“And people of all sorts, strangers, will stare at you through the big plate-glass windows—Englanders, chiffonniers, painters and sculptors, workmen, pioupious, old hags of washerwomen—and say, ‘Ah! what a beautiful woman was that! Look at her! She ought to be rolling in her carriage and pair!’ And just then who should come by, rolling in his carriage and pair, smothered in furs, and smoking a big cigar of the Havana, but Svengali, who will jump out, and push the canaille aside, and say, ‘Ha! ha! that is la grande Drilpy, who would not listen to Svengali, but looked at the chimney-pots when he told her of his manly love, and—’ ”
“Hi! damn it, Svengali, what the devil are you talking to Trilby about? You’re making her sick; can’t you see? Leave off, and go to the piano, man, or I’ll come and slap you on the back again!”
Thus would that sweating, pigheaded bullock of an Englander stop Svengali’s lovemaking and release Trilby from bad quarters of an hour.
Then Svengali, who had a wholesome dread of the pigheaded bullock, would go to the piano and make impossible discords, and say: “Dear Drilpy, come and sing ‘Pen Polt’! I am thirsting for those so beautiful chest notes! Come!”
Poor Trilby needed little pressing when she was asked to sing, and would go through her lamentable performance, to the great discomfort of Little Billee. It lost nothing of its grotesqueness from Svengali’s accompaniment, which was a triumph of cacophony, and he would encourage her—“Très pien, très pien, ça y est!”
When it was over, Svengali would test her ear, as he called it, and strike the C in the middle and then the F just above, and ask which was the highest; and she would declare they were both exactly the same. It was only when he struck a note in the bass and another in the treble that she could perceive any difference, and said that the first sounded like père Martin blowing up his wife, and the second like her little godson trying to make the peace between them.
She was quite tone-deaf, and didn’t know it; and he would pay her extravagant compliments on her musical talent, till Taffy would say: “Look here, Svengali, let’s hear you sing a song!”
And he would tickle him so masterfully under the ribs that the creature howled and became quite hysterical.
Then Svengali would vent his love of teasing on Little Billee, and pin his arms behind his back and swing him round, saying: “Himmel! what’s this for an arm? It’s like a girl’s!”
“It’s strong enough to paint!” said Little Billee.
“And what’s this for a leg? It’s like a mahlstick!”
“It’s strong enough to kick, if you don’t leave off!”
And Little Billee, the young and tender, would let out his little heel and kick the German’s shins; and just as the German was going to retaliate, big Taffy would pin his arms and make him sing another song, more discordant than Trilby’s—for he didn’t dream of kicking Taffy; of that you may be sure!
Such was Svengali—only to be endured for the sake of his music—always ready to vex, frighten, bully, or torment anybody or anything smaller and weaker than himself—from a woman or a child to a mouse or a fly.
Part III
“Par deçà, ne dela la mer
Ne sçay dame ni damoiselle
Qui soit en tous biens parfaits telle—
C’est un songe que d’y penser:
Dieu! qu’il fait bon la regarder!”
One lovely Monday morning in late September, at about eleven or so, Taffy and the Laird sat in the studio—each opposite his picture, smoking, nursing his knee, and saying nothing. The heaviness of Monday weighed on their spirits more than usual, for the three friends had returned late on the previous night from a week spent at Barbizon and in the forest of Fontainebleau—a heavenly week among the painters: Rousseau, Millet, Corot, Daubigny, let us suppose, and others less known to fame this day. Little Billee, especially, had been fascinated by all this artistic life in blouses and sabots and immense straw hats and panamas, and had sworn to himself and to his friends that he would some day live and die there—painting, the forest as it is, and peopling it with beautiful people out of his own fancy—leading a healthy outdoor life of simple wants and lofty aspirations.
At length Taffy said: “Bother work this morning! I feel much more like a stroll in the Luxembourg Gardens and lunch at the Café de l’Odéon, where the omelets are good and the wine isn’t blue.”
“The very thing I was thinking of myself,” said the Laird.
So Taffy slipped on his old shooting-jacket and his old Harrow cricket cap, with the peak turned the wrong way, and the Laird put on an old greatcoat of Taffy’s that reached to his heels, and a battered straw hat they had found in the studio when they took it; and both sallied forth into the mellow sunshine on the way to Carrel’s. For they meant to seduce Little Billee from his work, that he might share in their laziness, greediness, and general demoralization.
And whom should they meet coming down the narrow turreted old Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres but Little Billee himself, with an air of general demoralization so tragic that they were quite alarmed. He had his paintbox and field-easel in one hand and his little valise in the other. He was pale, his hat on the back of his head, his hair staring all at sixes and sevens, like a sick Scotch terrier’s.
“Good Lord! what’s the matter?” said Taffy.
“Oh! oh! oh! she’s sitting
