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 die there--painting, the forest as it is, and peopling it
with beautiful people out of his own fancy--leading a healthy out-door
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 Café de l'Odéon, where
the omelets are good and the wine isn't blue."
"The very thing I was thinking of myself," said the Laird.
[Illustration: THE HAPPY LIFE]
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
great-coat 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 demoralization.
And whom should they meet coming down the narrow turreted old Rue
Vieille des Mauvais Ladres but Little Billee himself, with an air of
general demoralization 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 staring
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 coming 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 sha'n't let you go unless you swear to me, on your honor, that you'll
write directly, you get there, and every day till you come back. Swear!"
"All right; I swear--honor 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 demoralized 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 favor 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 a stone pitcher on her shoulder.
[Illustration: "'LET ME GO, TAFFY ...'"]
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 donc, 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 father'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 "altogether," 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.
[Illustration: "'QU'EST CE QU'IL A DONC, CE LITREBILI?'"]
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 Psyché," 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.
* * * * *
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 favorite 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.
Gérôme, Durien, the two Hennequins, and Émile Baratier; and for the
head and hands to lots of people, and for the feet only to Charles
Faure, André 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 die 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.
[Illustration: REPENTANCE]
"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
Angèle Boisse, who is getting on very well indeed, in the Rue des
Cloîtres Ste. Pétronille.
"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
Toréador"--saying to her as he left, "à ce soir donc, mille sacrés
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 fell 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.
[Illustration: CONFESSION]
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 realized, 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 père Trin's, and Trilby
went back to her _blanchisserie de fin_.
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 favor, 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 jaw 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 even 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.
Favorite 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 infinitely more admired now than in the fifties.
Her photograph would be in the shop-windows. 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 Clytie, 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.
[Illustration: "ALL AS IT USED TO BE"]
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 honorable 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.
[Illustration: "TWIN GRAY STARS"]
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!
Boum! boum! Better than the waiter at the Café de la Rotonde, hein? And
the grisettes of the quartier latin shall pour us out your little white
wine--'fotre betit fin planc,' 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
Élysées. 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 süssen füssen, 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 École de Médecine, 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 tomcat!' 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.