we know not why,'

so dwelt the Laird upon the poor old tune 'Ben Bolt,' which kept
singing itself over and over again in his tired consciousness, and
maddened him with novel, strange, unhackneyed, unsuspected beauties
such as he had never dreamed of in any earthly music.

It had become a wonder, and he knew not why!

They spent what was left of the morning at the Louvre, and tried to
interest themselves in the 'Marriage of Cana,' and the 'Woman at the
Well,' and Vandyck's man with the glove, and the little Princess of
Velasquez, and Lisa Gioconda's smile: it was of no use trying. There
was no sight worth looking at in all Paris but Trilby in her golden
raiment; no other princess in the world; no smile but hers, when
through her parted lips came bubbling Chopin's Impromptu. They had not
long to stay in Paris, and they must drink of that bubbling fountain
once more--coute que route! They went to the Salle des Bashibazoucks,
and found that all seats allover the house had been taken for days and
weeks; and the 'queue' at the door had already begun! and they had to
give up all hopes of slaking this particular thirst.

Then they went and lunched perfunctorily, and talked desultorily over
lunch, and read criticisms of La Svengali's debut in the morning
papers--a chorus of journalistic acclamation gone mad, a frenzied
eulogy in every key--but nothing was good enough for them! Brand-new
words were wanted--another language!

Then they wanted a long walk, and could think of nowhere to go in all
Paris--that immense Paris, where they had promised themselves to see
so much that the week they were to spend there had seemed too short!

Looking in a paper, they saw it announced that the band of the
Imperial Guides would play that afternoon in the Pre Catelan, Bois de
Boulogne, and thought they might as well walk there as anywhere else,
and walk back again in time to dine with the Passe-fils--a prandial
function which did not promise to be very amusing; but still it was
something to kill the evening with, since they couldn't go and hear
Trilby again.

Outside the Pre Catelan they found a crowd of cabs and carriages,
saddle-horses and grooms. One might have thought one's self in the
height of the Paris season. They went in, and strolled about here and
there, and listened to the band, which was famous (it has performed in
London at the Crystal Palace), and they looked about and studied life,
or tried to.

Suddenly they saw, sitting with three ladies (one of whom, the eldest,
was in black), a very smart young officer, a Guide, all red and green
and gold, and recognised their old friend Zouzou. They bowed, and he
knew them at once, and jumped up and came to them and greeted them
warmly, especially his old friend Taffy, whom he took to his mother---
the lady in black--and introduced to the other ladies, the younger of
whom (strangely unlike the rest of her countrywomen) was so
lamentably, so pathetically plain that it would be brutal to attempt
the cheap and easy task of describing her. It was Miss Lavinia Hunks,
the famous American millionairess, and her mother. Then the good
Zouzou came back and talked to the Laird and Little Billee.

Zouzou, in some subtle and indescribable way, had become very ducal
indeed.

He looked extremely distinguished, for one thing, in his beautiful
Guides' uniform, and was most gracefully and winningly polite. He
inquired warmly after Mrs. and Miss Bagot, and begged Little Billee
would recall him to their amiable remembrance when he saw them again.
He expressed most sympathetically his delight to see Little Billee
looking so strong and so well (Little Billee looked like a pallid
little washed-out ghost, after his white night).

They talked of Dodor. He said how attached he was to Dodor, and always
should be; but Dodor, it seemed, had made a great mistake in leaving
the army and going into a retail business (petit commerce). He had
done for himself--degringole! He should have stuck to the dragons--
with a little patience and good conduct he would have 'won his
epaulet'--and then one might have arranged for him a good little
marriage--un parti convenable--for he was 'tres joli gargon, Dodor!
bonne tournure--et tres gentiment ne! C'est tres ancien, les Rigolot--
dans le Poitou, je crois--Lafarce, et tout ca; tout a fait bien!'

It was difficult to realise that this polished and discreet and
somewhat patronising young man of the world was the jolly dog who had
gone after Little Billee's hat on all fours in the Rue Vieille des
Trois Mauvais Ladres and brought it back in his mouth--the Caryhatide!

Little Billee little knew that Monsieur le Due de la Rochemar-tel-
Boissegur had quite recently delighted a very small and select and
most august imperial supper-party at Compiegne with this very story,
not blinking a single detail of his own share in it--and had given a
most touching and sympathetic description of 'le joli petit peintre
anglais qui s'appelait Litrebili, et ne pouvait pas se tenir sur ses
jambes--et qui pleurait d'amour fraternel dans les bras de mon copain
Dodor!'

'Ah! Monsieur Gontran, ce que je donnerais pour avoir vu?--' had said
the greatest lady in France; 'un de mes zouaves--a quatre pattes--dans
la rue--un chapeau dans la bouche--oh--c'est impayable!'

Zouzou kept these blackguard bohemian reminiscences for the imperial
circle alone--to which it was suspected that he was secretly rallying
himself. Among all outsiders--especially within the narrow precincts
of the cream of the noble Faubourg (which remained aloof from the
Tuileries)--he was a very proper and gentlemanlike person indeed, as
his brother had been--and, in his mother's fond belief, 'tres bien
pensant, tres bien vu, a Frohsdorf et a Rome.'

On lui aurait donne le ban Dieu sans confession--

as Madame Vinard had said of Little Billee--they would have shriven
him at sight, and admitted him to the holy communion on trust!

He did not present Little Billee and the Laird to his mother, nor to
Mrs. and Miss Hunks; that honour was reserved for 'the Man of Blood'
alone; nor did he ask where they were staying, nor invite them to call
on him. But in parting he expressed the immense pleasure it had given
him to meet them again, and the hope he had of some day shaking their
hands in London.

As the friends walked back to Paris together, it transpired that 'the
Man of Blood' had been invited by Madame Duchesse Mere (Maman
Duchesse, as Zouzou called her) to dine with her next day, and meet
the Hunkses at a furnished apartment she had taken in the Place
Vendome; for they had let (to the Hunkses) the Hotel de la Rochemartel
in the Rue de Lille; they had also been obliged to let their place in
the country, le chateau de Bois-segur (to Monsieur Despoires, or 'des
Poires,' as he chose to spell himself on his visiting cards--the
famous soap manufacturer--'Un tres brave homme, a ce qu'on dit!' and
whose only son, by the way, soon after married Mademoiselle Jeanne-
Adelaide d'Amaury-Brissac de Roncesvaulx de Boissegur de la
Rochemartel).

'Il ne fait pas gras chez nous a present--je vous assure!'

Madame Duchesse Mere had pathetically said to Taffy--but had given him
to understand that things would be very much better for her son in the
event of his marriage with Miss Hunks.

