Trilby

Madame Cantharidi, as everybody knows, is a very clever but extremely plain old woman with a cracked voice – of spotless reputation, and the irreproachable mother of a grown-up family whom she has brought up in perfection. They have never been allowed to see their mother (and grandmother) act – not even the sons. Their excellent father (who adores both them and her) has drawn the line at that!

In private life she is "quite the lady," but on the stage – well, go and see her, and you will understand how she comes to be the idol of the Parisian public. For she is the true and liberal dispenser to them of that modern "esprit gaulois" which would make the good Rabelais turn uneasily in his grave and blush there like a Benedictine Sister.

And truly she deserves the reverential love and gratitude of her chers Parisiens! She amused them all through the Empire; during the année terrible she was their only stay and comfort, and has been their chief delight ever since, and is now.

When they come back from La Revanche, may Madame Cantharidi be still at her post, "Les mouches d'Espagne," to welcome the returning heroes, and exult and crow with them in her funny cracked old voice; or, haply, even console them once more, as the case may be.

"Victors or vanquished, they will laugh the same!"

Mrs. Taffy is a poor French scholar. One must know French very well indeed (and many other things besides) to seize the subtle points of Madame Cantharidi's play (and by-play)!

But Madame Cantharidi has so droll a face and voice, and such very droll, odd movements that Mrs. Taffy goes into fits of laughter as soon as the quaint little old lady comes on the stage. So heartily does she laugh that a good Parisian bourgeois turns round and remarks to his wife: "V'là une jolie p'tite Anglaise qui n'est pas bégueule, an moins! Et l' gros bœuf avec les yeux bleus en boules de loto – c'est son mari, sans doute! il n'a pas l'air trop content par exemple, celui-là!"

The fact is that the good Taffy (who knows French very well indeed) is quite scandalized, and very angry with Dodor for sending them there; and as soon as the first act is finished he means, without any fuss, to take his wife away.

As he sits patiently, too indignant to laugh at what is really funny in the piece (much of it is vulgar without being funny), he finds himself watching a little white-haired man in the orchestra, a fiddler, the shape of whose back seems somehow familiar, as he plays an obbligato accompaniment to a very broadly comic song of Madame Cantharidi's. He plays beautifully – like a master – and the loud applause is as much for him as for the vocalist.

Presently this fiddler turns his head so that his profile can be seen, and Taffy recognizes him.

After five minutes' thought, Taffy takes a leaf out of his pocket-book and writes (in perfectly grammatical French):

"DEAR GECKO, – You have not forgotten Taffy Wynne, I hope; and Litrebili, and Litrebili's sister, who is now Mrs. Taffy Wynne. We leave Paris to-morrow, and would like very much to see you once more. Will you, after the play, come and sup with us at the Café Anglais? If so, look up and make 'yes' with the head, and enchant

"Your well-devoted TAFFY WYNNE."

He gives this, folded, to an attendant – for "le premier violon – celui qui a des cheveux blancs."

Presently he sees Gecko receive the note and read it and ponder for a while.

Then Gecko looks round the theatre, and Taffy waves his handkerchief and catches the eye of the premier violon, who "makes 'yes' with the head."

And then, the first act over, Mr. and Mrs. Wynne leave the theatre; Mr. explaining why, and Mrs. very ready to go, as she was beginning to feel strangely uncomfortable without quite realizing as yet what was amiss with the lively Madame Cantharidi.

They went to the Café Anglais and bespoke a nice little room on the entresol overlooking the boulevard, and ordered a nice little supper; salmi of something very good, mayonnaise of lobster, and one or two other dishes better still – and chambertin of the best. Taffy was particular about these things on a holiday, and regardless of expense. Porthos was very hospitable, and liked good food and plenty of it; and Athos dearly loved good wine!

And then they went and sat at a little round table outside the Café de la Paix on the boulevard, near the Grand Opéra, where it is always very gay, and studied Paris life, and nursed their appetites till supper-time.

