Mrs. Bagot. He read it twice over, and was forced to acknowledge that it
was a very good letter--the letter of a clever, warm-hearted woman, but
a woman also whose son was to her as the very apple of her eye. One felt
she was ready to flay her dearest friend alive in order to make Little
Billee a pair of gloves out of the skin, if he wanted a pair; but one
also felt she would be genuinely sorry for the friend. Taffy's own
mother had been a little like that, and he missed her every day of his
life.
Full justice was done by Mrs. Bagot to all Trilby's qualities of head
and heart and person; but at the same time she pointed out, with all the
cunning and ingeniously casuistic logic of her sex, when it takes to
special pleading (even when it has right on its side), what the
consequences of such a marriage must inevitably be in a few years--even
sooner! The quick disenchantment, the life-long regret, on both sides!
He could not have found a word to controvert her arguments, save perhaps
in his own private belief that Trilby and Little Billee were both
exceptional people; and how could he hope to know Little Billee's nature
better than the boy's own mother!
And if he had been the boy's elder brother in blood, as he already was
in art and affection, would he, should he, could he have given his
fraternal sanction to such a match?
Both as his friend and his brother he felt it was out of the question.
The other letter was from Trilby, in her bold, careless handwriting,
that sprawled all over the page, and her occasionally imperfect
spelling. It ran thus:
[Illustration: "'I MUST TAKE THE BULL BY THE HORNS'"]
"MY DEAR, DEAR TAFFY,--This is to say good-bye. I'm going away, to
put an end to all this misery, for which nobody's to blame but
myself.
"The very moment after I'd said _yes_ to Little Billee I knew
perfectly well what a stupid fool I was, and I've been ashamed of
myself ever since. I had a miserable week, I can tell you. I knew
how it would all turn out.
"I am dreadfully unhappy, but not half so unhappy as if I married
him and he were ever to regret it and be ashamed of me; and of
course he would, really, even if he didn't show it--good and kind
as he is--an angel!
"Besides--of course I could never be a lady--how could I?--though I
ought to have been one, I suppose. But everything seems to have
gone wrong with me, though I never found it out before--and it
can't be righted!
"Poor papa!
"I am going away with Jeannot. I've been neglecting him shamefully.
I mean to make up for it all now.
"You mustn't try and find out where I am going; I know you won't if
I beg you, nor any one else. It would make everything so much
harder for me.
"Angèle knows; she has promised me not to tell. I should like to
have a line from you very much. If you send it to her she will send
it on to me.
"Dear Taffy, next to Little Billee, I love you and the Laird better
than any one else in the whole world. I've never known real
happiness till I met you. You have changed me into another
person--you and Sandy and Little Billee.
"Oh, it _has_ been a jolly time, though it didn't last long. It
will have to do for me for life. So good-bye. I shall never, never
forget; and remain, with dearest love,
"Your ever faithful and most affectionate friend,
"TRILBY O'FERRALL.
"P.S.--When it has all blown over and settled again, if it ever
does, I shall come back to Paris, perhaps, and see you again some
day."
The good Taffy pondered deeply over this letter--read it half a dozen
times at least; and then he kissed it, and put it back into its envelope
and locked it up.
He knew what very deep anguish underlay this somewhat trivial expression
of her sorrow.
He guessed how Trilby, so childishly impulsive and demonstrative in the
ordinary intercourse of friendship, would be more reticent than most
women in such a case as this.
He wrote to her warmly, affectionately, at great length, and sent the
letter as she had told him.
The Laird also wrote a long letter full of tenderly worded friendship
and sincere regard. Both expressed their hope and belief that they would
soon see her again, when the first bitterness of her grief would be
over, and that the old pleasant relations would be renewed.
And then, feeling wretched, they went and silently lunched together at
the Café de l'Odéon, where the omelets were good and the wine wasn't
blue.
Late that evening they sat together in the studio, reading. They found
they could not talk to each other very readily without Little Billee to
listen--three's company sometimes and two's none!
Suddenly there was a tremendous getting up the dark stairs outside in a
violent hurry, and Little Billee burst into the room like a small
whirlwind--haggard, out of breath, almost speechless at first with
excitement.
"Trilby? where is she?... what's become of her?... She's run away ...
oh! She's written me such a letter!... We were to have been married ...
at the Embassy ... my mother ... she's been meddling; and that cursed
old ass ... that beast ... my uncle!... They've been here! I know all
about it.... Why didn't you stick up for her?..."