'Good heavens?' said Little Billee, on hearing this; 'that grotesque
little bogy in blue? Why, she's deformed--she squints--she's a dwarf,
and looks like an idiot! Millions or no millions, the man who marries
her is a felon! As long as there are stones to break and a road to
break them on, the able-bodied man who marries a woman like that for
anything but pity and kindness--and even then--dishonours himself,
insults his ancestry, and inflicts on his descendants a wrong that
nothing will ever redeem--he nips them in the bud--he blasts them for
ever! He ought to be cut by his fellow-men--sent to Coventry--to
jail--to penal servitude for life! He ought to have a separate hell to
himself when he dies--he ought to--'

'Shut up you little blaspheming ruffian!' said the Laird. 'Where do
you expect to go to, yourself, with such frightful sentiments? And
what would become of your beautiful old twelfth-century dukedoms, with
a hundred yards of back frontage opposite the Louvre, on a beautiful
historic river, and a dozen beautiful historic names, and no money--if
you had your way?' and the Laird wunk his historic wink.

'Twelfth-century dukedoms be damned!' said Taffy, au grand serieux, as
usual. 'Little Billee's quite right, and Zouzou makes me sick!
Besides, what does she marry him for--not for his beauty either, I
guess! She's his fellow-criminal, his deliberate accomplice, particeps
delicti, accessory before, the act and after! She has no right to
marry at all! tar and feathers and a rail for both of them--and for
Maman Duchesse too--and I suppose that's why I refused her invitation
to dinner! and now let's go and dine with Dodor--... anyhow Dodor's
young woman doesn't marry him for a dukedom--or even his "de"--mais
bien pour ses beaux yeux! and if the Rigolots of the future turn out
less nice to look at than their sire, and not quite so amusing, they
will probably be a great improvement on him in many other ways.
There's room enough--and to spare!'

'Ear! 'ear!' said Little Billee (who always grew flippant when Taffy
got on his high horse). 'Your 'ealth and song, sir--them's my
sentiments to a T! What shall we 'ave the pleasure of drinkin', after
that wery nice 'armony?'

After which they walked on in silence, each, no doubt, musing on the
general contrariness of things, and imagining what splendid little
Wynnes, or Bagots, or M'Allisters might have been ushered into a
decadent world for its regeneration if fate had so willed it that a
certain magnificent and singularly gifted grisette, etc. etc. etc. ...

Mrs. and Miss Hunks passed them as they walked along, in a beautiful
blue barouche with C-springs--un 'buit-ressorts'; Maman Duchesse
passed them in a hired fly; Zouzou passed them on horseback; 'tout
Paris' passed them; but they were none the wiser, and agreed that the
show was not a patch on that in Hyde Park during the London season.

When they reached the Place de la Concorde it was that lovely hour of
a fine autumn day in beautiful bright cities when all the lamps are
lit in the shops and streets and under the trees, and it is still
daylight--a quickly fleeting joy; and as a special treat on this
particular occasion the sun set, and up rose the yellow moon over
eastern Paris, and floated above the chimney-pots of the Tuileries.

They stopped to gaze at the homeward procession of cabs and carriages,
as they used to do in the old times. Tout Paris was still passing;
tout Paris is very long.

They stood among a little crowd of sightseers like themselves, Little
Billee right in front--in the road.

Presently a magnificent open carriage came by--more magnificent than
even the Hunkses', with liveries and harness quite vulgarly
resplendent--almost Napoleonic.

Lolling back in it lay Monsieur et Madame Svengali--he with his broad-
brimmed felt sombrero over his long black curls, wrapped in costly
furs, smoking his big cigar of the Havana.

By his side La Svengali--also in sables--with a large black velvet hat
on, her light brown hair done up in a huge knot on the nape of her
neck. She was rouged and pearl-powdered, and her eyes were blackened
beneath, and thus made to look twice their size; but in spite of all
such disfigurements she was a most splendid vision, and caused quite a
little sensation in the crowd as she came slowly by.

Little Billee's heart was in his mouth. He caught Svengali's eye, and
saw him speak to her. She turned her head and looked at him standing
there--they both did. Little Billee bowed. She stared at him with a
cold stare of disdain, and cut him dead--so did Svengali. And as they
passed he heard them both snigger--she with a little high-pitched
flippant snigger worthy of a London barmaid.

Little Billee was utterly crushed, and everything seemed turning
round.

The Laird and Taffy had seen it all without losing a detail. The
Svengalis had not even looked their way. The Laird said:

'It's not Trilby--I swear! She could never have done that--it's not in
her! and it's another face altogether--I'm sure of it!'

Taffy was also staggered and in doubt. They caught hold of Little
Billee, each by an arm, and walked him off to the boulevards. He was
quite demoralised, and wanted not to dine at Passe-fil's. He wanted to
go straight home at once. He longed for his mother as he used to long
for her when he was in trouble as a small boy and she was away from
home--longed for her desperately--to hug her and hold her and fondle
her, and be fondled, for his own sake and hers; all his old love for
her had come back in full--with what arrears! all his old love for his
sister, for his old home.

When they went back to the hotel to dress (for Dodor had begged them
to put on their best evening war-paint, so as to impress his future
mother-in-law), Little Billee became fractious and intractable. And it
was only on Taffy's promising that he would go all the way to
Devonshire with him on the morrow, and stay with him there, that he
could be got to dress and dine.

The huge Taffy lived entirely by his affections, and he hadn't many to
live by--the Laird, Trilby, and Little Billee.

Trilby was unattainable, the Laird was quite strong and independent
enough to get on by himself, and Taffy had concentrated all his
faculties of protection and affection on Little Billee, and was equal
to any burden or responsibility all this instinctive young fathering
might involve.

In the first place, Little Billee had always been able to do quite
easily, and better than any one else in the world, the very things
Taffy most longed to do himself and couldn't, and this inspired the
good Taffy with a chronic reverence and wonder he could not have
expressed in words.

Then Little Billee was physically small and weak, and incapable of
self-control. Then he was generous, amiable, affectionate, transparent
as crystal, without an atom of either egotism or conceit: and had a
gift of amusing you and interesting you by his talk (and its complete
sincerity) that never palled; and even his silence was charming--one
felt so sure of him--so there was hardly any sacrifice, little or big,
that big Taffy was not ready and glad to make for Little Billee. On
the other hand, there lay deep down under Taffy's surface irascibility
and earnestness about trifles (and beneath his harmless vanity of the
strong man), a long-suffering patience, a real humility, a robustness
of judgment, a sincerity and all-roundness, a completeness of
sympathy, that made him very good to trust and safe to lean upon. Then
his powerful, impressive aspect, his great stature, the gladiator-like
poise of his small round head on his big neck and shoulders, his huge
deltoids and deep chest and slender loins, his clean-cut ankles and
wrists, all the long and bold and highly-finished athletic shapes of
him, that easy grace of strength that made all his movements a
pleasure to watch, and any garment look well when he wore it--all this
was a perpetual feast to the quick, prehensile, aesthetic eye. And
then he had such a solemn, earnest, lovable way of bending pokers
round his neck, and breaking them on his arm, and jumping his own
height (or near it), and lifting up arm-chairs by one leg with one
hand, and what not else!

