Trilby Part 44

[Ill.u.s.tration: "TAFFY WAS ALLOWED TO SEE GECKO"]

Taffy was allowed to see Gecko, who was remanded till the result of the post-mortem should be made public. But beyond inquiring most anxiously and minutely after Trilby, and betraying the most pa.s.sionate concern for her, he would say nothing, and seemed indifferent as to his own fate.

When they went to Fitzroy Square, late in the afternoon, they found that many people, musical, literary, fas.h.i.+onable, and otherwise (and many foreigners), had called to inquire after Madame Svengali, but no one had been admitted to see her. Mrs. G.o.dwin was much elated by the importance of her new lodger.

Trilby had been writing to Angele Boisse, at her old address in the Rue des Cloitres Ste. Petronille, in the hope that this letter would find her still there. She was anxious to go back and be a _blanchisseuse de fin_ with her friend. It was a kind of nostalgia for Paris, the quartier latin, her clean old trade.

This project our three heroes did not think it necessary to discuss with her just yet; she seemed quite unfit for work of any kind.

The doctor, who had seen her again, had been puzzled by her strange physical weakness, and wished for a consultation with some special authority; Little Billee, who was intimate with most of the great physicians, wrote about her to Sir Oliver Calthorpe.

She seemed to find a deep happiness in being with her three old friends, and talked and listened with all her old eagerness and geniality, and much of her old gayety, in spite of her strange and sorrowful position.

But for this it was impossible to realize that her brain was affected in the slightest degree, except when some reference was made to her singing, and this seemed to annoy and irritate her, as though she were being made fun of. The whole of her marvellous musical career, and everything connected with it, had been clean wiped out of her recollection.

She was very anxious to get into other quarters, that Little Billee should suffer no inconvenience, and they promised to take rooms for her and Marta on the morrow.

They told her cautiously all about Svengali and Gecko; she was deeply concerned, but betrayed no such poignant anguish as might have been expected. The thought of Gecko troubled her most, and she showed much anxiety as to what might befall him.

Next day she moved with Marta to some lodgings in Charlotte Street, where everything was made as comfortable for them as possible.

Sir Oliver saw her with Dr. Thorne (the doctor who was attending her) and Sir Jacob Wilc.o.x.

Sir Oliver took the greatest interest in her case, both for her sake and his friend Little Billee's. Also his own, for he was charmed with her.

He saw her three times in the course of the week, but could not say for certain what was the matter with her, beyond taking the very gravest view of her condition. For all he could advise or prescribe, her weakness and physical prostration increased rapidly, through no cause he could discover. Her insanity was not enough to account for it. She lost weight daily; she seemed to be wasting and fading away from sheer general atrophy.

Two or three times he took her and Marta for a drive.

On one of these occasions, as they went down Charlotte Street, she saw a shop with transparent French blinds in the window, and through them some French women, with neat white caps, ironing. It was a French _blanchisserie de fin_, and the sight of it interested and excited her so much that she must needs insist on being put down and on going into it.

"Je voudrais bien parler a la patronne, si ca ne la derange pas," she said.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A FAIR BLANCHISSEUSE DE FIN]

The patronne, a genial Parisian, was much astonished to hear a great French lady, in costly garments, evidently a person of fas.h.i.+on and importance, applying to her rather humbly for employment in the business, and showing a thorough knowledge of the work (and of the Parisian work-woman's colloquial dialect). Marta managed to catch the patronne's eye, and tapped her own forehead significantly, and Sir Oliver nodded. So the good woman humored the great lady's fancy, and promised her abundance of employment whenever she should want it.

Employment! Poor Trilby was hardly strong enough to walk back to the carriage; and this was her last outing.

But this little adventure had filled her with hope and good spirits--for she had as yet received no answer from Angele Boisse (who was in Ma.r.s.eilles), and had begun to realize how dreary the quartier latin would be without Jeannot, without Angele, without the trois Angliches in the Place St. Anatole des Arts.

She was not allowed to see any of the strangers who came and made kind inquiries. This her doctors had strictly forbidden. Any reference to music or singing irritated her beyond measure. She would say to Marta, in bad German:

"Tell them, Marta--what nonsense it is! They are taking me for another--they are mad. They are trying to make a fool of me!"

And Marta would betray great uneasiness--almost terror--when she was appealed to in this way.

Part Eighth

"La vie est vaine: Un peu d'amour, Un peu de haine....

Et puis--bonjour!

