once more, on Christmas night, for the twentieth time--_will_ you marry
me? If not, I leave Paris to-morrow morning, and never come back. I
swear it on my word of honor!"
Trilby turned very pale, and leaned her back against the wall, and
covered her face with her hands.
Little Billee pulled them away.
"Answer me, Trilby!"
"God forgive me, _yes!_" said Trilby, and she ran down-stairs, weeping.
* * * * *
It was now very late.
It soon became evident that Little Billee was in extraordinary high
spirits--in an abnormal state of excitement.
He challenged Svengali to spar, and made his nose bleed, and frightened
him out of his sardonic wits. He performed wonderful and quite
unsuspected feats of strength. He swore eternal friendship to Dodor and
Zouzou, and filled their glasses again and again, and also (in his
innocence) his own, and trinquéd with them many times running. They were
the last to leave (except the three helpless policemen); and at about
five or six in the morning, to his surprise, he found himself walking
between Dodor and Zouzou by a late windy moonlight in the Rue Vieille
des Mauvais Ladres, now on one side of the frozen gutter, now on the
other, now in the middle of it, stopping them now and then to tell them
how jolly they were and how dearly he loved them.
Presently his hat flew away, and went rolling and skipping and bounding
up the narrow street, and they discovered that as soon as they let each
other go to run after it, they all three sat down.
So Dodor and Little Billee remained sitting, with their arms round each
other's necks and their feet in the gutter, while Zouzou went after the
hat on all fours, and caught it, and brought it back in his mouth like a
tipsy retriever. Little Billee wept for sheer love and gratitude, and
called him a cary_hat_ide (in English), and laughed loudly at his own
wit, which was quite thrown away on Zouzou! "No man ever _had_ such
dear, dear frenge! no man ever _was_ s'happy!"
After sitting for a while in love and amity, they managed to get up on
their feet again, each helping the other; and in some never-to-be-remembered
way they reached the Hôtel Corneille.
[Illustration: "'ANSWER ME, TRILBY!'"]
There they sat little Billee on the door-step and rang the bell, and
seeing some one coming up the Place de l'Odéon, and fearing he might be
a sergent de ville, they bid Little Billee a most affectionate but hasty
farewell, kissing him on both cheeks in French fashion, and contriving
to get themselves round the corner and out of sight.
Little Billee tried to sing Zouzou's drinking-song:
"Quoi de plus doux
Que les glougloux--
Les glougloux du vin à quat' sous...."
The stranger came up. Fortunately, it was no sergent de ville, but
Ribot, just back from a Christmas-tree and a little family dance at his
aunt's, Madame Kolb (the Alsacian banker's wife, in the Rue de la
Chaussée d'Antin).
[Illustration: A CARY_HAT_IDE]
Next morning poor Little Billee was dreadfully ill.
He had passed a terrible night. His bed had heaved like the ocean, with
oceanic results. He had forgotten to put out his candle, but fortunately
Ribot had blown it out for him, after putting him to bed and tucking him
up like a real good Samaritan.
And next morning, when Madame Paul brought him a cup of tisane de
chiendent (which does not happen to mean a hair of the dog that bit
him), she was kind, but very severe on the dangers and disgrace of
intoxication, and talked to him like a mother.
"If it had not been for kind Monsieur Ribot" (she told him), "the
door-step would have been your portion; and who could say you didn't
deserve it? And then think of the dangers of fire from a tipsy man all
alone in a small bedroom with chintz curtains and a lighted candle!"
"Ribot was kind enough to blow out my candle," said Little Billee,
humbly.
"Ah, Dame!" said Madame Paul, with much meaning--"au moins il a _bon
coeur_, Monsieur Ribot!"
And the crulest sting of all was when the good-natured and incorrigibly
festive Ribot came and sat by his bedside, and was kind and tenderly
sympathetic, and got him a pick-me-up from the chemist's (unbeknown to
Madame Paul).
"Credieu! vous vous êtes crânement bien amusé, hier soir! quelle bosse,
hein! je parie que c'était plus drôle que chez ma tante Kolb!"
All of which, of course, it is unnecessary to translate; except,
perhaps, the word "bosse," which stands for "noce," which stands for a
"jolly good spree."
In all his innocent little life Little Billee had never dreamed of such
humiliation as this--such ignominious depths of shame and misery and
remorse! He did not care to live. He had but one longing: that Trilby,
dear Trilby, kind Trilby, would come and pillow his head on her
beautiful white English bosom, and lay her soft, cool, tender hand on
his aching brow, and there let him go to sleep, and sleeping, die!