"I did ... as well as I could. Sandy couldn't stand it, and cut."
"_You_ stuck up for her ... _you_--why, you agreed with my mother that
she oughtn't to marry me--you--you false friend--you.... Why, she's an
angel--far too good for the likes of _me_ ... you know she is. As ... as
for her social position and all that, what degrading rot! Her father was
as much a gentleman as mine ... besides ... what the devil do I care for
her father?... it's _her_ I want--_her_--_her_--_her_, I tell you.... I
can't _live_ without her.... I must have her _back_--I must have her
_back_ ... do you _hear_? We were to have lived together at Barbizon ...
all our lives--and I was to have painted stunning pictures ... like
those other fellows there. Who cares for _their_ social position, I
should like to know ... or that of their wives? _Damn_ social
position!... we've often said so--over and over again. An artist's life
should be _away_ from the world--above all that meanness and paltriness
... all in his work. Social position, indeed! Over and over again we've
said what fetid, bestial rot it all was--a thing to make one sick and
shut one's self away from the world.... Why say one thing and act
another?... Love comes before all--love levels all--love and art ... and
beauty--before such beauty as Trilby's rank doesn't exist. Such rank as
mine, too! Good God! I'll never paint another stroke till I've got her
back ... never, never, I tell you--I can't--I won't!..."
[Illustration: "'TRILBY! WHERE IS SHE?'"]
And so the poor boy went on, tearing and raving about in his rampage,
knocking over chairs and easels, stammering and shrieking, mad with
excitement.
They tried to reason with him, to make him listen, to point out that it
was not her social position alone that unfitted her to be his wife and
the mother of his children, etc.
It was no good. He grew more and more uncontrollable, became almost
unintelligible, he stammered so--a pitiable sight and pitiable to hear.
"Oh! oh! good heavens! are you so precious immaculate, you two, that you
should throw stones at poor Trilby! What a shame, what a hideous shame
it is that there should be one law for the woman and another for the
man!... poor weak women--poor, soft, affectionate things that beasts of
men are always running after and pestering and ruining and trampling
underfoot.... Oh! oh! it makes me sick--it makes me sick!" And finally
he gasped and screamed and fell down in a fit on the floor.
The doctor was sent for; Taffy went in a cab to the Hôtel de Lille et
d'Albion to fetch his mother; and poor Little Billee, quite unconscious,
was undressed by Sandy and Madame Vinard and put into the Laird's bed.
The doctor came, and not long after Mrs. Bagot and her daughter. It was
a serious case. Another doctor was called in. Beds were got and made up
in the studio for the two grief-stricken ladies, and thus closed the eve
of what was to have been poor Little Billee's wedding-day, it seems.
Little Billee's attack appears to have been a kind of epileptic seizure.
It ended in brain-fever and other complications--a long and tedious
illness. It was many weeks before he was out of danger, and his
convalescence was long and tedious too.
His nature seemed changed. He lay languid and listless--never even
mentioned Trilby, except once to ask if she had come back, and if any
one knew where she was, and if she had been written to.
She had not, it appears. Mrs. Bagot had thought it was better not, and
Taffy and the Laird agreed with her that no good could come of writing.
Mrs. Bagot felt bitterly against the woman who had been the cause of all
this trouble, and bitterly against herself for her injustice. It was an
unhappy time for everybody.
* * * * *
There was more unhappiness still to come.
One day in February Madame Angèle Boisse called on Taffy and the Laird
in the temporary studio where they worked. She was in terrible
tribulation.
[Illustration: LA SOEUR DE LITREBILI]
Trilby's little brother had died of scarlet-fever and was buried, and
Trilby had left her hiding-place the day after the funeral and had never
come back, and this was a week ago. She and Jeannot had been living at a
village called Vibraye, in la Sarthe, lodging with some poor people she
knew--she washing and working with her needle till her brother fell ill.
She had never left his bedside for a moment, night or day, and when he
died her grief was so terrible that people thought she would go out of
her mind; and the day after he was buried she was not to be found
anywhere--she had disappeared, taking nothing with her, not even her
clothes--simply vanished and left no sign, no message of any kind.
All the ponds had been searched--all the wells, and the small stream
that flows through Vibraye--and the old forest.