"La vie est breve: Un peu d'espoir, Un peu de reve....

Et puis--bonsoir."

Svengali had died from heart-disease. The cut he had received from Gecko had not apparently (as far as the verdict of a coroner's inquest could be trusted) had any effect in aggravating his malady or hastening his death.

But Gecko was sent for trial at the Old Bailey, and sentenced to hard labor for six months (a sentence which, if I remember aright, gave rise to much comment at the time). Taffy saw him again, but with no better result than before. He chose to preserve an obstinate silence on his relations with the Svengalis and their relations with each other.

When he was told how hopelessly ill and insane Madame Svengali was, he shed a few tears, and said: "Ah, pauvrette, pauvrette--ah! monsieur--je l'aimais tant, je l'aimais tant! il n'y en a pas beaucoup comme elle, Dieu de misere! C'est un ange du Paradis!"

And not another word was to be got out of him.

It took some time to settle Svengali's affairs after his death. No will was found. His old mother came over from Germany, and two of his sisters, but no wife. The comic wife and the three children, and the sweet-stuff shop in Elberfeld, had been humorous inventions of his own--a kind of Mrs. Harris!

He left three thousand pounds, every penny of which (and of far larger sums that he had spent) had been earned by "la Svengali," but nothing came to Trilby of this; nothing but the clothes and jewels he had given her, and in this respect he had been lavish enough; and there were countless costly gifts from emperors, kings, great people of all kinds.

Trilby was under the impression that all these belonged to Marta. Marta behaved admirably; she seemed bound hand and foot to Trilby by a kind of slavish adoration, as that of a plain old mother for a brilliant and beautiful but dying child.

It soon became evident that, whatever her disease might be, Trilby had but a very short time to live.

She was soon too weak even to be taken out in a Bath-chair, and remained all day in her large sitting-room with Marta; and there, to her great and only joy, she received her three old friends every afternoon, and gave them coffee, and made them smoke cigarettes of caporal as of old; and their hearts were daily harrowed as they watched her rapid decline.

Day by day she grew more beautiful in their eyes, in spite of her increasing pallor and emaciation--her skin was so pure and white and delicate, and the bones of her face so admirable!

[Ill.u.s.tration: A THRONE IN BOHEMIA]

Her eyes recovered all their old humorous brightness when les trois Angliches were with her, and the expression of her face was so wistful and tender for all her playfulness, so full of eager clinging to existence and to them, that they felt the memory of it would haunt them forever, and be the sweetest and saddest memory of their lives.

Her quick, though feeble gestures, full of reminiscences of the vigorous and lively girl they had known a few years back, sent waves of pity through them and pure brotherly love; and the incomparable tones and changes and modulations of her voice, as she chatted and laughed, bewitched them almost as much as when she had sung the "Nussbaum" of Schumann in the Salle des Bas.h.i.+bazoucks.

Sometimes Lorrimer came, and Antony and the Greek. It was like a genial little court of bohemia. And Lorrimer, Antony, the Laird, and Little Billee made those beautiful chalk and pencil studies of her head which are now so well known--all so singularly like her, and so singularly unlike each other! _Trilby vue a travers quatre temperaments!_

These afternoons were probably the happiest poor Trilby had ever spent in her life--with these dear people round her, speaking the language she loved; talking of old times and jolly Paris days, she never thought of the morrow.

But later--at night, in the small hours--she would wake up with a start from some dream full of tender and blissful recollection, and suddenly realize her own mischance, and feel the icy hand of that which was to come before many morrows were over; and taste the bitterness of death so keenly that she longed to scream out loud, and get up, and walk up and down, and wring her hands at the dreadful thought of parting forever!

But she lay motionless and mum as a poor little frightened mouse in a trap, for fear of waking up the good old tired Marta, who was snoring at her side.

And in an hour or two the bitterness would pa.s.s away, the creeps and the horrors; and the stoical spirit of resignation would steal over her--the balm, the blessed calm! and all her old bravery would come back.

And then she would sink into sleep again, and dream more blissfully than ever, till the good Marta woke her with a motherly kiss and a fragrant cup of coffee; and she would find, feeble as she was, and doomed as she felt herself to be, that joy cometh of a morning; and life was still sweet for her, with yet a whole day to look forward to.

One day she was deeply moved at receiving a visit from Mrs. Bagot, who, at Little Billee's earnest desire, had come all the way from Devons.h.i.+re to see her.