At half-past eleven Gecko made his appearance – very meek and humble. He looked old – ten years older than he really was – much bowed down, and as if he had roughed it all his life, and had found living a desperate long, hard grind.

He kissed Mrs. Taffy's hand, and seemed half inclined to kiss Taffy's too, and was almost tearful in his pleasure at meeting them again, and his gratitude at being asked to sup with them. He had soft, clinging, caressing manners, like a nice dog's, that made you his friend at once. He was obviously genuine and sincere, and quite pathetically simple, as he always had been.

At first he could scarcely eat for nervous excitement; but Taffy's fine example and Mrs. Taffy's genial, easy-going cordiality (and a couple of glasses of chambertin) soon put him at his ease and woke up his dormant appetite; which was a very large one, poor fellow!

He was told all about Little Billee's death, and deeply moved to hear the cause which had brought it about, and then they talked of Trilby.

He pulled her watch out of his waistcoat-pocket and reverently kissed it, exclaiming: "Ah! c'était un ange! un ange du Paradis! when I tell you I lived with them for five years! Oh! her kindness, Dio, dio Maria! It was 'Gecko this!' and 'Gecko that!' and 'Poor Gecko, your toothache, how it worries me!' and 'Gecko, how tired and pale you look – you distress me so, looking like that! Shall I mix you a maitrank?' And 'Gecko, you love artichokes à la Barigoule; they remind you of Paris – I have heard you say so. Well, I have found out where to get artichokes, and I know how to do them à la Barigoule, and you shall have them for dinner to-day and to-morrow and all the week after!' and we did!

"Ach! dear kind one – what did I really care for artichokes à la Barigoule?..

"And it was always like that – always – and to Svengali and old Marta just the same! and she was never well – never! toujours souffrante!

"And it was she who supported us all – in luxury and splendor sometimes!"

"And what an artist!" said Taffy.

"Ah, yes! but all that was Svengali, you know. Svengali was the greatest artist I ever met! Monsieur, Svengali was a demon, a magician! I used to think him a god! He found me playing in the streets for copper coins, and took me by the hand, and was my only friend, and taught me all I ever knew – and yet he could not play my instrument!

"And now he is dead, I have forgotten how to play it myself! That English jail! it demoralized me, ruined me forever! ach! quel enfer, nom de Dieu (pardon, madame)! I am just good enough to play the obbligato at the Mouches d'Espagne, when the old Cantharidi sings,

"'V'là mon mari qui r'gardePrends garde – ne m'chatouille plus!'

"It does not want much of an obbligato, hein, a song so noble and so beautiful as that!

"And that song, monsieur, all Paris is singing it now. And that is the Paris that went mad when Trilby sang the 'Nussbaum' of Schumann at the Salle des Bashibazoucks. You heard her? Well!"

And here poor Gecko tried to laugh a little sardonic laugh in falsetto, like Svengali's, full of scorn and bitterness – and very nearly succeeded.

"But what made you strike him with – with that knife, you know?"

"Ah, monsieur, it had been coming on for a long time. He used to work Trilby too hard; it was killing her – it killed her at last! And then at the end he was unkind to her and scolded her and called her names – horrid names – and then one day in London he struck her. He struck her on the fingers with his bâton, and she fell down on her knees and cried …

"Monsieur, I would have defended Trilby against a locomotive going grande vitesse! against my own father – against the Emperor of Austria – against the Pope! and I am a good Catholic, monsieur! I would have gone to the scaffold for her, and to the devil after!"

And he piously crossed himself.

"But, Svengali – wasn't he very fond of her?"

"Oh yes, monsieur! quant à ça, passionately! But she did not love him as he wished to be loved. She loved Litrebili, monsieur! Litrebili, the brother of madame. And I suppose that Svengali grew angry and jealous at last. He changed as soon as he came to Paris. Perhaps Paris reminded him of Litrebili – and reminded Trilby, too!"

"But how on earth did Svengali ever manage to teach her how to sing like that? She had no ear for music whatever when we knew her!"