He slept and slept, with no better rest for his aching brow than the
pillow of his bed in the Hôtel Corneille, and failed to die this time.
And when, after some forty-eight hours or so, he had quite slept off the
fumes of that memorable Christmas debauch, he found that a sad thing had
happened to him, and a strange!
It was as though a tarnishing breath had swept over the reminiscent
mirror of his mind and left a little film behind it, so that no past
thing he wished to see therein was reflected with quite the old pristine
clearness. As though the keen, quick, razorlike edge of his power to
reach and re-evoke the by-gone charm and glamour and essence of things
had been blunted and coarsened. As though the bloom of that special joy,
the gift he unconsciously had of recalling past emotions and sensations
and situations, and making them actual once more by a mere effort of the
will, had been brushed away.
And he never recovered the full use of that most precious faculty, the
boon of youth and happy childhood, and which he had once possessed,
without knowing it, in such singular and exceptional completeness. He
was to lose other precious faculties of his over-rich and complex
nature--to be pruned and clipped and thinned--that his one supreme
faculty of painting might have elbow-room to reach its fullest, or else
you would never have seen the wood for the trees (or _vice versa_--which
is it?).
[Illustration: "'LES GLOUGLOUX DU VIN À QUAT' SOUS....'"]
On New-year's Day Taffy and the Laird were at their work in the studio,
when there was a knock at the door, and Monsieur Vinard, cap in hand,
respectfully introduced a pair of visitors, an English lady and
gentleman.
The gentleman was a clergyman, small, thin, round-shouldered, with a
long neck; weak-eyed and dryly polite. The lady was middle-aged, though
still young looking; very pretty, with gray hair; very well dressed;
very small, full of nervous energy, with tiny hands and feet. It was
Little Billee's mother; and the clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Bagot, was
her brother-in-law.
Their faces were full of trouble--so much so that the two painters did
not even apologize for the carelessness of their attire, or for the odor
of tobacco that filled the room. Little Billee's mother recognized the
two painters at a glance, from the sketches and descriptions of which
her son's letters were always full.
They all sat down.
After a moment's embarrassed silence, Mrs. Bagot exclaimed, addressing
Taffy: "Mr. Wynne, we are in terrible distress of mind. I don't know if
my son has told you, but on Christmas Day he engaged himself to be
married!"
"To--be--_married!_" exclaimed Taffy and the Laird, for whom this was
news indeed.
"Yes--to be married to a Miss Trilby O'Ferrall, who, from what he
implies, is in quite a different position in life to himself. Do you
know the lady, Mr. Wynne?"
"Oh yes! I know her very well indeed; we _all_ know her."
"Is she English?"
"She's an English subject, I believe."
"Is she a Protestant or a Roman Catholic?" inquired the clergyman.
"A--a--upon my word, I really don't know!"
"You know her very well indeed, and you _don't_--_know_--_that_, Mr.
Wynne!" exclaimed Mr. Bagot.
"Is she a _lady_, Mr. Wynne?" asked Mrs. Bagot, somewhat impatiently, as
if that were a much more important matter.
By this time the Laird had managed to basely desert his friend; had got
himself into his bedroom, and from thence, by another door, into the
street and away.
"A lady?" said Taffy; "a--it so much depends upon what that word exactly
means, you know; things are so--a--so different here. Her father was a
gentleman, I believe--a fellow of Trinity, Cambridge--and a clergyman,
if _that_ means anything!... he was unfortunate and all
that--a--intemperate, I fear, and not successful in life. He has been
dead six or seven years."
"And her mother?"
"I really know very little about her mother, except that she was very
handsome, I believe, and of inferior social rank to her husband. She's
also dead; she died soon after him."
"What is the young lady, then? An English governess, or something of
that sort?"
"Oh, no, no--a--nothing of _that_ sort," said Taffy (and inwardly, "You
coward--you cad of a Scotch thief of a sneak of a Laird--to leave all
this to me!").
"What? Has she independent means of her own, then?"
"A--not that I know of; I should even say, decidedly not!"
"What _is_ she, then? She's at least respectable, I hope!"
"At present she's a--a blanchisseuse de fin--that is considered
respectable here."
"Why, that's a washer-woman, isn't it?"
"Well--rather better than that, perhaps--_de fin_, you know!--things are
so different in Paris! I don't think you'd say she was very much like a
washer-woman--to look at!"
"Is she so good-looking, then?"
"Oh yes; extremely so. You may well say that--very beautiful,
indeed--about that, at least, there is no doubt whatever!"
"And of unblemished character?"