So that there was hardly any sacrifice, little or big, that Little
Billee would not accept from big Taffy as a mere matter of course--a
fitting and proper tribute rendered by bodily strength to genius.

Par nobile fratrum--well met and well mated for fast and long-enduring
friendship.

The family banquet at Monsieur Passefil's would have been dull but for
the irrepressible Dodor, and still more for the Laird of Cockpen, who
rose to the occasion, and surpassed himself in geniality, drollery,
and eccentricity of French grammar and accent. Monsieur Passefil was
also a droll in his way, and had the quickly familiar, jocose
facetiousness that seems to belong to the successful middle-aged
bourgeois all over the world, when he's not pompous instead (he can
even be both sometimes).

Madame Passefil was not jocose. She was much impressed by the
aristocratic splendour of Taffy, the romantic melancholy and
refinement of Little Billee, and their quiet and dignified politeness.
She always spoke of Dodor as Monsieur de Lafarce, though the rest of
the family (and one or two friends who had been invited) always called
him Monsieur Theodore, and he was officially known as Monsieur
Rigolot.

Whenever Madame Passefil addressed him or spoke of him in this
aristocratic manner (which happened very often), Dodor would wink at
his friends, with his tongue in his cheek. It seemed to amuse him
beyond measure.

Mademoiselle Ernestine was evidently too much in love to say anything,
and seldom took her eyes off Monsieur Theodore, whom she had never
seen in evening dress before. It must be owned that he looked very
nice--more ducal than even Zouzou--and to be Madame de Lafarce en
perspective, and the future owner of such a brilliant husband as
Dodor, was enough to turn a stronger little bourgeois head than
Mademoiselle Ernestine's.

She was not beautiful, but healthy, well grown, well brought up, and
presumably of a sweet, kind, and amiable disposition--an ingenue fresh
from her convent--innocent as a child, no doubt; and it was felt that
Dodor had done better for himself (and for his race) than Monsieur le
Due. Little Dodors need have no fear.

After dinner the ladies and gentlemen left the dining-room together,
and sat in a pretty salon overlooking the boulevard, where cigarettes
were allowed, and there was music. Mademoiselle Ernestine laboriously
played 'Les Cloches du Monastere' (by Monsieur Lefebure-Wely, if I'm
not mistaken). It's the most bourgeois piece of music I know.

Then Dodor, with his sweet high voice, so strangely pathetic and true,
sang goody-goody little French songs of innocence (of which he seemed
to have an endless repertoire) to his future wife's conscientious
accompaniment--to the immense delight, also, of all his future family,
who were almost in tears--and to the great amusement of the Laird, at
whom he winked in the most pathetic parts, putting his forefinger to
the side of his nose, like Noah Claypole in Oliver Twist.

The wonder of the hour, La Svengali, was discussed, of course; it was
unavoidable. But our friends did not think it necessary to reveal that
she was 'la grande Trilby.' That would soon transpire by itself.

And, indeed, before the month was a week older the papers were full of
nothing else.

Madame Svengali--'la grande Trilby,'--was the only daughter of the
honourable and reverend Sir Lord O'Ferrall.

She had run away from the primeval forests and lonely marshes of le
Dublin, to lead a free-and-easy life among the artists of the Quartier
Latin of Paris--une vie de boheme!

She was the Venus Anadyomene from top to toe. She was blanche comme
neige, avec un volcan dans le cceur. Casts of her alabaster feet could
be had at Brucciani's, in the Rue de la Souriciere St. Denis. (He made
a fortune.)

Monsieur Ingres had painted her left foot on the wall of a studio in
the Place St. Anatole des Arts; and an eccentric Scotch milord (le
Comte de Pencock) had bought the house containing the flat containing
the studio containing the wall on which it was painted, had had the
house pulled down, and the wall framed and glazed and sent to his
castle of Edimbourg.

(This, unfortunately, was in excess of the truth. It was found
impossible to execute the Laird's wish, on account of the material the
wall was made of. So the Lord Count of Pencock--such was Madame
Vinard's version of Sandy's nickname--had to forgo his purchase.)

Next morning our friends were in readiness to leave Paris; even the
Laird had had enough of it, and longed to get back to his work
again---a 'Hari-Kari in Yokohama.' (He had never been to Japan; but no
more had any one else in those early days.)

They had just finished breakfast, and were sitting in the courtyard of
the hotel, which was crowded, as usual.

Little Billee went into the hotel post-office to despatch a note to
his mother. Sitting sideways there at a small table and reading
letters was Svengali--of all people in the world. But for these two
and a couple of clerks the room was empty.

Svengali looked up; they were quite close together. Little Billee, in
his nervousness, began to shake, and half put out his hand, and drew
it back again, seeing the look of hate on Svengali's face.

Svengali jumped up, put his letters together, and passing by Little
Billee on his way to the door, called him 'verfluchter Schweinhund,'
and deliberately spat in his face.

Little Billee was paralysed for a second or two; then he ran after
Svengali, and caught him just at the top of the marble stairs, and
kicked him, and knocked off his hat, and made him drop all his
letters. Svengali turned round and struck him over the mouth and made
it bleed, and Little Billee hit out like a fury, but with no effect:
he couldn't reach high enough, for Svengali was well over six feet.

There was a crowd round them in a minute, including the beautiful old
man in the court suit and gold chain, who called out: 'Vite! vite! un
commissaire de police!'--a cry that was echoed all over the place.

Taffy saw the row, and shouted, 'Bravo, little 'un!' and jumping up
from his table, jostled his way through the crowd; and Little Billee,
bleeding and gasping and perspiring and stammering said:

'He spat in my face, Taffy--damn him! I'd never even spoken to him--
not a word, I swear!'

Svengali had not reckoned on Taffy's being there; he recognised him at
once, and turned white.

Taffy, who had dogskin gloves on, put out his right hand, and deftly
seized Svengali's nose between his fore and middle fingers and nearly
pulled it off, and swung his head two or three times backward and
forward by it, and then from side to side, Svengali holding on to his
wrist and then, letting him go, gave him a sounding open-handed smack
on his right cheek--and a smack on the face from Taffy (even in play)
was no joke, I'm told; it made one smell brimstone, and see and hear
things that didn't exist.

Svengali gasped worse than Little Billee, and couldn't speak for a
while. Then he said:

'Lache--grand lache! che fous enferrai mes temoins!'

'At your orders!' said Taffy, in beautiful French, and drew out his
card-case, and gave him his card in quite the orthodox French manner,
adding: 'I shall be here till to-morrow at twelve--but that is my
London address, in case I don't hear from you before I leave. I'm
sorry, but you really mustn't spit, you know--it's not done. I will
come to you whenever you send for me--even if I have to come from the
end of the world.'

