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_SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION_
TRILBY
A Novel
_By_
GEORGE DU MAURIER
AUTHOR OF
"PETER IBBETSON" "THE MARTIAN"
"SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE"
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE AUTHOR
[Illustration: "_Aux nouvelles que j'apporte,
Vos beaux yeux vont pleurer!_"]
NEW YORK
INTERNATIONAL BOOK AND PUBLISHING COMPANY
1899
_This volume is issued for sale in
paper covers only._
Copyright, 1894, 1899, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
[Illustration: "_IT WAS TRILBY!_" [See page 317]]
_"Hélas! Je sais un chant d'amour,
Triste et gai, tour à tour!"_
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"IT WAS TRILBY!" _Frontispiece_
TAFFY, ALIAS TALBOT WYNNE 4
"THE LAIRD OF COCKPEN" 5
"THE THIRD HE WAS 'LITTLE BILLEE'" 7
"IT DID ONE GOOD TO LOOK AT HIM" 9
AMONG THE OLD MASTERS 13
"WISTFUL AND SWEET" 17
THE "ROSEMONDE" OF SCHUBERT 21
TRILBY'S LEFT FOOT 27
THE FLEXIBLE FLAGEOLET 31
THE BRIDGE OF ARTS 34
"THREE MUSKETEERS OF THE BRUSH" 39
TAFFY MAKES THE SALAD 43
"THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE" 47
TRILBY'S FOREBEARS 52
TAIL-PIECE 56
"AS BAD AS THEY MAKE 'EM" 59
"A VOICE HE DIDN'T UNDERSTAND" 63
"AND SO, NO MORE" 67
"'TWO ENGLANDERS IN ONE DAY'" 70
"'HIMMEL! THE ROOF OF YOUR MOUTH'" 73
"'ÇA FERA UNE FAMEUSE CRAPULE DE MOINS!'" 77
"'AV YOU SEEN MY FAHZER'S OLE SHOES?'" 81
TAFFY À L'ÉCHELLE! 85
"THE FOX AND THE CROW" 89
THE LATIN QUARTER 92
CUISINE BOURGEOISE EN BOHÈME 95
"THE SOFT EYES" 98
ILYSSUS 101
"'VOILÀ L'ESPAYCE DE HOM KER JER SWEE!'" 105
TIT FOR TAT 111
THE HAPPY LIFE 116
"'LET ME GO, TAFFY...'" 119
"'QU'EST CE QU'IL A DONC, CE LITREBILI?'" 121
REPENTANCE 125
CONFESSION 129
"ALL AS IT USED TO BE" 133
"TWIN GRAY STARS" 135
"AN INCUBUS" 137
THE CAPITALIST AND THE SWELL 141
"'I WILL NOT! I WILL NOT!'" 151
DODOR IN HIS GLORY 153
HÔTEL DE LA ROCHEMARTEL 155
CHRISTMAS EVE 161
"'ALLONS GLYCÈRE! ROUGIS MON VERRE....'" 163
SOUVENIR 168
"MY SISTER DEAR" 173
A DUCAL FRENCH FIGHTING-COCK 175
"'ANSWER ME, TRILBY!'" 179
A CARY_HAT_IDE 180
"'LES GLOUGLOUX DU VIN À QUAT' SOUS....'" 183
"'IS SHE A _LADY_, MR. WYNNE?'" 187
"'_FOND_ OF HIM? AREN'T _YOU_?'" 191
"SO LIKE LITTLE BILLEE" 195
"'I MUST TAKE THE BULL BY THE HORNS'" 199
"'TRILBY! WHERE IS SHE?'" 203
LA SOEUR DE LITREBILI 205
"HE FELL A-WEEPING, QUITE DESPERATELY" 207
"THE SWEET MELODIC PHRASE" 211
"SORROWFULLY, ARM IN ARM" 215
DEMORALIZATION 225
FRED WALKER 227
_PLATONIC LOVE_ 230
"DARLINGS, OLD OR YOUNG" 235
"THE MOON-DIAL" 237
THE CHAIRMAN 239
A HAPPY DINNER 245
"A-SMOKIN' THEIR POIPES AND CIGYARS" 247
"BONJOUR, SUZON!" 253
A HUMAN NIGHTINGALE 257
CUP-AND-BALL 263
SWEET ALICE 267
"MAY HEAVEN GO WITH HER!" 272
"'SO MUCH FOR ALICE, TRAY'" 277
"'YOU'RE A _THIEF_, SIR!'" 287
"AN ATMOSPHERE OF BANK-NOTES AND GOLD" 293
"A LITTLE PICTURE OF THE THAMES" 296
"'AH! THE BEAUTIFUL INTERMENT, MESSIEURS!'" 301