Taffy, red and perspiring as if he were going through his Indian-club
exercise, was silent--and his face expressed a miserable perplexity. But
nothing could equal the anxious misery of those two maternal eyes, so
wistfully fixed on his.
After some seconds of a most painful stillness, the lady said, "Can't
you--oh, _can't_ you give me an answer, Mr. Wynne?"
"Oh, Mrs. Bagot, you have placed me in a terrible position! I--I love
your son just as if he were my own brother! This engagement is a
complete surprise to me--a most painful surprise! I'd thought of many
possible things, but never of _that!_ I cannot--I really _must_ not
conceal from you that it would be an unfortunate marriage for your
son--from a--a worldly point of view, you know--although both I and
McAllister have a very deep and warm regard for poor Trilby
O'Ferrall--indeed, a great admiration and affection and respect! She
was once a model."
"A _model_, Mr. Wynne? What _sort_ of a model--there are models and
models, of course."
[Illustration: "'IS SHE A _LADY_, MR. WYNNE?'"]
"Well, a model of every sort, in every possible sense of the word--head,
hands, feet, everything!"
"A model for the _figure?_"
"Well--yes!"
"Oh, my God! my God! my God!" cried Mrs. Bagot--and she got up and
walked up and down the studio in a most terrible state of agitation,
her brother-in-law following her and begging her to control herself. Her
exclamations seemed to shock him, and she didn't seem to care.
"Oh, Mr. Wynne! Mr. Wynne! If you only _knew_ what my son is to me--to
all of us--always has been! He has been with us all his life, till he
came to this wicked, accursed city! My poor husband would never hear of
his going to any school, for fear of all the harm he might learn there.
My son was as innocent and pure-minded as any girl, Mr. Wynne--I could
have trusted him anywhere--and that's why I gave way and allowed him to
come _here_, of all places in the world--all alone. Oh! I should have
come with him! Fool--fool--fool that I was!...
"Oh, Mr. Wynne, he won't see either his mother or his uncle! I found a
letter from him at the hotel, saying he'd left Paris--and I don't even
know where he's gone!... Can't _you_, can't Mr. McAllister, do
_anything_ to avert this miserable disaster? You don't know how he loves
you both--you should see his letters to me and to his sister! they are
always full of you!"
"Indeed, Mrs. Bagot--you can count on McAllister and me for doing
everything in our power! But it is of no use our trying to influence
your son--I feel quite sure of _that_! It is to _her_ we must make our
appeal."
"Oh, Mr. Wynne! to a washer-woman--a figure model--and Heaven knows what
besides! and with such a chance as this!"
"Mrs. Bagot, you don't know her? She may have been all that. But
strange as it may seem to you--and seems to me, for that matter--she's
a--she's--upon my word of honor, I really think she's about the best
woman I ever met--the most unselfish--the most--"
"Ah! She's a _beautiful_ woman--I can well see _that!_"
"She has a beautiful nature, Mrs. Bagot--you may believe me or not, as
you like--and it is to that I shall make my appeal, as your son's
friend, who has his interests at heart. And let me tell you that deeply
as I grieve for you in your present distress, my grief and concern for
her are far greater!"
"What! grief for her if she marries my son!"
"No, indeed--but if she refuses to marry him. She may not do so, of
course--but my instinct tells me she will!"
"Oh! Mr. Wynne, is that likely?"
"I will do my best to make it so--with such an utter trust in her
unselfish goodness of heart and her passionate affection for your son
as--"
"How do you know she has all this passionate affection for him?"
"Oh, McAllister and I have long guessed it--though we never thought this
particular thing would come of it. I think, perhaps, that first of all
you ought to see her yourself--you would get quite a new idea of what
she really is--you would be surprised, I assure you."
Mrs. Bagot shrugged her shoulders impatiently, and there was silence for
a minute or two.
And then, just as in a play, Trilby's "Milk below!" was sounded at the
door, and Trilby came into the little antechamber, and seeing
strangers, was about to turn back. She was dressed as a grisette, in her
Sunday gown and pretty white cap (for it was New-year's Day), and
looking her very best.
Taffy called out, "Come in, Trilby!"
And Trilby came into the studio.
As soon as she saw Mrs. Bagot's face she stopped short--erect, her
shoulders a little high, her mouth a little open, her eyes wide with
fright--and pale to the lips--a pathetic, yet commanding, magnificent,
and most distinguished apparition, in spite of her humble attire.
The little lady got up and walked straight to her, and looked up into
her face, that seemed to tower so. Trilby breathed hard.