Gecko was silent for a while, and Taffy filled his glass, and gave him a cigar, and lit one himself.

"Monsieur, no – that is true. She had not much ear. But she had such a voice as had never been heard. Svengali knew that. He had found it out long ago. Litolff had found it out, too. One day Svengali heard Litolff tell Meyerbeer that the most beautiful female voice in Europe belonged to an English grisette who sat as a model to sculptors in the quartier latin, but that unfortunately she was quite tone-deaf, and couldn't sing one single note in tune. Imagine how Svengali chuckled! I see it from here!

"Well, we both taught her together – for three years – morning, noon, and night – six – eight hours a day. It used to split me the heart to see her worked like that! We took her voice note by note – there was no end to her notes, each more beautiful than the other – velvet and gold, beautiful flowers, pearls, diamonds, rubies – drops of dew and honey; peaches, oranges, and lemons! en veux-tu en voilà! – all the perfumes and spices of the Garden of Eden! Svengali with his little flexible flageolet, I with my violin – that is how we taught her to make the sounds – and then how to use them. She was a phénomène, monsieur! She could keep on one note and make it go through all the colors in the rainbow – according to the way Svengali looked at her. It would make you laugh – it would make you cry – but, cry or laugh, it was the sweetest, the most touching, the most beautiful note you ever heard – except all her others! and each had as many overtones as the bells in the Carillon de Notre Dame. She could run up and down the scales, chromatic scales, quicker and better and smoother than Svengali on the piano, and more in tune than any piano! and her shake – ach! twin stars, monsieur! She was the greatest contralto, the greatest soprano the world has ever known! the like of her has never been! the like of her will never be again! and yet she only sang in public for two years.

"Ach! those breaks and runs and sudden leaps from darkness into light and back again – from earth to heaven!.. those slurs and swoops and slides à la Paganini from one note to another, like a swallow flying!.. or a gull! Do you remember them? how they drove you mad? Let any other singer in the world try to imitate them – they would make you sick! That was Svengali … he was a magician!

"And how she looked, singing! do you remember? her hands behind her – her dear, sweet, slender foot on a little stool – her thick hair lying down all along her back! And that good smile like the Madonna's so soft and bright and kind! Ach! Bel ucel di Dio! it was to make you weep for love, merely to see her (c'était à vous faire pleurer d'amour, rien que de la voir)! That was Trilby! Nightingale and bird-of-paradise in one!

"Enfin she could do anything – utter any sound she liked, when once Svengali had shown her how – and he was the greatest master that ever lived! and when once she knew a thing, she knew it. Et voilà!"

"How strange," said Taffy, "that she should have suddenly gone out of her senses that night at Drury Lane, and so completely forgotten it all! I suppose she saw Svengali die in the box opposite, and that drove her mad!"

And then Taffy told the little fiddler about Trilby's death-song, like a swan's, and Svengali's photograph. But Gecko had heard it all from Marta, who was now dead.

Gecko sat and smoked and pondered for a while, and looked from one to the other. Then he pulled himself together with an effort, so to speak, and said, "Monsieur, she never went mad – not for one moment!"

"What! Do you mean to say she deceived us all?"

"Non, monsieur! She could never deceive anybody, and never would. She had forgotten – voilà tout!"

"But hang it all, my friend, one doesn't forget such a – "

"Monsieur, listen! She is dead. And Svengali is dead – and Marta also. And I have a good little malady that will kill me soon, Gott sei dank– and without much pain.

"I will tell you a secret.

"There were two Trilbys. There was the Trilby you knew, who could not sing one single note in tune. She was an angel of paradise. She is now! But she had no more idea of singing than I have of winning a steeple-chase at the croix de Berny. She could no more sing than a fiddle can play itself! She could never tell one tune from another – one note from the next. Do you remember how she tried to sing 'Ben Bolt' that day when she first came to the studio in the Place St. Anatole des Arts? It was droll, hein? à se boucher les oreilles! Well, that was Trilby, your Trilby! that was my Trilby too – and I loved her as one loves an only love, an only sister, an only child – a gentle martyr on earth, a blessed saint in heaven! And that Trilby was enough for me!