Taffy went to Vibraye, cross-examined everybody he could, communicated
with the Paris police, but with no result, and every afternoon, with a
beating heart, he went to the Morgue....
* * * * *
The news was of course kept from Little Billee. There was no difficulty
about this. He never asked a question, hardly ever spoke.
When he first got up and was carried into the studio he asked for his
picture "The Pitcher Goes to the Well," and looked at it for a while,
and then shrugged his shoulders and laughed--a miserable sort of laugh,
painful to hear--the laugh of a cold old man, who laughs so as not to
cry! Then he looked at his mother and sister, and saw the sad havoc that
grief and anxiety had wrought in them.
It seemed to him, as in a bad dream, that he had been mad for many
years--a cause of endless sickening terror and distress; and that his
poor weak wandering wits had come back at last, bringing in their train
cruel remorse, and the remembrance of all the patient love and kindness
that had been lavished on him for many years! His sweet sister--his
dear, long-suffering mother! what had really happened to make them look
like this?
And taking them both in his feeble arms, he fell a-weeping, quite
desperately and for a long time.
And when his weeping-fit was over, when he had quite wept himself out,
he fell asleep.
[Illustration: "HE FELL A-WEEPING, QUITE DESPERATELY"]
And when he awoke he was conscious that another sad thing had happened
to him, and that for some mysterious cause his power of loving had not
come back with his wandering wits--had been left behind--and it seemed
to him that it was gone for ever and ever--would never come back
again--not even his love for his mother and sister, not even his love
for Trilby--where all _that_ had once been was a void, a gap, a
blankness....
Truly, if Trilby had suffered much, she had also been the innocent cause
of terrible suffering. Poor Mrs. Bagot, in her heart, could not forgive
her.
I feel this is getting to be quite a sad story, and that it is high time
to cut this part of it short.
As the warmer weather came, and Little Billee got stronger, the studio
became more pleasant. The ladies' beds were removed to another studio on
the next landing, which was vacant, and the friends came to see Little
Billee, and make it more lively for him and his sister.
As for Taffy and the Laird, they had already long been to Mrs. Bagot as
a pair of crutches, without whose invaluable help she could never have
held herself upright to pick her way in all this maze of trouble.
Then M. Carrel came every day to chat with his favorite pupil and
gladden Mrs. Bagot's heart. And also Durien, Carnegie, Petrolicoconose,
Vincent, Antony, Lorrimer, Dodor, and l'Zouzou; Mrs. Bagot thought the
last two irresistible, when she had once been satisfied that they were
"gentlemen," in spite of appearances. And, indeed, they showed
themselves to great advantage; and though they were so much the opposite
to Little Billee in everything, she felt almost maternal towards them,
and gave them innocent, good, motherly advice, which they swallowed
_avec attendrissement_, not even stealing a look at each other. And they
held Mrs. Bagot's wool, and listened to Miss Bagot's sacred music with
upturned pious eyes, and mealy mouths that butter wouldn't melt in!
It is good to be a soldier and a detrimental; you touch the hearts of
women and charm them--old and young, high or low (excepting, perhaps, a
few worldly mothers of marriageable daughters). They take the sticking
of your tongue in the cheek for the wearing of your heart on the sleeve.
Indeed, good women all over the world, and ever since it began, have
loved to be bamboozled by these genial, roistering dare-devils, who
haven't got a penny to bless themselves with (which is so touching), and
are supposed to carry their lives in their hands, even in piping times
of peace. Nay, even a few rare _bad_ women sometimes, such women as the
best and wisest of us are often ready to sell our souls for!
"A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien,
A feather of the blue,
A doublet of the Lincoln green--
No more of me you knew,
My love!
No more of me you knew...."
As if that wasn't enough, and to spare!
Little Billee could hardly realize that these two polite and gentle and
sympathetic sons of Mars were the lively grigs who had made themselves
so pleasant all round, and in such a singular manner, on the top of that
St. Cloud omnibus; and he admired how they added hypocrisy to their
other crimes!
Svengali had gone back to Germany, it seemed, with his pockets full of
napoleons and big Havana cigars, and wrapped in an immense fur-lined
coat, which he meant to wear all through the summer. But little Gecko
often came with his violin and made lovely music, and that seemed to do
Little Billee more good than anything else.
