Trilby Part 48

Svengali!..._"

They remained in silence round her for several minutes, terror-stricken.

The doctor came; he put his hand to her heart, his ear to her lips. He turned up one of her eyelids and looked at her eye. And then, his voice quivering with strong emotion, he stood up and said, "Madame Svengali's trials and sufferings are all over!"

"Oh, good G.o.d! is she _dead_?" cried Mrs. Bagot.

"Yes, Mrs. Bagot. She has been dead several minutes--perhaps a quarter of an hour."

VINGT ANS APReS

PORTHOS-ATHOS, _alias_ Taffy Wynne, is sitting to breakfast (opposite his wife) at a little table in the court-yard of that huge caravanserai on the Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, where he had sat more than twenty years ago with the Laird and Little Billee; where, in fact, he had pulled Svengali's nose.

Little is changed in the aspect of the place: the same cosmopolite company, with more of the American element, perhaps; the same arrivals and departures in railway omnibuses, cabs, hired carriages; and, airing his calves on the marble steps, stood just such another colossal and beautiful old man in black cloth coat and knee-breeches and silk stockings as of yore, with probably the very same pinchbeck chain. Where do they breed these magnificent old Frenchmen? In Germany, perhaps, "where all the good big waiters come from!"

And also the same fine weather. It is always fine weather in the court-yard of the Grand Hotel. As the Laird would say, they manage these things better there!

Taffy wears a short beard, which is turning gray. His kind blue eye is no longer choleric, but mild and friendly--as frank as ever; and full of humorous patience. He has grown stouter; he is very big indeed, in all three dimensions, but the symmetry and the gainliness of the athlete belong to him still in movement and repose; and his clothes fit him beautifully, though they are not new, and show careful beating and brushing and ironing, and even a faint suspicion of all but imperceptible fine-drawing here and there.

What a magnificent old man _he_ will make some day, should the Grand Hotel ever run short of them! He looks as if he could be trusted down to the ground--in all things, little or big; as if his word were as good as his bond, and even better; his wink as good as his word, his nod as good as his wink; and, in truth, as he looks, so he is.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'SVENGALI!... SVENGALI!... SVENGALI!...'"]

The most cynical disbeliever in "the grand old name of gentleman," and its virtues as a noun of definition, would almost be justified in quite dogmatically a.s.serting at sight, and without even being introduced, that, at all events, Taffy is a "gentleman," inside and out, up and down--from the crown of his head (which is getting rather bald) to the sole of his foot (by no means a small one, or a lightly shod--_ex pede Herculem_)!

Indeed, this is always the first thing people say of Taffy--and the last. It means, perhaps, that he may be a trifle dull. Well, one can't be everything!

Porthos was a trifle dull--and so was Athos, I think; and likewise his son, the faithful Viscount of Bragelonne--_bon chien cha.s.se de race_!

And so was Wilfred of Ivanhoe, the disinherited; and Edgar, the Lord of Ravenswood! and so, for that matter, was Colonel Newcome, of immortal memory!

Yet who does not love them--who would not wish to be like them, for better, for worse!

Taffy's wife is unlike Taffy in many ways; but (fortunately for both) very like him in some. She is a little woman, very well shaped, very dark, with black, wavy hair, and very small hands and feet; a very graceful, handsome, and vivacious person; by no means dull; full, indeed, of quick perceptions and intuitions; deeply interested in all that is going on about and around her, and with always lots to say about it, but not too much.

She distinctly belongs to the rare, and ever-blessed, and most precious race of charmers.

She had fallen in love with the stalwart Taffy more than a quarter of a century ago in the Place St. Anatole des Arts, where he and she and her mother had tended the sick-couch of Little Billee--but she had never told her love. _Tout vient a point, pour qui sait attendre!_

[Ill.u.s.tration: "TOUT VIENT a POINT, POUR QUI SAIT ATTENDRE!"]

That is a capital proverb, and sometimes even a true one. Blanche Bagot had found it to be both!

One terrible night, never to be forgotten, Taffy lay fast asleep in bed, at his rooms in Jermyn Street, for he was very tired; grief tires more than anything, and brings a deeper slumber.

That day he had followed Trilby to her last home in Kensal Green, with Little Billee, Mrs. Bagot, the Laird, Antony, the Greek, and Durien (who had come over from Paris on purpose) as chief mourners; and very many other people, n.o.ble, famous, or otherwise, English and foreign; a splendid and most representative gathering, as was duly chronicled in all the newspapers here and abroad; a fitting ceremony to close the brief but splendid career of the greatest pleasure-giver of our time.

He was awakened by a tremendous ringing at the street-door bell, as if the house were on fire; and then there was a hurried scrambling up in the dark, a tumbling over stairs and kicking against banisters, and Little Billee had burst into his room, calling out: "Oh! Taffy, Taffy!

I'm g-going mad--I'm g-going m-mad! I'm d-d-done for...."

"All right, old fellow--just wait till I strike a light!"

"Oh, Taffy! I haven't slept for four nights--not a wink! She d-d-died with Sv--Sv--Sv ... d.a.m.n it, I can't get it out! that ruffian's name on her lips!... it was just as if he were calling her from the t-t-tomb!

She recovered her senses the very minute she saw his photograph--she was so f-fond of him she f-forgot everybody else! She's gone straight to him, after all--in some other life!... to slave for him, and sing for him, and help him to make better music than ever! Oh, T--T--oh--oh!

Taffy--oh! oh! oh! catch hold! c-c-catch...." And Little Billee had all but fallen on the floor in a fit.

And all the old miserable business of five years before had begun over again!