'Tres bien! tres bien!' said a military-looking old gentleman close
by, who gave Taffy his card, in case he might be of any service--and
who seemed quite delighted at the row--and indeed it was really
pleasant to note with what a smooth, flowing, rhythmical spontaneity
the good Taffy could always improvise these swift little acts of
summary retributive justice: no hurry or scurry or flurry whatever---
not an inharmonious gesture, not an infelicitous line--the very poetry
of violence, and almost its only excuse!

Whatever it was worth, this was Taffy's special gift and it never
failed him at a pinch.

When the commissaire de police arrived, all was over. Svengali had
gone away in a cab, and Taffy put himself at the disposition of the
commissaire.

They went into the post-office and discussed it all with the old
military gentleman, and the majordome in velvet, and the two clerks
who had seen the original insult. And all that was required of Taffy
and his friends for the present was 'their names, pre-names, titles,
qualities, age, address, nationality, occupation,' etc.

'C'est une affaire qui s'arrangera autrement, et autre part!' had said
the military gentleman--monsieur le general Comte de la Tour-aux-
Loups.

So it blew over quite simply, and all that day a fierce unholy joy
burned in Taffy's choleric blue eye.

Not, indeed, that he had any wish to injure Trilby's husband, or meant
to do him any grievous bodily harm, whatever happened. But he was glad
to have given Svengali a lesson in manners.

That Svengali should Injure him never entered into his calculations
for a moment. Besides, he didn't believe Svengali would show fight;
and in this he was not mistaken.

But he had, for hours, the feel of that long, thick, shapely Hebrew
nose being kneaded between his gloved knuckles, and a pleasing sense
of the effectiveness of the tweak he had given it. So he went about
chewing the cud of that heavenly remembrance all day, till reflection
brought remorse, and he felt sorry; for he was really the mildest-
mannered man that ever broke a head!

Only the sight of Little Billee's blood (which had been made to flow
by such an unequal antagonist) had roused the old Adam.

No message came from Svengali to ask for the names and addresses of
Taffy's seconds; so Dodor and Zouzou (not to mention Mister the
general Count of the Tooraloorals, as the Laird called him) were left
undisturbed; and our three musketeers went back to London clean of
blood, whole of limb, and heartily sick of Paris.

Little Billee stayed with his mother and sister in Devonshire till
Christmas, Taffy staying at the village inn.

It was Taffy who told Mrs. Bagot about La Svengali's all but certain
identity with Trilby, after Little Billee had gone to bed, tired and
worn out, the night of their arrival.

'Good heavens!' said poor Mrs. Bagot. 'Why, that's the new singing
woman who's coming over here! There's an article about her in to-day's
Times. It says she's a wonder, and that there's no one like her!
Surely, that can't be the Miss O'Ferrall I saw in Paris!'

'It seems impossible--but I'm almost certain it is--and Willy has no
doubts in the matter. On the other hand, M'Allister declares it
isn't.'

'Oh, what trouble! So that's why poor Willy looks so ill and
miserable! It's all come back again. Could she sing at all then, when
you knew her in Paris?'

'Not a note--her attempts at singing were quite grotesque.'

'Is she still very beautiful?'

'Oh yes; there's no doubt about that; more than ever!'

'And her singing--is that so very wonderful? I remember that she had a
beautiful voice in speaking.'

'Wonderful? Ah, yes; I never heard or dreamed the like of it. Grisi,
Alboni, Patti--not one of them to be mentioned in the same breath!'

'Good heavens! Why, she must be simply irresistible! I wonder you're
not in love with her yourself. How dreadful these sirens are, wrecking
the peace of families!'

'You mustn't forget that she gave way at once at a word from you, Mrs.
Bagot; and she was very fond of Willy. She wasn't a siren then.'

'Oh yes--oh yes! that's true--she behaved very well--she did her
duty--I can't deny that! You must try and forgive me, Mr. Wynne---
although I can't forgive her!--that dreadful illness of poor Willy's--
that bitter time in Paris--'

And Mrs. Bagot began to cry, and Taffy forgave. 'Oh. Mr. Wynne, let us
still hope that there's some mistake--that it's only somebody like
her! Why, she's coming to sing in London after Christmas! My poor
boy's infatuation will only increase. What shall I do?

'Well--she's another man's wife, you see. So Willy's infatuation is
bound to burn itself out as soon as he fully recognises that important
fact. Besides, she cut him dead in the Champs Elysees--and her husband
and Willy had a row next day at the hotel, and cuffed and kicked each
other--that's rather a bar to any future intimacy, I think.'

'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 neighbourhood, 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 dulness 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 shop-windows. 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 neighbour),
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
unexpected, had come upon the scene that apparition so loathed and
dreaded of old--the pig-headed Yorkshireman--the huge British
philistine, the irresponsible bull, the junker, the ex-Crimean, Front-
de-Breuf, 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 open-
handed blow on his face, had so shaken and demoralised him that he had
never recovered from it.

He was thinking about it always--night and day--and constantly
dreaming at night that he was being tweaked and slapped over again by
a colossal nightmare Taffy, and waking up In agonies of terror, rage,
and shame. All healthy sleep had forsaken him.

Moreover, he was much older than he looked--nearly fifty--and far from
sound. His life had been a long, hard struggle.

He had for his wife, slave, and pupil a fierce, jealous kind of
affection that was a source of endless torment to him for indelibly
graven in her heart, which he wished to occupy alone, was the never-
fading image of the little English painter, and of this she made no
secret.

Gecko no longer cared for the master. All Gecko's doglike devotion was
concentrated on the slave and pupil, whom he worshipped with a fierce
but pure and unselfish passion. The only living soul that Svengali
could trust was the old Jewess who lived with them--his relative--but
even she had come to love the pupil as much as the master.

On the occasion of this rehearsal at Drury Lane he (Svengali) was
conducting and Madame Svengali was singing. He interrupted her several
times, angrily and most unjustly, and told her she was singing out of
tune 'like a verfluchter tomcat,' which was quite untrue. She was
singing beautifully, 'Home, Sweet Home.'

Finally he struck her two or three smart blows on her knuckles with
his little baton, and she fell on her knees weeping and crying out:

'Oh! oh! Svengali! ne me battez pas, mon ami--je fais tout ce que je
peux!'

On which little Gecko had suddenly jumped up and struck Svengali on
the neck near the collar-bone, and then it was seen that he had a
little bloody knife in his hand, and blood flowed from Svengali's
neck, and at the sight of it Svengali had fainted; and Madame Svengali
had taken his head on her lap, looking dazed and stupefied, as in a
waking dream.

Gecko had been disarmed, but as Svengali recovered from his faint and
was taken home, the police had not been sent for, and the affair was
hushed up, and a public scandal avoided. But La Svengali's first
appearance, to Monsieur J--'s despair, had to be put off for a week.
For Svengali would not allow her to sing without him; nor indeed,
would he be parted from her for a minute, or trust her out of his
sight.