"PAUVRE TRILBY". 303
"'JE PRONG!'" 307
"'OON PAIR DE GONG BLONG'" 311
GECKO 315
"AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE" 319
"OUVRE-MOI TA PORTE POUR L'AMOUR DE DIEU!" 322
"MALBROUCK S'EN VA-T'EN GUERRE" 325
"AUX NOUVELLES QUE J'APPORTE, VOS BEAUX YEUX VONT PLEURER!". 329
UN IMPROMPTU DE CHOPIN 331
"AND THE REMEMBRANCE OF THEM--HAND IN HAND" 338
"'I BELIEVE YOU, MY BOY!'" 341
"MAMAN DUCHESSE" 351
THE CUT DIRECT 354
"PETIT ENFANT, J'AIMAIS D'UN AMOUR TENDRE...." 358
"'VITE! VITE! UN COMMISSAIRE DE POLICE!'" 363
"I SUPPOSE YOU DO ALL THIS KIND OF THING FOR MERE AMUSEMENT,
MR. WYNNE?" 367
THE FIRST VIOLIN LOSES HIS TEMPER 373
"HAST THOU FOUND ME, O MINE ENEMY?" 375
"'OH, DON'T YOU REMEMBER SWEET ALICE, BEN BOLT?'" 377
"THE LAST THEY SAW OF SVENGALI" 383
"'THREE NICE CLEAN ENGLISHMEN'" 386
"POENA PEDE CLAUDO" 389
"THE OLD STUDIO" 391
"'ET MAINTENANT DORS, MA MIGNONNE!'" 395
"TAFFY WAS ALLOWED TO SEE GECKO" 400
A FAIR BLANCHISSEUSE DE FIN 403
A THRONE IN BOHEMIA 407
"'OH, MY POOR GIRL! MY POOR GIRL!'" 410
"'AH, POOR MAMMA! SHE WAS EVER SO MUCH PRETTIER THAN THAT!'" 416
"'TO SING LIKE THAT IS _TO PRAY_!'" 422
"'THE REMEMBRANCE OF THAT PALM SUNDAY!'" 425
FOR GECKO 431
"OUT OF THE MYSTERIOUS EAST" 432
"'SVENGALI!... SVENGALI!... SVENGALI!...'" 437
"TOUT VIENT À POINT, POUR QUI SAIT ATTENDRE!" 439
"I, PETE COELESTES...." 441
"PETITS BONHEURS DE CONTREBANDE" 447
ENTER GECKO 451
"'WE TOOK HER VOICE NOTE BY NOTE'" 455
THE NIGHTINGALE'S FIRST SONG 459
"'ICH HABE _GELIEBT UND GELEBET_!'" 461
TAIL-PIECE 464
TRILBY
Part First
"Mimi Pinson est une blonde,
Une blonde que l'on connaît;
Elle n'a qu'une robe au monde,
Landérirette! 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 northwest. 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 altorilievo 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 a nest, a rest, a
pillow, a refuge--to be loved and desired forever 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 chetah-skins and a large Persian praying-rug. One-half of it,
however (under the trapeze and at the farthest end 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 knick-knacks, 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.
[Illustration: TAFFY, ALIAS TALBOT WYNNE]
He was good-looking, with straight features; but I regret to say that,
besides his heavy plunger's mustache, 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 ...?"
[Illustration: "THE LAIRD OF COCKPEN"]
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 savory 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 homoeopathic 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 flavor intact; or like the famous bull-dog 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 discolored, old, cracked,
dingy walls, with mysterious windows and rusty iron balconies of great
antiquity--sights that set him dreaming dreams of mediæval French love
and wickedness and crime, bygone mysteries of Paris!