There has been too much sickness in this story, so I will tell as little as possible of poor Little Billee's long illness, his slow and only partial recovery, the paralysis of his powers as a painter, his quick decline, his early death, his manly, calm, and most beautiful surrender--the wedding of the moth with the star, of the night with the morrow!

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I, PETE COELESTES...."]

For all but blameless as his short life had been, and so full of splendid promise and performance, nothing ever became him better than the way he left it. It was as if he were starting on some distant holy quest, like some gallant knight of old--"A Bagot to the Rescue!" It shook the infallibility of a certain vicar down to its very foundations, and made him think more deeply about things than he had ever thought yet. It gave him pause!... and so wrung his heart that when, at the last, he stooped to kiss his poor young dead friend's pure white forehead, he dropped a bigger tear on it than Little Billee (once so given to the dropping of big tears) had ever dropped in his life.

But it is all too sad to write about.

It was by Little Billee's bedside, in Devonshire, that Taffy had grown to love Blanche Bagot, and not very many weeks after it was all over that Taffy had asked her to be his wife; and in a year they were married, and a very happy marriage it turned out--the one thing that poor Mrs. Bagot still looks upon as a compensation for all the griefs and troubles of her life.

During the first year or two Blanche had perhaps been the most ardently loving of this well-a.s.sorted pair. That beautiful look of love surprised (which makes all women's eyes look the same) came into hers whenever she looked at Taffy, and filled his heart with tender compunction, and a queer sense of his own unworthiness.

Then a boy was born to them, and that look fell on the boy, and the good Taffy caught it as it pa.s.sed him by, and he felt a helpless, absurd jealousy, that was none the less painful for being so ridiculous! and then that look fell on another boy and yet another, so that it was through these boys that she looked at their father. Then _his_ eyes caught the look, and kept it for their own use; and he grew never to look at his wife without it; and as no daughter came, she retained for life the monopoly of that most sweet and expressive regard.

They are not very rich. He is a far better sportsman than he will ever be a painter; and if he doesn't sell his pictures, it is not because they are too good for the public taste: indeed, he has no illusions on that score himself, even if his wife has! He is quite the least conceited art-duffer I ever met--and I have met many far worse duffers than Taffy.

Would only that I might kill off his cousin Sir Oscar, and Sir Oscar's five sons (the Wynnes are good at sons), and his seventeen grandsons, and the fourteen cousins (and their numerous male progeny), that stand between Taffy and the baronetcy, and whatever property goes with it, so that he might be Sir Taffy, and dear Blanche Bagot (that was) might be called "my lady"! This Shakespearian holocaust would scarcely cost me a pang!

It is a great temptation, when you have duly slain your first hero, to enrich hero number two beyond the dreams of avarice, and provide him with a t.i.tle and a castle and park, as well as a handsome wife and a nice family! But truth is inexorable--and, besides, they are just as happy as they are.

They are well off enough, anyhow, to spend a week in Paris at last, and even to stop at the Grand Hotel! now that two of their sons are at Harrow (where their father was before them), and the third is safe at a preparatory school at Elstree, Herts.

It is their first outing since the honeymoon, and the Laird should have come with them.

But the good Laird of c.o.c.kpen (who is now a famous Royal Academician) is preparing for a honeymoon of his own. He has gone to Scotland to be married himself--to wed a fair and clever country-woman of just a suitable age, for he has known her ever since she was a bright little la.s.sie in short frocks, and he a promising A.R.A. (the pride of his native Dundee)--a marriage of reason, and well-seasoned affection, and mutual esteem--and therefore sure to turn out a happy one! and in another fortnight or so the pair of them will very possibly be sitting to breakfast opposite each other at that very corner table in the court-yard of the Grand Hotel! and she will laugh at everything he says--and they will live happily ever after.

So much for hero number three--D'Artagnan! Here's to you, Sandy McAlister, canniest, genialest, and most humorous of Scots! most delicate, and dainty, and fanciful of British painters! "I trink your health, mit your family's--may you lif long--and brosper!"

So Taffy and his wife have come for their second honeymoon, their Indian-summer honeymoon, alone; and are well content that it should be so. Two's always company for such a pair--the amusing one and the amusable!--and they are making the most of it!

They have been all over the quartier latin, and revisited the well-remembered spots; and even been allowed to enter the old studio, through the kindness of the concierge (who is no longer Madame Vinard).

It is tenanted by two American painters, who are coldly civil on being thus disturbed in the middle of their work.

The studio is very spick and span, and most respectable. Trilby's foot, and the poem, and the sheet of plate-gla.s.s have been improved away, and a bookshelf put in their place. The new concierge (who has only been there a year) knows nothing of Trilby, and of the Vinards, only that they are rich and prosperous, and live somewhere in the south of France, and that Monsieur Vinard is mayor of his commune. _Que le bon Dieu les benisse! c'etaient de bien braves gens._

Then Mr. and Mrs. Taffy have also been driven (in an open caleche with two horses) through the Bois de Boulogne to St. Cloud; and to Versailles, where they lunched at the Hotel des Reservoirs--_parlez-moi de ca_! and to St. Germain, and to Meudon (where they lunched at la loge du garde champetre--a new one); they have visited the Salon, the Louvre, the porcelain manufactory at Sevres, the Gobelins, the Hotel Cluny, the Invalides, with Napoleon's tomb, and seen half a dozen churches, including Notre Dame and the Sainte Chapelle; and dined with the Dodors at their charming villa near Asnieres, and with the Zouzous at the splendid Hotel de la Rochemartel, and with the Duriens in the Parc Monceau (Dodor's food was best and Zouzou's worst; and at Durien's the company and talk were so good that one forgot to notice the food--and that was a pity). And the young Dodors are all right--and so are the young Duriens. As for the young Zouzous, there aren't any--and that's a relief.