At length Mrs. Bagot said, in her high accents, "You are Miss Trilby
O'Ferrall?"
"Oh yes--yes--I am Trilby O'Ferrall, and you are Mrs. Bagot; I can see
that!"
A new tone had come into her large, deep, soft voice, so tragic, so
touching, so strangely in accord with the whole aspect just then--so
strangely in accord with the whole situation--that Taffy felt his cheeks
and lips turn cold, and his big spine thrill and tickle all down his
back.
"Oh yes; you are very, very beautiful--there's no doubt about _that_!
You wish to marry my son?"
"I've refused to marry him nineteen times for his own sake; he will tell
you so himself. I am not the right person for him to marry. I know that.
On Christmas night he asked me for the twentieth time; he swore he would
leave Paris next day forever if I refused him. I hadn't the courage. I
was weak, you see! It was a dreadful mistake."
"Are you so fond of him?"
"_Fond_ of him? Aren't _you_?"
"I'm his mother, my good girl!"
To this Trilby seemed to have nothing to say.
"You have just said yourself you are not a fit wife for him. If you are
so _fond_ of him, will you ruin him by marrying him; drag him down;
prevent him from getting on in life; separate him from his sister, his
family, his friends?"
[Illustration: "'_FOND_ OF HIM? AREN'T _YOU_?'"]
Trilby turned her miserable eyes to Taffy's miserable face, and said,
"Will it really be all that, Taffy?"
"Oh, Trilby, things have got all wrong, and can't be righted! I'm afraid
it might be so. Dear Trilby--I can't tell you what I feel--but I can't
tell you lies, you know!"
"Oh no--Taffy--you don't tell lies!"
Then Trilby began to tremble very much, and Taffy tried to make her sit
down, but she wouldn't. Mrs. Bagot looked up into her face, herself
breathless with keen suspense and cruel anxiety--almost imploring.
Trilby looked down at Mrs. Bagot very kindly, put out her shaking hand,
and said; "Good-bye, Mrs. Bagot. I will not marry your son. I _promise_
you. I will never see him again."
Mrs. Bagot caught and clasped her hand and tried to kiss it, and said:
"Don't go yet, my dear good girl. I want to talk to you. I want to tell
you how deeply I--"
"Good-bye, Mrs. Bagot," said Trilby, once more; and, disengaging her
hand, she walked swiftly out of the room.
Mrs. Bagot seemed stupefied, and only half content with her quick
triumph.
"She will not marry your son, Mrs. Bagot. I only wish to God she'd marry
_me_!"
"Oh, Mr. Wynne!" said Mrs. Bagot, and burst into tears.
"Ah!" exclaimed the clergyman, with a feebly satirical smile and a
little cough and sniff that were not sympathetic, "now if _that_ could
be arranged--and I've no doubt there wouldn't be much opposition on the
part of the lady" (here he made a little complimentary bow), "it would
be a very desirable thing all round!"
"It's tremendously good of you, I'm sure--to interest yourself in _my_
humble affairs," said Taffy. "Look here, sir--I'm not a great genius
like your nephew--and it doesn't much matter to any one but myself what
I make of my life--but I can assure you that if Trilby's heart were set
on me as it is on him, I would gladly cast in my lot with hers for life.
She's one in a thousand. She's the one sinner that repenteth, you know!"
"Ah, yes--to be sure!--to be sure! I know all about that; still, facts
are facts, and the world is the world, and we've got to live in it,"
said Mr. Bagot, whose satirical smile had died away under the gleam of
Taffy's choleric blue eye.
Then said the good Taffy, frowning down on the parson (who looked mean
and foolish, as people can sometimes do even with right on their side):
"And now, Mr. Bagot--I can't tell you how very keenly I have suffered
during this--a--this most painful interview--on account of my very deep
regard for Trilby O'Ferrall. I congratulate you and your sister-in-law
on its complete success. I also feel very deeply for your nephew. I'm
not sure that he has not lost more than he will gain by--a--by
the--a--the success of this--a--this interview, in short!"
Taffy's eloquence was exhausted, and his quick temper was getting the
better of him.
Then Mrs. Bagot, drying her eyes, came and took his hand in a very
charming and simple manner, and said: "Mr. Wynne, I think I know what
you are feeling just now. You must try and make some allowance for us.
You will, I am sure, when we are gone, and you have had time to think a
little. As for that noble and beautiful girl, I only wish that she were
such that my son _could_ marry her--in her past life, I mean. It is not
her humble rank that would frighten me; _pray_ believe that I am quite
sincere in this--and don't think too hardly of your friend's mother.