The wound was a slight one. The doctor who attended Svengali described
the wife as being quite imbecile, no doubt from grief and anxiety. But
she never left her husband's bedside for a moment, and had the
obedience and devotion of a dog.

When the night came round for the postponed debut, Svengali was
allowed by the doctor to go to the theatre, but he was absolutely
forbidden to conduct. His grief and anxiety at this were
uncontrollable; he raved like a madman; and Monsieur J--was almost as
bad.

Monsieur J--had been conducting the Svengali band at rehearsals during
the week, in the absence of its master--an easy task. It had been so
thoroughly drilled and knew its business so well that it could almost
conduct itself, and it had played all the music it had to play (much
of which consisted of accompaniments to La Svengali's songs) many
times before. Her repertoire was immense, and Svengali had written
these orchestral scores with great care and felicity.

On the famous night it was arranged that Svengali should sit in a box
alone, exactly opposite his wife's place on the platform, where she
could see him well; and a code of simple signals was arranged between
him and Monsieur J--and the band, so that virtually he might conduct,
himself, from his box, should any hesitation or hitch occur. This
arrangement was rehearsed the day before (a Sunday) and had turned out
quite successfully, and La Svengali had sung in perfection in the
empty theatre.

When Monday evening arrived everything seemed to be going smoothly;
the house was soon crammed to suffocation, all but the middle box on
the grand tier. It was not a promenade concert, and the pit was turned
into guinea stalls (the promenade concerts were to begin a week
later).

Right in the middle of these stalls sat the Laird and Taffy and Little
Billee.

The band came in by degrees and tuned their instruments.

Eyes were constantly being turned to the empty box, and people
wondered what royal personages would appear.

Monsieur J--took his place amid immense applause, and bowed in his
inimitable way, looking often at the empty box.

Then he tapped and waved his baton, and the band played its Hungarian
dance music with immense success; when this was over there was a
pause, and soon some signs of impatience from the gallery. Monsieur
J--had disappeared.

Taffy stood up, his back to the orchestra, looking round.

Some one came into the empty box, and stood for a moment in front,
gazing at the house. A tall man, deathly pale, with long black hair
and a beard.

It was Svengali.

He caught sight of Taffy and met his eyes, and Taffy said: 'Good God!
Look! look!'

Then Little Billee and the Laird got up and looked.

And Svengali for a moment glared at them. And the expression of his
face was so terrible with wonder, rage, and fear that they were quite
appalled--and then he sat down, still glaring at Taffy, the whites of
his eyes showing at the top, and his teeth bared in a spasmodic grin
of hate.

Then thunders of applause filled the house, and turning round and
seating themselves, Taffy and Little Billee and the Laird saw Trilby
being led by J--down the platform, between the players, to the front,
her face smiling rather vacantly, her eyes anxiously intent on
Svengali in his box.

She made her bows to right and left just as she had done in Paris.

The band struck up the opening bars of 'Ben Bolt,' with which she was
announced to make her debut.

She still stared--but she didn't sing--and they played the little
symphony three times.

One could hear Monsieur J--in a hoarse, anxious whisper saying.

'Mais chantez done, madame--pour l'amour de Dieu, commencez done---
commencez!'

She turned round with an extraordinary expression of face, and said.

'Chanter? pourquoi done voulez-vous que je chante, moi? chanter quoi,
alors?'

'Mais "Ben Bolt," parbleu--chantez!'

'Ah--"Ben Bolt!" oui--je connais ca!'

Then the band began again.

And she tried, but failed to begin herself. She turned round and said.

'Comment diable voulez-vous que je chante avec tout ce train qu'ils
font, ces diables de musiciens?'

'Mais, mon Dieu, madame--qu'est-ce que vous avez done?' cried Monsieur
J---.

'J'ai que j'aime mieux chanter sans toute cette satanee musique,
parbleu! J'aime mieux chanter toute seule!'

'Sans musique, alors--mais chantez--chantez!'

The band was stopped--the house was in a state of indescribable wonder
and suspense.

She looked all round, and down at herself, and fingered her dress.
Then she looked up to the chandelier with a tender, sentimental smile
and began--

'Oh don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?

Sweet Alice with hair so brown.

Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile--'

She had not got further than this when the whole house was in an
uproar--shouts from the gallery--shouts of laughter, hoots, hisses,
cat-calls, cock-crows.

She stopped and glared like a brave lioness, and called out--

'Qu'est-ce que vous avez done, tous! tas de vieilles pommes cuites que
vous etes! Est-ce qu'on a peur de vous?' and then, suddenly--

'Why, you're all English, aren't you?--what's all the row about?---
what have you brought me here for?--what have I done, I should like to
know?'

And in asking these questions the depth and splendour of her voice
were so extraordinary--its tone so pathetically feminine, yet so full
of hurt and indignant command, that the tumult was stilled for a
moment.

It was the voice of some being from another world--some insulted
daughter of a race more puissant and nobler than ours; a voice that
seemed as if it could never utter a false note.

Then came a voice from the gods in answer--

'Oh, ye're Henglish, har yer? Why don't yer sing as yer bought to
sing--yer've got voice enough, any'ow! why don't yer sing in tune?'

'Sing in tune' cried Trilby. 'I didn't want to sing at all---I only
sang because I was asked to sing--that gentleman asked me--that French
gentleman with the white waistcoat! I won't sing another note!'

'Oh, yer won't, won't yer! then let us 'ave our money back, or we'll
know what for!'

And again the din broke out, and the uproar was frightful.

Monsieur J--screamed out across the theatre: 'Svengali! Svengali!
qu'est-ce qu'elle a done, votre femme? ... Elle est devenue folle!'

Indeed she had tried to sing 'Ben Bolt,' but had sung it in her old
way--as she used to sing it in the Quartier Latin--the most lamentably
grotesque performance ever heard out of a human throat!

'Svengali! Svengali!' shrieked poor Monsieur J--gesticulating towards
the box where Svengali was sitting, quite impassible, gazing at
Monsieur J--, and smiling a ghastly, sardonic smile, a rictus of hate
and triumphant revenge--as if he were saying--

'I've got the laugh of you all, this time!'

Taffy, the Laird, Little Billee, the whole house, were now staring at
Svengali, and his wife was forgotten.

She stood vacantly looking at everybody and everything--the
chandelier, Monsieur J--, Svengali in his box, the people in the
stalls, in the gallery--and smiling as if the noisy scene amused and
excited her.

'Svengali! Svengali! Svengali!'

The whole house took up the cry, derisively. Monsieur J--led Madame
Svengali away; she seemed quite passive. That terrible figure of
Svengali still sat, immovable, watching his wife's retreat--still
smiling his ghastly smile. All eyes were now turned on him once more.