It made him realize in his brain all the love he could no longer feel in
his heart. The sweet melodic phrase, rendered by a master, was as
wholesome, refreshing balm to him while it lasted--or as manna in the
wilderness. It was the one good thing within his reach, never to be
taken from him as long as his ear-drums remained and he could hear a
master play.
Poor Gecko treated the two English ladies _de bas en haut_ as if they
had been goddesses, even when they accompanied him on the piano! He
begged their pardon for every wrong note they struck, and adopted their
"tempi"--that is the proper technical term, I believe--and turned
scherzos and allegrettos into funeral dirges to please them; and agreed
with them, poor little traitor, that it all sounded much better like
that!
O Beethoven! O Mozart! did you turn in your graves?
Then, on fine afternoons, Little Billee was taken for drives to the Bois
de Boulogne with his mother and sister in an open fly, and generally
Taffy as a fourth; to Passy, Auteuil, Boulogne, St. Cloud, Meudon--there
are many charming places within an easy drive of Paris.
[Illustration: "THE SWEET MELODIC PHRASE"]
And sometimes Taffy or the Laird would escort Mrs. and Miss Bagot to the
Luxembourg Gallery, the Louvre, the Palais Royal--to the Comédie
Française once or twice; and on Sundays, now and then, to the English
chapel in the Rue Marboeuf. It was all very pleasant; and Miss Bagot
looks back on the days of her brother's convalescence as among the
happiest in her life.
And they would all five dine together in the studio, with Madame Vinard
to wait, and her mother (a cordon bleu) for cook; and the whole aspect
of the place was changed and made fragrant, sweet, and charming by all
this new feminine invasion and occupation.
And what is sweeter to watch than the dawn and growth of love's young
dream, when strength and beauty meet together by the couch of a beloved
invalid?
Of course the sympathetic reader will foresee how readily the stalwart
Taffy fell a victim to the charms of his friend's sweet sister, and how
she grew to return his more than brotherly regard! and how, one lovely
evening, just as March was going out like a lamb (to make room for the
first of April), little Billee joined their hands together, and gave
them his brotherly blessing!
As a matter of fact, however, nothing of this kind happened. Nothing
ever happens but the _un_foreseen. Pazienza!
* * * * *
Then at length one day--it was a fine, sunny, showery day in April,
by-the-bye, and the big studio window was open at the top and let in a
pleasant breeze from the northwest, just as when our little story
began--a railway omnibus drew up at the porte cochère in the Place St.
Anatole des Arts, and carried away to the station of the Chemin de Fer
du Nord Little Billee and his mother and sister, and all their
belongings (the famous picture had gone before); and Taffy and the Laird
rode with them, their faces very long, to see the last of the dear
people, and of the train that was to bear them away from Paris; and
Little Billee, with his quick, prehensile, æsthetic eye, took many a
long and wistful parting gaze at many a French thing he loved, from the
gray towers of Notre Dame downward--Heaven only knew when he might see
them again!--so he tried to get their aspect well by heart, that he
might have the better store of beloved shape and color memories to chew
the cud of when his lost powers of loving and remembering clearly should
come back, and he lay awake at night and listened to the wash of the
Atlantic along the beautiful red sandstone coast at home.
He had a faint hope that he should feel sorry at parting with Taffy and
the Laird.
But when the time came for saying good-bye he couldn't feel sorry in the
least, for all he tried and strained so hard!
So he thanked them so earnestly and profusely for all their kindness and
patience and sympathy (as did also his mother and sister) that their
hearts were too full to speak, and their manner was quite gruff--it was
a way they had when they were deeply moved and didn't want to show it.
And as he gazed out of the carriage window at their two forlorn figures
looking after him when the train steamed out of the station, his sorrow
at not feeling sorry made him look so haggard and so woe-begone that
they could scarcely bear the sight of him departing without them, and
almost felt as if they must follow by the next train, and go and cheer
him up in Devonshire, and themselves too.
They did not yield to this amiable weakness. Sorrowfully, arm in arm,
with trailing umbrellas, they recrossed the river, and found their way
to the Café de l'Odéon, where they ate many omelets in silence, and
dejectedly drank of the best they could get, and were very sad indeed.