Think of all I shall have to go through with my poor son--who is deeply
in love--and no wonder! and who has won the love of such a woman as
that! and who cannot see at present how fatal to him such a marriage
would be. I can see all the charm and believe in all the goodness, in
spite of all. And, oh, how beautiful she is, and what a voice! All that
counts for so much, doesn't it? I cannot tell you how I grieve for her.
I can make no amends--who could, for such a thing? There are no amends,
and I shall not even try. I will only write and tell her all I think and
feel. You will forgive us, won't you?"
And in the quick, impulsive warmth and grace and sincerity of her manner
as she said all this, Mrs. Bagot was so absurdly like Little Billee that
it touched big Taffy's heart, and he would have forgiven anything, and
there was nothing to forgive.
"Oh, Mrs. Bagot, there's no question of forgiveness. Good heavens! it is
all so unfortunate, you know! Nobody's to blame that I can see.
Good-bye, Mrs. Bagot; good-bye, sir," and so saying, he saw them down to
their "remise," in which sat a singularly pretty young lady of seventeen
or so, pale and anxious, and so like Little Billee that it was quite
funny, and touched big Taffy's heart again.
* * * * *
When Trilby went out into the court-yard in the Place St. Anatole des
Arts, she saw Miss Bagot looking out of the carriage window, and in the
young lady's face, as she caught her eye, an expression of sweet
surprise and sympathetic admiration, with lifted eyebrows and parted
lips--just such a look as she had often got from Little Billee! She knew
her for his sister at once. It was a sharp pang.
[Illustration: "SO LIKE LITTLE BILLEE"]
She turned away, saying to herself: "Oh no; I will not separate him from
his sister, his family, his friends! That would _never_ do! _That's_
settled, anyhow!"
Feeling a little dazed, and wishing to think, she turned up the Rue
Vieille des Mauvais Ladres, which was always deserted at this hour. It
was empty but for a solitary figure sitting on a post, with its legs
dangling, its hands in its trousers-pockets, an inverted pipe in its
mouth, a tattered straw hat on the back of its head, and a long gray
coat down to its heels. It was the Laird.
As soon as he saw her he jumped off his post and came to her, saying:
"Oh, Trilby--what's it all about? I couldn't stand it! I ran away!
Little Billee's mother's there!"
"Yes, Sandy dear, I've just seen her."
"Well, what's up?"
"I've promised her never to see Little Billee any more. I was foolish
enough to promise to marry him. I refused many times these last three
months, and then he said he'd leave Paris and never come back, and so,
like a fool, I gave way. I've offered to live with him and take care of
him and be his servant--to be everything he wished but his wife! But he
wouldn't hear of it. Dear, dear Little Billee! he's an angel--and I'll
take precious good care no harm shall ever come to him through me! I
shall leave this hateful place and go and live in the country: I suppose
I must manage to get through life somehow. I know of some poor people
who were once very fond of me, and I could live with them and help them
and keep myself. The difficulty is about Jeannot. I thought it all out
before it came to this. I was well prepared, you see."
She smiled in a forlorn sort of way, with her upper lip drawn tight
against her teeth, as if some one were pulling her back by the lobes of
her ears.
"Oh! but Trilby--what shall we do without you? Taffy and I, you know!
You've become one of us!"
"Now how good and kind of you to say that!" exclaimed poor Trilby, her
eyes filling. "Why, that's just all I lived for, till all this happened.
But it can't be any more now, can it? Everything is changed for me--the
very sky seems different. Ah! Durien's little song--'_Plaisir
d'amour--chagrin d'amour_!' it's all quite true, isn't it? I shall start
immediately, and take Jeannot with me, I think."
"But where do you think of going?"
"Ah! I mayn't tell you that, Sandy dear--not for a long time! Think of
all the trouble there'd be-- Well, there's no time to be lost. I must
take the bull by the horns."
She tried to laugh, and took him by his big side-whiskers and kissed him
on the eyes and mouth, and her tears fell on his face.
Then, feeling unable to speak, she nodded farewell, and walked quickly
up the narrow winding street. When she came to the first bend she turned
round and waved her hand, and kissed it two or three times, and then
disappeared.
The Laird stared for several minutes up the empty
thoroughfare--wretched, full of sorrow and compassion. Then he filled
himself another pipe and lit it, and hitched himself on to another post,
and sat there dangling his legs and kicking his heels, and waited for
the Bagots' cab to depart, that he might go up and face the righteous
wrath of Taffy like a man, and bear up against his bitter reproaches for
cowardice and desertion before the foe.
* * * * *