Monsieur J--was then seen to enter his box with a policeman and two or
three other men, one of them in evening dress. He quickly drew the
curtains to; then, a minute or two after, he reappeared on the
platform, bowing and scraping to the audience, as pale as death, and
called for silence, the gentleman in evening dress by his side; and
this person explained that a very dreadful thing had happened--that
Monsieur Svengali had suddenly died in that box--of apoplexy or heart
disease; that his wife had seen it from her place on the stage, and
had apparently gone out of her senses, which accounted for her
extraordinary behaviour.

He added that the money would be returned at the doors, and begged the
audience to disperse quietly.

Taffy, with his two friends behind him, forced his way to a stage door
he knew. The Laird had no longer any doubts on the score of Trilby's
identity--this Trilby, at all events.

Taffy knocked and thumped till the door was opened, and gave his card
to the man who opened it, stating that he and his friends were old
friends of Madame Svengali, and must see her at once.

The man tried to slam the door in his face, but Taffy pushed through,
and shut it on the crowd outside, and insisted on being taken to
Monsieur J--immediately; and was so authoritative and big, and looked
such a swell, that the man was cowed, and led him.

They passed an open door, through which they had a glimpse of a
prostrate form on a table--a man partially undressed, and some men
bending over him, doctors probably.

That was the last they saw of Svengali.

Then they were taken to another door, and Monsieur J--came out, and
Taffy explained who they were, and they were admitted.

La Svengali was there, sitting in an armchair by the fire, while
several of the band stood round gesticulating, and talking German or
Polish or Yiddish. Gecko, on his knees, was alternately chafing her
hands and feet. She seemed quite dazed.

But at the sight of Taffy she jumped up and rushed at him, saying:
'Oh, Taffy dear--oh, Taffy! what's it all about? Where on earth am I?
What an age since we met!'

Then she caught sight of the Laird, and kissed him; and then she
recognised Little Billee.

She looked at him for a long while in great surprise, and then shook
hands with him.

'How pale you are! and so changed--you've got a moustache! What's the
matter? Why are you all dressed in black, with white cravats, as if
you were going to a funeral? Where's Svengali? I should like to go
home!'

'Where--what do you call--home, I mean--where is it?' asked Taffy.

'C'est a l'Hotel de Normandie, dans le Haymarket. On va vous y
conduire, madame!' said Monsieur J--.

'Oui--c'est ca!' said Trilby--'Hotel de Normandie--mais Svengali--ou
est-ce qu'il est?'

'Helas! madame--il est tres malade!'

'Malade? Qu'est-ce qu'il a? How funny you look, with your moustache,
Little Billee! dear, dear Little Billee! so pale, so very pale! Are
you ill too? Oh, I hope not! How glad I am to see you again--you can't
tell! though I promised your mother I wouldn't--never, never! Where
are we now, dear Little Billee?'

Monsieur J--seemed to have lost his head. He was constantly running in
and out of the room, distracted. The bandsmen began to talk and try to
explain, in incomprehensible French, to Taffy. Gecko seemed to have
disappeared. It was a bewildering business--noises from outside, the
tramp and bustle and shouts of the departing crowd, people running in
and out and asking for Monsieur J--, policemen, firemen, and what not!

Then Little Billee, who had been exerting the most heroic self-
control, suggested that Trilby should come to his house in Fitzroy
Square, first of all, and be taken out of all this--and the idea
struck Taffy as a happy one--and it was proposed to Monsieur J--, who
saw that our three friends were old friends of Madame Svengali's, and
people to be trusted; and he was only too glad to be relieved of her,
and gave his consent.

Little Billee and Taffy drove to Fitzroy Square to prepare Little
Billee's landlady, who was much put out at first at having such a
novel and unexpected charge imposed on her. It was all explained to
her that it must be so. That Madame Svengali, the greatest singer in
Europe and an old friend of her tenant's, had suddenly gone out of her
mind from grief at the tragic death of her husband, and that for this
night at least the unhappy lady must sleep under that roof--indeed, in
Little Billee's own bed, and that he would sleep at a hotel; and that
a nurse would be provided at once--it might be only for that one
night; and that the lady was as quiet as a lamb, and would probably
recover her faculties after a night's rest. A doctor was sent for from
close by, and soon Trilby appeared, with the Laird, and her appearance
and her magnificent sables impressed Mrs. Godwin, the landlady--
brought her figuratively on her knees. Then Taffy, the Laird, and
Little Billee departed again and dispersed--to procure a nurse for the
night, to find Gecko, to fetch some of Trilby's belongings from the
Hotel de Normandie, and her maid.

The maid (the old German Jewess and Svengali's relative), distracted
by the news of her master's death, had gone to the theatre. Gecko was
in the hands of the police. Things had got to a terrible pass. But our
three friends did their best, and were up most of the night.

So much for La Svengali's debut in London.

The present scribe was not present on that memorable occasion, and has
written this inadequate and most Incomplete description partly from
hearsay and private information, partly from the reports in the
contemporary newspapers.

Should any surviving eye-witness of that lamentable fiasco read these
pages, and see any gross inaccuracy in this bald account of it, the P.
S. will feel deeply obliged to the same for any corrections or
additions, and these will be duly acted upon and gratefully
acknowledged in all subsequent editions; which will be numerous, no
doubt, on account of the great interest still felt in 'La Svengali,'
even by those who never saw or heard her (and they are many), and also
because the present scribe is better qualified (by his opportunities)
for the compiling of this brief biographical sketch than any person
now living, with the exception, of course, of 'Taffy' and 'the Laird,'
to whose kindness, even more than to his own personal recollections,
he owes whatever it may contain of serious historical value.

Next morning they all three went to Fitzroy Square. Little Billee had
slept at Taffy's rooms in Jermyn Street.

Trilby seemed quite pathetically glad to see them again. She was
dressed simply and plainly--in black; her trunks had been sent from
the hotel.

The hospital nurse was with her; the doctor had just left. He had said
that she was suffering from some great nervous shock--a pretty safe
diagnosis!

Her wits had apparently not come back, and she seemed in no way to
realise her position.

'Ah! what it is to see you again, all three! It makes one feel glad to
be alive! I've thought of many things, but never of this--never! Three
nice clean Englishmen, all speaking English--and such dear old
friends! Ah! j'aime tant ca--c'est le del! I wonder I've got a word of
English left!'

Her voice was so soft and sweet and low that these ingenuous remarks
sounded like a beautiful song. And she 'made the soft eyes' at them
all three, one after another, in her old way; and the soft eyes
quickly filled with tears.

She seemed ill and weak and worn out, and insisted on keeping the
Laird's hand in hers.

'What's the matter with Svengali? He must be dead!'

They all three looked at each other, perplexed.

'Ah! he's dead! I can see it in your faces. He'd got heart disease.
I'm sorry! oh, very sorry indeed! He was always very kind, poor
Svengali!'

'Yes. He's dead,' said Taffy.

'And Gecko--dear little Gecko--is he dead too? I saw him last night--
he warmed my hands and feet: where were we?'

'No. Gecko's not dead. But he's had to be locked up for a little
while. He struck Svengali, you know. You saw it all.'