"And that was the Trilby that loved your brother, madame – oh! but with all the love that was in her! He did not know what he had lost, your brother! Her love, it was immense, like her voice, and just as full of celestial sweetness and sympathy! She told me everything! ce pauvre Litrebili, ce qu'il a perdu!

"But all at once – pr-r-r-out! presto! augenblick!.. with one wave of his hand over her – with one look of his eye – with a word – Svengali could turn her into the other Trilby, his Trilby, and make her do whatever he liked … you might have run a red-hot needle into her and she would not have felt it…

"He had but to say 'Dors!' and she suddenly became an unconscious Trilby of marble, who could produce wonderful sounds – just the sounds he wanted, and nothing else – and think his thoughts and wish his wishes – and love him at his bidding with a strange unreal factitious love … just his own love for himself turned inside out —à l'envers– and reflected back on him, as from a mirror … un écho, un simulacre, quoi! pas autre chose!… It was not worth having! I was not even jealous!

"Well, that was the Trilby he taught how to sing – and – and I helped him, God of heaven forgive me! That Trilby was just a singing-machine – an organ to play upon – an instrument of music – a Stradivarius – a flexible flageolet of flesh and blood – a voice, and nothing more – just the unconscious voice that Svengali sang with – for it takes two to sing like la Svengali, monsieur – the one who has got the voice, and the one who knows what to do with it… So that when you heard her sing the 'Nussbaum,' the 'Impromptu,' you heard Svengali singing with her voice, just as you hear Joachim play a chaconne of Bach with his fiddle!.. Herr Joachim's fiddle … what does it know of Sebastian Bach? and as for chaconnes … il s'en moque pas mal, ce fameux violon! …

"And our Trilby … what did she know of Schumann, Chopin? – nothing at all! She mocked herself not badly of Nussbaums and impromptus … they would make her yawn to demantibulate her jaws!.. When Svengali's Trilby was being taught to sing … when Svengali's Trilby was singing – or seemed to you as if she were singing —our Trilby had ceased to exist … our Trilby was fast asleep … in fact, our Trilby was dead…

"Ah, monsieur … that Trilby of Svengali's! I have heard her sing to kings and queens in royal palaces!.. as no woman has ever sung before or since… I have seen emperors and grand-dukes kiss her hand, monsieur – and their wives and daughters kiss her lips, and weep…

"I have seen the horses taken out of her sledge and the pick of the nobility drag her home to the hotel … with torchlights and choruses and shoutings of glory and long life to her!.. and serenades all night, under her window!.. she never knew! she heard nothing – felt nothing – saw nothing! and she bowed to them, right and left, like a queen!

"I have played the fiddle for her while she sang in the streets, at fairs and festas and Kermessen … and seen the people go mad to hear her … and once, at Prague, Svengali fell down in a fit from sheer excitement! and then, suddenly, our Trilby woke up and wondered what it was all about … and we took him home and put him to bed and left him with Marta – and Trilby and I went together arm in arm all over the town to fetch a doctor and buy things for supper – and that was the happiest hour in all my life!

"Ach! what an existence! what travels! what triumphs! what adventures! Things to fill a book – a dozen books – Those five happy years – with those two Trilbys! what recollections!.. I think of nothing else, night or day … even as I play the fiddle for old Cantharidi. Ach!.. To think how often I have played the fiddle for la Svengali … to have done that is to have lived … and then to come home to Trilby … our Trilby … the real Trilby!.. Got sei dank! Ich habe geliebt und gelebet! geliebt und gelebet! geliebt und gelebet! Cristo di Dio… Sweet sister in heaven… Ô Dieu de Misère, ayez pitié de nous…"

His eyes were red, and his voice was high and shrill and tremulous and full of tears; these remembrances were too much for him; and perhaps also the chambertin! He put his elbows on the table and hid his face in his hands and wept, muttering to himself in his own language (Whatever that might have been – Polish, probably) as if he were praying.