* * * * *
* * * * *
* * * * *
Nearly five years have elapsed since we bade farewell and _au revoir_ to
Taffy and the Laird at the Paris station of the Chemin de Fer du Nord,
and wished Little Billee and his mother and sister Godspeed on their way
to Devonshire, where the poor sufferer was to rest and lie fallow for a
few months, and recruit his lost strength and energy, that he might
follow up his first and well-deserved success, which perhaps contributed
just a little to his recovery.
Many of my readers will remember his splendid début at the Royal Academy
in Trafalgar Square with that now so famous canvas "The Pitcher Goes to
the Well," and how it was sold three times over on the morning of the
private view, the third time for a thousand pounds--just five times what
he got for it himself. And that was thought a large sum in those days
for a beginner's picture, two feet by four.
[Illustration: "SORROWFULLY, ARM IN ARM"]
I am well aware that such a vulgar test is no criterion whatever of a
picture's real merit. But this picture is well known to all the world by
this time, and sold only last year at Christy's (more than thirty-six
years after it was painted) for three thousand pounds.
Thirty-six years! That goes a long way to redeem even three thousand
pounds of all their cumulative vulgarity.
"The Pitcher" is now in the National Gallery, with that other canvas by
the same hand, "The Moon-Dial." There they hang together for all who
care to see them, his first and his last--the blossom and the fruit.
He had not long to live himself, and it was his good-fortune, so rare
among those whose work is destined to live forever, that he succeeded at
his first go-off.
And his success was of the best and most flattering kind.
It began high up, where it should, among the masters of his own craft.
But his fame filtered quickly down to those immediately beneath, and
through these to wider circles. And there was quite enough of opposition
and vilification and coarse abuse of him to clear it of any suspicion of
cheapness or evanescence. What better antiseptic can there be than the
philistine's deep hate? What sweeter, fresher, wholesomer music than the
sound of his voice when he doth so furiously rage?
Yes! That is "good production." As Svengali would have said, "C'est un
cri du coeur!"
And then, when popular acclaim brings the great dealers and the big
cheques, up rises the printed howl of the duffer, the disappointed one,
the "wounded thing with an angry cry"--the prosperous and happy bagman
that _should_ have been, who has given up all for art, and finds he
can't paint and make himself a name, after all, and never will, so falls
to writing about those who can--and what writing!
To write in hissing dispraise of our more successful fellow-craftsman,
and of those who admire him! that is not a clean or pretty trade. It
seems, alas! an easy one, and it gives pleasure to so many. It does not
even want good grammar. But it pays--well enough even to start and run a
magazine with, instead of scholarship and taste and talent! humor,
sense, wit, and wisdom! It is something like the purveying of
pornographic pictures: some of us look at them and laugh, and even buy.
To be a purchaser is bad enough; but to be the purveyor thereof--ugh!
A poor devil of a cracked soprano (are there such people still?) who has
been turned out of the Pope's choir because he can't sing in tune,
_after all_!--think of him yelling and squeaking his treble rage at
Santley--Sims Reeves--Lablache!
Poor, lost, beardless nondescript! why not fly to other climes, where at
least thou might'st hide from us thy woful crack, and keep thy miserable
secret to thyself! Are there no harems still left in Stamboul for the
likes of thee to sweep and clean, no women's beds to make and slops to
empty, and doors and windows to bar--and tales to carry, and the pasha's
confidence and favor and protection to win? Even _that_ is a better
trade than pandering for hire to the basest instinct of all--the dirty
pleasure we feel (some of us) in seeing mud and dead cats and rotten
eggs flung at those we cannot but admire--and secretly envy!
All of which eloquence means that Little Billee was pitched into right
and left, as well as overpraised. And it all rolled off him like water
off a duck's back, both praise and blame.
* * * * *
It was a happy summer for Mrs. Bagot, a sweet compensation for all the
anguish of the winter that had gone before, with her two beloved
children together under her wing, and all the world (for her) ringing
with the praise of her boy, the apple of her eye, so providentially
rescued from the very jaws of death, and from other dangers almost as
terrible to her fiercely jealous maternal heart.
And his affection for her _seemed_ to grow with his returning health;
but, alas! he was never again to be quite the same light-hearted,
innocent, expansive lad he had been before that fatal year spent in
Paris.
One chapter of his life was closed, never to be reopened, never to be
spoken of again by him to her, by her to him. She could neither forgive
nor forget. She could but be silent.