'I? No! I never saw it. But I dreamt something like it! Gecko with a
knife, and people holding him, and Svengali bleeding on the ground.
That was just before Svengali's illness. He'd cut himself in the neck,
you know--with a rusty nail, he told me. I wonder how?...But it was
wrong of Gecko to strike him. They were such friends. Why did he?'

'Well--it was because Svengali struck you with his conductor's wand
when you were rehearsing. Struck you on the fingers and made you cry!
don't you remember?'

'Struck me! rehearsing?--made me cry! what are you talking about, dear
Taffy? Svengali never struck me! He was kindness itself--always! and
what should I rehearse?'

'Well, the songs you were to sing at the theatre in the evening.'

'Sing at the theatre! I never sang at any theatre--except last night,
if that big place was a theatre! and they didn't seem to like it! I'll
take precious good care never to sing in a theatre again! How they
howled! and there was Svengali in the box opposite, laughing at me.
Why was I taken there? and why did that funny little Frenchman in the
white waistcoat ask me to sing? I know very well I can't sing well
enough to sing in a place like that! What a fool I was! It all seems
like a bad dream! What was it all about? Was it a dream, I wonder!'

'Well--but don't you remember singing at Paris, in the Salle des
Bashibazoucks--and at Vienna--St. Petersburg--lots of places?'

'What nonsense, dear--you're thinking of some one else! I never sang
anywhere! I've been to Vienna and St. Petersburg--but I never sang
there--good heavens!'

Then there was a pause, and our three friends looked at her
helplessly.

Little Billee said: 'Tell me, Trilby--what made you cut me dead when I
bowed to you in the Place de la Concorde, and you were riding with
Svengali in that swell carriage?'

'I never rode in a swell carriage with Svengali! Omnibuses were more
in our line! You're dreaming, dear Little Billee--you're taking me for
somebody else; and as for my cutting you--why, I'd sooner cut
myself---into little pieces!'

'Where were you staying with Svengali in Paris?'

'I really forget. Were we in Paris? Oh yes, of course. Hotel Bertrand,
Place Notre Dame des Victoires.'

'How long have you been going about with Svengali?'

'Oh, months, years--I forget. I was very ill. He cured me.'

'Ill! What was the matter?'

'Oh! I was mad with grief, and pain in my eyes, and wanted to kill
myself, when I lost my dear little Jeannot, at Vibraye. I fancied I
hadn't been careful enough with him. I was crazed! Don't you remember
writing to me there, Taffy--through Angele Boisse? Such a sweet letter
you wrote! I know it by heart! And you too, Sandy'; and she kissed
him. 'I wonder where they are, your letters? I've got nothing of my
own in the world--not even your dear letters--nor Little Billee's--
such lots of them!

'Well, Svengali used to write to me too--and then he got my address
from Angele. .. .

'When Jeannot died, I felt I must kill myself or get away from
Vibraye--get away from the people there; so when he was buried I cut
my hair short and got a workman's cap and blouse and trousers and
walked all the way to Paris without saying anything to anybody. I
didn't want anybody to know; I wanted to escape from Svengali, who
wrote that he was coming there to fetch me. I wanted to hide in Paris.
When I got there at last it was two o'clock in the morning, and I was
in dreadful pain--and I'd lost all my money--thirty francs--through a
hole in my trousers' pocket. Besides, I had a row with a carter in the
Halle. He thought I was a man, and hit me and gave me a black eye,
just because I patted his horse and fed it with a carrot I'd been
trying to eat myself. He was tipsy, I think. Well, I looked over the
bridge at the river--just by the Morgue--and wanted to jump in. But
the Morgue sickened me, so I hadn't the pluck. Svengali used to be
always talking about the Morgue, and my going there some day. He used
to say he'd come and look at me there, and the idea made me so sick I
couldn't. I got bewildered and quite stupid.

'Then I went to Angele's, in the Rue des Cloitres Ste. Petron-ille,
and waited about; but I hadn't the courage to ring, so I went to the
Place St. Anatole des Arts, and looked up at the old studio window,
and thought how comfortable it was in there, with the big settee near
the stove, and all that, and felt inclined to ring up Madame Vinard;
and then I remembered Little Billee was ill there, and his mother and
sister were with him. Angele had written me, you know. Poor Little
Billee! There he was, very ill!

'So I walked about the place, and up and down the Rue des Trois
Mauvais Ladres. Then I went down the Rue de Seine to the river again,
and again I hadn't the pluck to jump in. Besides, there was a sergent-
de-ville who followed and watched me. And the fun of it was that I
knew him quite well, and he didn't know me a bit. It was Celestin
Beaumollet, who got so tipsy on Christmas night. Don't you remember?
The tall one, who was pitted with the small-pox.

'Then I walked about till near daylight. Then I could stand it no
longer, and went to Svengali's, in the Rue Tireliard, but he'd moved
to the Rue des Saints Peres; and I went there and found him. I didn't
want to a bit, but I couldn't help myself. It was fate, I suppose! He
was very kind, and cured me almost directly, and got me coffee and
bread and butter--the best I ever tasted--and a warm bath from Bidet
Freres, in the Rue Savonarole. It was heavenly! And I slept for two
days and two nights! And then he told me how fond he was of me, and
how he would always cure me, and take care of me, and marry me, if I
would go away with him. He said he would devote his whole life to me,
and took a small room for me, next to his.

'I stayed with him there a week, never going out or seeing any one,
mostly asleep. I'd caught a chill.

'He played in two concerts and made a lot of money; and then we went
away to Germany together; and no one was a bit the wiser.'

'And did he marry you?'

'Well--no. He couldn't, poor fellow! He'd already got a wife living,
and three children, which he declared were not his. They live in
Elberfeld in Prussia; she keeps a small sweet-stuff shop there. He
behaved very badly to them. But it was not through me! He'd deserted
them long before; but he used to send them plenty of money when he'd
got any; I made him, for I was very sorry for her. He was always
talking about her, and what she said and what she did, and imitating
her saying her prayers and eating pickled cucumber with one hand and
drinking schnapps with the other, so as not to lose any time; till he
made me the of laughing. He could be very funny, Svengali, though he
was German, poor dear! And then Gecko joined us, and Marta.'

'Who's Marta?'

'His aunt. She cooked for us, and all that. She's coming here
presently; she sent word from the hotel; she's very fond of him. Poor
Marta! Poor Gecko! What will they ever do without Svengali?'

'Then what did he do to live?'

'Oh! he played at concerts, I suppose--and all that.'

'Did you ever hear him?'

'Yes. Sometimes Marta took me; at the beginning, you know. He was
always very much applauded. He plays beautifully. Everybody said so.'

'Did he never try and teach you to sing?'

'Oh, mai'e a'ie! not he! Why, he always laughed when I tried to sing;
and so did Marta; and so did Gecko! It made them roar! I used to sing
"Ben Bolt." They used to make me, just for fun--and go into fits. I
didn't mind a scrap. I'd had no training, you know!'