Taffy and his wife got up and leaned on the window-bar and looked out on the deserted boulevards, where an army of scavengers, noiseless and taciturn, was cleansing the asphalt roadway. The night above was dark, but "star-dials hinted of morn," and a fresh breeze had sprung up, making the leaves dance and rustle on the sycamore-trees along the Boulevard – a nice little breeze; just the sort of little breeze to do Paris good. A four-wheel cab came by at a foot pace, the driver humming a tune; Taffy hailed him; he said, "V'là, m'sieur!" and drew up.

Taffy rang the bell, and asked for the bill, and paid it. Gecko had apparently fallen asleep. Taffy gently woke him up, and told him how late it was. The poor little man seemed dazed and rather tipsy, and looked older than ever; sixty, seventy – any age you like. Taffy helped him on with his great-coat, and, taking him by the arm, led him down-stairs, giving him his card, and telling him how glad he was to have seen him, and that he would write to him from England – a promise which was kept, one may be sure.

Gecko uncovered his fuzzy white head, and took Mrs. Taffy's hand and kissed it, and thanked her warmly for her "si bon et sympathique accueil."

Then Taffy all but lifted him into the cab, the jolly cabman saying:

"Ah! bon – connais bien, celui là; vous savez – c'est lui qui joue du violon aux Mouches d'Espagne! Il a soupé, l'bourgeois; n'est-ce pas, m'sieur? 'petits bonheurs de contrebande,' hein?.. ayez pas peur! on vous aura soin de lui! il joue joliment bien, m'sieur; n'est-ce pas?"

Taffy shook Gecko's hand, and asked,

"Où restez-vous, Gecko?"

"Quarante-huit, Rue des Pousse-cailloux, au cinquième."

"How strange!" said Taffy to his wife – "how touching! why, that's where Trilby used to live – the very number! the very floor!"

"Oui, oui," said Gecko, waking up; "c'est l'ancienne mansarde à Trilby – j'y suis depuis douze ans —j'y suis, j'y reste…"

And he laughed feebly at his mild little joke.

Taffy told the address to the cabman, and gave him five francs.

"Merci, m'sieur! C'est de l'aut' côté de l'eau – près de la Sorbonne, s'pas? On vous aura soin du bourgeois; soyez tranquille – ayez pas peur! quarante-huit; on y va! Bonsoir, monsieur et dame!" And he clacked his whip and rattled away, singing:

"V'là mon mari qui r'garde —Prends garde!Ne m'chatouill' plus!"

Mr. and Mrs. Wynne walked back to the hotel, which was not far. She hung on to his big arm and crept close to him, and shivered a little. It was quite chilly. Their footsteps were very audible in the stillness; "pit-pat, flopety-clop," otherwise they were both silent. They were tired, yawny, sleepy, and very sad; and each was thinking (and knew the other was thinking) that a week in Paris was just enough – and how nice it would be, in just a few hours more, to hear the rooks cawing round their own quiet little English country home – where three jolly boys would soon be coming for the holidays.

And there we will leave them to their useful, hum-drum, happy domestic existence – than which there is no better that I know of, at their time of life – and no better time of life than theirs!

"Où peut-on être mieux qu'au sein de ta famille?"

That blessed harbor of refuge well within our reach, and having really cut our wisdom teeth at last, and learned the ropes, and left off hankering after the moon – we can do with so little down here…

A little work, a little playTo keep us going – and so, good-day!A little warmth, a little lightOf love's bestowing – and so, good-night!A little fun, to match the sorrowOf each day's growing – and so, good-morrow!A little trust that when we dieWe reap our sowing! And so – good-bye!

1

Glossary.– Pioupiou (alias pousse-caillou, alias tourlourou) – a private soldier of the line. Zouzou – a Zouave. Nounou – a wet-nurse with a pretty ribboned cap and long streamers. Toutou – a nondescript French lapdog, of no breed known to Englishmen (a regular little beast!) Loulou – a Pomeranian dog – not much better.