[Illustration: "THE THIRD HE WAS 'LITTLE BILLEE'"]
One gap went right through the block, and gave him a glimpse of the
river, the "Cité," 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 midst 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 Hôtel de Seine, in the street of that name.
Little Billee lodged at the Hôtel Corneille, in the Place de l'Odéon.
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.
[Illustration: "IT DID ONE GOOD TO LOOK AT HIM"]
They loved him for his affectionate disposition, his lively and
caressing ways; and they admired him far more than he ever knew, for
they recognized in him a quickness, a keenness, a delicacy of
perception, in matters of form and color, 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 life-like, 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 béret 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
musicianlike 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 mustache, 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 small-pox, 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 amène mon ami Checko,
qui choue du fiolon gomme 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 biâno!" exclaimed Svengali, flinging his red béret on it, and
his cloak on the ground. "Ch'espère qu'il est pon, et pien 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.
[Illustration: AMONG THE OLD MASTERS]
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 but of 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
list 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 collar-bone, which just
showed itself between the unbuttoned lapels of her military coat collar,
was of a delicate privetlike 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:
[Illustration: "WISTFUL AND SWEET"]
"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 color, 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, æsthetic eye, and
knew by the grace of Heaven what the shapes and sizes and colors 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), fac-similed 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 civilized 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
young love's 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, comes 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, voilà, de l'éloquence--à 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 à la crème_ 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,
and 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: "Maïe, aïe! c'est rudement bien
tapé, c'te musique-là! Seulement, c'est pas gai, vous savez! Comment
q'ça s'appelle?"
"It is called the 'Rosemonde' of Schubert, matemoiselle," replied
Svengali. (I will translate.)
[Illustration: THE "ROSEMONDE" OF SCHUBERT]
"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 étudiants,
S'en vont à la chaumière
Pour y danser le cancan,"
striking wrong notes, and banging out a bass in a different 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 étudiants." 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 is 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 strong. He gave me his word of honor. 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 Comédie Française, nor yet that of the
Faubourg St. Germain, nor yet that of 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 half-way 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, maïe, aïe!"
She went to the door and paused, looking round benignly. "What nice
teeth you've all three got. That's because you're 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 ça l'amuse!
va-t-en ville, et fait tout ce qui concerne son état! Don't forget.
Thanks all, and good-bye."
"En v'là 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 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
barytone.
[Illustration: TRILBY'S LEFT FOOT]
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-à-fait chentil! Allons, Gecko, chouez-nous ça!"
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 battle-doored 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
splendor 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 élèfe! che le fais chanter sur son fiolon, c'est comme si
c'était _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 Honorine;" 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 tune 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.
[Illustration: THE FLEXIBLE FLAGEOLET]
When Svengali ended, he leered again on his dumb-struck 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
Pillee, 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 honor 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 maître 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.
Durien came in and looked over his shoulder, and exclaimed: "Tiens! le
pied de Trilby! vous avez fait ça d'après nature?"
"Nong!"
"De mémoire, alors?"
"Wee!"
"Je vous en fais mon compliment! Vous avez eu la main heureuse. Je
voudrais bien avoir fait ça, moi! C'est un petit chef-d'oeuvre que
vous avez fait là--tout bonnement, mon cher! Mais vous élaborez trop. De
grâce, 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 Père 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 coin of the empire. Good distending soups,
omelets that were only too savory, lentils, red and white beans, meat so
dressed and sauced and seasoned that you didn't know whether it were
beef or mutton--flesh, fowl, or good red herring--or even bad, for that
matter--nor very greatly care.
And just the same lettuce, radishes, and cheese of Gruyère or Brie as
you got at the Trois Frères Provençaux (but not the same butter!). And
to wash it all down, generous wine in wooden "brocs"--that stained a
lovely æsthetic blue everything it was spilled over.
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF ARTS]
And you hobnobbed with models, male and female, students of law and
medicine, painters and sculptors, workmen and blanchisseuses 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 dominos at the Café du
Luxembourg opposite; or at the Théâtre 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 as it seems; or, best of all, at the Théâtre de l'Odéon, to
see some piece of 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 Cité, 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-à-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 Cité 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 Grenelle 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
year and century, at that particular epoch of their own mortal and
uncertain lives.