'Was there anybody else he knew--any other woman?'

'Not that I know of! He always made out he was so fond of me that he
couldn't even look at another woman. Poor Svengali!' (Here her eyes
filled with tears again.) 'He was always very kind! But I never could
be fond of him in the way he wished--never! It made me sick even to
think of! Once I used to hate him--in Paris--in the studio; don't you
remember?

'He hardly ever left me; and then Marta looked after me--for I've
always been weak and ill, and often so languid that I could hardly
walk across the room. It was that three days' walk from Vibraye to
Paris. I never got over it.

'I used to try and do all I could--be a daughter to him, as I couldn't
be anything else--mend his things, and all that, and cook him little
French dishes. I fancy he was very poor at one time; we were always
moving from place to place. But I always had the best of everything.
He insisted on that--even if he had to go without himself. It made him
quite unhappy when I wouldn't eat, so I used to force myself.

'Then, as soon as I felt uneasy about things, or had any pain, he
would say, "Dors, ma mignonne!" and I would sleep at once--for hours,
I think--and wake up oh, so tired! and find him kneeling by me, always
so anxious and kind--and Marta and Gecko! and sometimes we had the
doctor, and I was ill in bed.

'Gecko used to dine and breakfast with us--you've no idea what an
angel he is, poor little Gecko! But what a dreadful thing to strike
Svengali! Why did he? Svengali taught him all he knows!' 'And you knew
no one else--no other woman?' 'No one that I can remember--except
Marta--not a soul!' 'And that beautiful dress you had on last night?'
'It isn't mine. It's on the bed upstairs, and so's the fur cloak. They
belong to Marta. She's got lots of them, lovely things--silk, satin,
velvet--and lots of beautiful jewels. Marta deals in them, and makes
lots of money.

'I've often tried them on; I'm very easy to fit,' she said, 'being so
tall and thin. And poor Svengali would kneel down and cry, and kiss my
hands and feet, and tell me I was his goddess and empress, and all
that, which I hate. And Marta used to cry, too. And then he would
say--

'"Et maintenant dors, ma mignonne!"

'And when I woke up I was so tired that I went to sleep again on my
own account.

'But he was very patient. Oh, dear me! I've always been a poor,
helpless, useless log and burden to him!

'Once I actually walked in my sleep--and woke up in the market-place
at Prague--and found an immense crowd, and poor Svengali bleeding from
the forehead, in a faint on the ground. He'd been knocked down by a
horse and cart, he told me. He'd got his guitar with him. I suppose he
and Gecko had been playing somewhere, for Gecko had his fiddle. If
Gecko hadn't been there, I don't know what we should have done. You
never saw such queer people as they were--such crowds---you'd think
they'd never seen an Englishwoman before. The noise they made, and the
things they gave me...some of them went down on their knees, and
kissed my hands and the skirts of my gown.

'He was ill in bed for a week after that, and I nursed him, and he was
very grateful. Poor Svengali! God knows I felt grateful to him for
many things! Tell me how he died! I hope he hadn't much pain.'

They told her it was quite sudden, from heart disease.

'Ah! I knew he had that; he wasn't a healthy man; he used to smoke too
much. Marta used always to be very anxious.'

Just then Marta came in.

Marta was a fat elderly Jewess of rather a grotesque and ignoble type.
She seemed overcome with grief--all but prostrate.

Trilby hugged and kissed her, and took off her bonnet and shawl, and
made her sit down in a big arm-chair, and got her a foot-stool.

She couldn't speak a word of anything but Polish and a little German.
Trilby had also picked up a little German, and with this and by means
of signs, and no doubt through a long intimacy with each other's ways,
they understood each other very well. She seemed a very good old
creature, and very fond of Trilby, but in mortal terror of the three
Englishmen.

Lunch was brought up for the two women and the nurse, and our friends
left them, promising to come again that day.

They were utterly bewildered; and the Laird would have it that there
was another Madame Svengali somewhere, the real one, and that Trilby
was a fraud--self-deceived and self-deceiving--quite unconsciously so,
of course.

Truth looked out of her eyes, as it always had done--truth was in
every line of her face.

The truth only--nothing but the truth could ever be told in that Voice
of velvet,' which rang as true when she spoke as that of any thrush or
nightingale, however rebellious it might be now (and for ever perhaps)
to artificial melodic laws and limitations and restraints. The long
training it had been subjected to had made it 'a wonder, a world's
delight,' and though she might never sing another note, her mere
speech would always be more golden than any silence, whatever she
might say.

Except on the one particular point of her singing, she had seemed
absolutely sane--so, at least, thought Taffy, the Laird, and Little
Billee. And each thought to himself, besides, that this last
incarnation of Trilbyness was quite the sweetest, most touching, most
endearing of all.

They had not failed to note how rapidly she had aged, now that they
had seen her without her rouge and pearl powder; she looked thirty at
least--she was only twenty-three.

Her hands were almost transparent in their waxen whiteness; delicate
little frosty wrinkles had gathered round her eyes; there were gray
streaks in her hair; all strength and straightness and elasticity
seemed to have gone out of her with the memory of her endless triumphs
(if she really was La Svengali), and of her many wanderings from city
to city all over Europe.

It was evident enough that the sudden stroke which had destroyed her
power of singing had left her physically a wreck.

But she was one of those rarely-gifted beings who cannot look or speak
or even stir without waking up (and satisfying) some vague longing
that lies dormant in the hearts of most of us, men and women alike;
grace, charm, magnetism--whatever the nameless seduction should be
called that she possessed to such an unusual degree--she had lost none
of it when she lost her high spirits, her buoyant health and energy,
her wits!

Tuneless and insane, she was more of a siren than ever--a quite
unconscious siren--without any guile, who appealed to the heart all
the more directly and irresistibly that she could no longer stir the
passions.

All this was keenly felt by all three--each in his different way--by
Taffy and Little Billee especially.

All her past life was forgiven--her sins of omission and commission!
And whatever might be her fate--recovery, madness, disease, or death--
the care of her till she died or recovered should be the principal
business of their lives.

Both had loved her. All three, perhaps. One had been loved by her as
passionately, as purely, as unselfishly, as any man could wish to be
loved, and in some extraordinary manner had recovered, after many
years, at the mere sudden sight and sound of her, his lost share in
our common inheritance--the power to love, and all its joy and sorrow;
without which he had found life not worth living, though he had
possessed every other gift and blessing in such abundance.

'Oh, Circe, poor Circe, dear Circe, divine enchantress that you were!'
he said to himself, in his excitable way. 'A mere look from your eyes,
a mere note of your heavenly voice, has turned a poor, miserable,
callous brute back into a man again! and I will never forget it---
never! And now that a still worse trouble than mine has befallen you,
you shall always be first in my thoughts till the end!'