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 most
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 Gérôme; 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.
[Illustration: "THE SOFT EYES"]
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 senile
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 armory
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, and sober
Silenus, and chasten Jove himself--a thing to Quixotize 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 splendor 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 _à la hussarde_, off the
spring-board 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-summersault 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 à papier! quel gaillard que cet Anglais, hein?"
"A-t-on jamais vu un torse pareil!"
"Et les bras, donc!"
"Et les jambes, nom d'un tonnerre!"
"Mâtin! J'aimerais mieux être en colère contre lui qu'il ne soit en
colère 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 neighbor, 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 dress-makers and boot-makers, 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!
[Illustration: ILYSSUS]
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 here let me humbly apologize 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 a 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 Pâques," 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 progenitor.
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-color sketch of him, just as he
was, and gave it to Trilby, who gave it to le père 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 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 champêtre's. Swings, peep-shows,
donkey-rides; shooting at a mark with cross-bows 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, heelless 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 favorite 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 champêtre."
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 dea_!
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 humor, no greater humorist ever danced a _pas seul_.
[Illustration: "'VOILÀ L'ESPAYCE DE HOM KER JER SWEE!'"]
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!
"Voilà l'espayce de hom 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 come
in admirably....
Then, one fine day, 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 sauvé, M. le Docteur; écoutez! il dit
ses prières en Anglais, ce brave garçon!"
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
heart-felt fervor, intoning, solemnly:
"'Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron,
Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace--
All these you eat at Terré's Tavern
In that one dish of bouillabaisse!'"
"Ah! mais c'est très bien de sa part, ce brave jeune homme! rendre
grâces au ciel comme cela, quand le danger est passé! très bien, très
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 mesmerize 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 paralyze 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 furor, and blossomed out into beautiful
and costly clothes of quite original color 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--hein! 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 Engländerinnen 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 arm-chair,
and they will sit all round him on footstools, and bring him tea and gin
and küchen and marrons glacés, 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 Anglaises! they will think it an honor 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, pig-headed 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!...
[Illustration: TIT FOR TAT]
"Look at your Frenchmen there--your damned conceited verfluchte 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's 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 is talking! 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 windows--Englanders, chiffonniers, painters and sculptors,
workmen, pioupious, old hags of washer-women--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 Polt'! 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--"Très pien, très pien, ça y 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 père 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 deçà, ne dela la mer
Ne sçay dame ni damoiselle
Qui soit en tous biens parfaits telle--
C'est un songe que d'y penser:
Dieu! qu'il fait bon la regarder!"