“Ha! le biâno!” exclaimed Svengali, flinging his red beret on it, and his cloak on the ground. “Ch’espère qu’il est pon, et pien t’accord!”
And sitting down on the music-stool, he ran up and down the scales with that easy power, that smooth, even crispness of touch, which reveal the master.
Then he fell to playing Chopin’s impromptu in A flat, so beautifully that Little Billee’s heart went nigh to bursting with suppressed emotion and delight. He had never heard any music of Chopin’s before, nothing but British provincial homemade music—melodies with variations, “Annie Laurie,” “The Last Rose of Summer,” “The Blue Bells of Scotland;” innocent little motherly and sisterly tinklings, invented to set the company at their ease on festive evenings, and make all-round conversation possible for shy people; who fear the unaccompanied sound of their own voices, and whose genial chatter always leaves off directly the music ceases.
He never forgot that impromptu, which he was destined to hear again one day in strange circumstances.
Then Svengali and Gecko made music together, divinely. Little fragmentary things, sometimes consisting but of a few bars, but these bars of such beauty and meaning! Scraps, snatches, short melodies, meant to fetch, to charm immediately, or to melt or sadden or madden just for a moment, and that knew just when to leave off—czardas, gypsy dances, Hungarian love-plaints, things little known out of eastern Europe in the fifties of this century, till the Laird and Taffy were almost as wild in their enthusiasm as Little Billee—a silent enthusiasm too deep for speech. And when these two great artists left off to smoke, the three Britishers were too much moved even for that, and there was a stillness. …
Suddenly there came a loud knuckle-rapping at the outer door, and a portentous voice of great volume, and that might almost have belonged to any sex (even an angel’s), uttered the British milkman’s yodel, “Milk below!” and before anyone could say “Entrez,” a strange figure appeared, framed by the gloom of the little antechamber.
It was the figure of a very tall and fully developed young female, clad in the gray overcoat of a French infantry soldier, continued netherwards by a short striped petticoat, beneath which were visible her bare white ankles and insteps, and slim, straight, rosy heels, clean cut and smooth as the back of a razor; her toes lost themselves in a huge pair of male list slippers, which made her drag her feet as she walked.
She bore herself with easy, unembarrassed grace, like a person whose nerves and muscles are well in tune, whose spirits are high, who has lived much in the atmosphere of French studios, and feels at home in it.
This strange medley of garments was surmounted by a small bare head with short, thick, wavy brown hair, and a very healthy young face, which could scarcely be called quite beautiful at first sight, since the eyes were too wide apart, the mouth too large, the chin too massive, the complexion a mass of freckles. Besides, you can never tell how beautiful (or how ugly) a face may be till you have tried to draw it.
But a small portion of her neck, down by the collarbone, which just showed itself between the unbuttoned lapels of her military coat collar, was of a delicate privetlike whiteness that is never to be found on any French neck, and very few English ones. Also, she had a very fine brow, broad and low, with thick level eyebrows much darker than her hair, a broad, bony, high bridge to her short nose, and her full, broad cheeks were beautifully modelled. She would have made a singularly handsome boy.
As the creature looked round at the assembled company and flashed her big white teeth at them in an all-embracing smile of uncommon width and quite irresistible sweetness, simplicity, and friendly trust, one saw at a glance that she was out of the common clever, simple, humorous, honest, brave, and kind, and accustomed to be genially welcomed wherever she went. Then suddenly closing the door behind her, dropping her smile, and looking wistful and sweet, with her head on one side and her arms akimbo, “Ye’re all English, now, aren’t ye?” she exclaimed. “I heard the music, and thought I’d just come in for a bit, and pass the time of day: you don’t mind? Trilby, that’s my name—Trilby O’Ferrall.”
She said this in English, with an accent half Scotch and certain French intonations, and in a voice so rich and deep and full as almost to suggest an incipient tenore robusto; and one felt instinctively that it was a real pity she wasn’t a boy, she would have made such a jolly one.
“We’re delighted, on the contrary,” said Little Billee, and advanced a chair for her.
But she said, “Oh, don’t mind me; go on with the music,” and sat herself down cross-legged on the model-throne near the piano.
As they still looked at her, curious and half embarrassed, she pulled a paper parcel containing food out of one of the coat-pockets, and exclaimed:
“I’ll just take a bite, if you don’t object; I’m a model, you know, and it’s just rung twelve—‘the rest.’ I’m posing for Durien the sculptor, on the next floor. I pose to him for the altogether.”
“The altogether?” asked Little Billee.
“Yes—l’ensemble, you know—head, hands, and feet—everything—especially feet. That’s my foot,” she said, kicking off her big slipper and stretching out the limb. “It’s the handsomest foot in all Paris. There’s only one in all Paris to match it, and here it is,” and she laughed heartily (like a merry peal of bells), and stuck out the other.
And in truth they were astonishingly beautiful feet, such as one only sees in pictures and statues—a true inspiration of shape and color, all made up of delicate lengths and subtly modulated curves and noble straightnesses and happy little dimpled arrangements in innocent young
