He slept and slept, with no better rest for his aching brow than the pillow of his bed in the Hôtel Corneille, and failed to die this time. And when, after some forty-eight hours or so, he had quite slept off the fumes of that memorable Christmas debauch, he found that a sad thing had happened to him, and a strange!
It was as though a tarnishing breath had swept over the reminiscent mirror of his mind and left a little film behind it, so that no past thing he wished to see therein was reflected with quite the old pristine clearness. As though the keen, quick, razorlike edge of his power to reach and re-evoke the bygone charm and glamour and essence of things had been blunted and coarsened. As though the bloom of that special joy, the gift he unconsciously had of recalling past emotions and sensations and situations, and making them actual once more by a mere effort of the will, had been brushed away.
And he never recovered the full use of that most precious faculty, the boon of youth and happy childhood, and which he had once possessed, without knowing it, in such singular and exceptional completeness. He was to lose other precious faculties of his over-rich and complex nature—to be pruned and clipped and thinned—that his one supreme faculty of painting might have elbow-room to reach its fullest, or else you would never have seen the wood for the trees (or vice versa—which is it?).
On New-year’s Day Taffy and the Laird were at their work in the studio, when there was a knock at the door, and Monsieur Vinard, cap in hand, respectfully introduced a pair of visitors, an English lady and gentleman.
The gentleman was a clergyman, small, thin, round-shouldered, with a long neck; weak-eyed and dryly polite. The lady was middle-aged, though still young looking; very pretty, with gray hair; very well dressed; very small, full of nervous energy, with tiny hands and feet. It was Little Billee’s mother; and the clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Bagot, was her brother-in-law.
Their faces were full of trouble—so much so that the two painters did not even apologize for the carelessness of their attire, or for the odor of tobacco that filled the room. Little Billee’s mother recognized the two painters at a glance, from the sketches and descriptions of which her son’s letters were always full.
They all sat down.
After a moment’s embarrassed silence, Mrs. Bagot exclaimed, addressing Taffy: “Mr. Wynne, we are in terrible distress of mind. I don’t know if my son has told you, but on Christmas Day he engaged himself to be married!”
“To—be—married!” exclaimed Taffy and the Laird, for whom this was news indeed.
“Yes—to be married to a Miss Trilby O’Ferrall, who, from what he implies, is in quite a different position in life to himself. Do you know the lady, Mr. Wynne?”
“Oh yes! I know her very well indeed; we all know her.”
“Is she English?”
“She’s an English subject, I believe.”
“Is she a Protestant or a Roman Catholic?” inquired the clergyman.
“A—a—upon my word, I really don’t know!”
“You know her very well indeed, and you don’t—know—that, Mr. Wynne!” exclaimed Mr. Bagot.
“Is she a lady, Mr. Wynne?” asked Mrs. Bagot, somewhat impatiently, as if that were a much more important matter.
By this time the Laird had managed to basely desert his friend; had got himself into his bedroom, and from thence, by another door, into the street and away.
“A lady?” said Taffy; “a—it so much depends upon what that word exactly means, you know; things are so—a—so different here. Her father was a gentleman, I believe—a fellow of Trinity, Cambridge—and a clergyman, if that means anything! … he was unfortunate and all that—a—intemperate, I fear, and not successful in life. He has been dead six or seven years.”
“And her mother?”
“I really know very little about her mother, except that she was very handsome, I believe, and of inferior social rank to her husband. She’s also dead; she died soon after him.”
“What is the young lady, then? An English governess, or something of that sort?”
“Oh, no, no—a—nothing of that sort,” said Taffy (and inwardly, “You coward—you cad of a Scotch thief of a sneak of a Laird—to leave all this to me!”).
“What? Has she independent means of her own, then?”
“A—not that I know of; I should even say, decidedly not!”
“What is she, then? She’s at least respectable, I hope!”
“At present she’s a—a blanchisseuse de fin—that is considered respectable here.”
“Why, that’s a washerwoman, isn’t it?”
“Well—rather better than that, perhaps—de fin, you know!—things are so different in Paris! I don’t think you’d say she was very much like a washerwoman—to look at!”
“Is she so good-looking, then?”
“Oh yes; extremely so. You may well say that—very beautiful, indeed—about that, at least, there is no doubt whatever!”
“And of unblemished character?”
Taffy, red and perspiring as if he were going through his Indian-club exercise, was silent—and his face expressed a miserable perplexity. But nothing could equal the anxious misery of those two maternal eyes, so wistfully fixed on his.
After some seconds of a most painful stillness, the lady said, “Can’t you—oh, can’t you give me an answer, Mr. Wynne?”
“Oh, Mrs. Bagot, you have placed me in a terrible position! I—I love your son just as if he were my own brother! This engagement is a complete surprise to me—a most painful surprise! I’d thought of many possible things, but never of that! I cannot—I really must not conceal from you that it would be an unfortunate marriage for your son—from a—a worldly point of view, you know—although both I and McAllister have a very deep and warm regard for poor Trilby O’Ferrall—indeed, a great admiration and affection and respect! She was once a model.”
“A
