She smiled in a forlorn sort of way, with her upper lip drawn tight against her teeth, as if someone were pulling her back by the lobes of her ears.
“Oh! but Trilby—what shall we do without you? Taffy and I, you know! You’ve become one of us!”
“Now how good and kind of you to say that!” exclaimed poor Trilby, her eyes filling. “Why, that’s just all I lived for, till all this happened. But it can’t be any more now, can it? Everything is changed for me—the very sky seems different. Ah! Durien’s little song—’Plaisir d’amour—chagrin d’amour!’ it’s all quite true, isn’t it? I shall start immediately, and take Jeannot with me, I think.”
“But where do you think of going?”
“Ah! I mayn’t tell you that, Sandy dear—not for a long time! Think of all the trouble there’d be—Well, there’s no time to be lost. I must take the bull by the horns.”
She tried to laugh, and took him by his big side-whiskers and kissed him on the eyes and mouth, and her tears fell on his face.
Then, feeling unable to speak, she nodded farewell, and walked quickly up the narrow winding street. When she came to the first bend she turned round and waved her hand, and kissed it two or three times, and then disappeared.
The Laird stared for several minutes up the empty thoroughfare—wretched, full of sorrow and compassion. Then he filled himself another pipe and lit it, and hitched himself on to another post, and sat there dangling his legs and kicking his heels, and waited for the Bagots’ cab to depart, that he might go up and face the righteous wrath of Taffy like a man, and bear up against his bitter reproaches for cowardice and desertion before the foe.
Next morning Taffy received two letters: one, a very long one, was from Mrs. Bagot. He read it twice over, and was forced to acknowledge that it was a very good letter—the letter of a clever, warmhearted woman, but a woman also whose son was to her as the very apple of her eye. One felt she was ready to flay her dearest friend alive in order to make Little Billee a pair of gloves out of the skin, if he wanted a pair; but one also felt she would be genuinely sorry for the friend. Taffy’s own mother had been a little like that, and he missed her every day of his life.
Full justice was done by Mrs. Bagot to all Trilby’s qualities of head and heart and person; but at the same time she pointed out, with all the cunning and ingeniously casuistic logic of her sex, when it takes to special pleading (even when it has right on its side), what the consequences of such a marriage must inevitably be in a few years—even sooner! The quick disenchantment, the lifelong regret, on both sides!
He could not have found a word to controvert her arguments, save perhaps in his own private belief that Trilby and Little Billee were both exceptional people; and how could he hope to know Little Billee’s nature better than the boy’s own mother!
And if he had been the boy’s elder brother in blood, as he already was in art and affection, would he, should he, could he have given his fraternal sanction to such a match?
Both as his friend and his brother he felt it was out of the question.
The other letter was from Trilby, in her bold, careless handwriting, that sprawled all over the page, and her occasionally imperfect spelling. It ran thus:
“My dear, dear Taffy—This is to say goodbye. I’m going away, to put an end to all this misery, for which nobody’s to blame but myself.
“The very moment after I’d said yes to Little Billee I knew perfectly well what a stupid fool I was, and I’ve been ashamed of myself ever since. I had a miserable week, I can tell you. I knew how it would all turn out.
“I am dreadfully unhappy, but not half so unhappy as if I married him and he were ever to regret it and be ashamed of me; and of course he would, really, even if he didn’t show it—good and kind as he is—an angel!
“Besides—of course I could never be a lady—how could I?—though I ought to have been one, I suppose. But everything seems to have gone wrong with me, though I never found it out before—and it can’t be righted!
“Poor papa!
“I am going away with Jeannot. I’ve been neglecting him shamefully. I mean to make up for it all now.
“You mustn’t try and find out where I am going; I know you won’t if I beg you, nor anyone else. It would make everything so much harder for me.
“Angèle knows; she has promised me not to tell. I should like to have a line from you very much. If you send it to her she will send it on to me.
“Dear Taffy, next to Little Billee, I love you and the Laird better than anyone else in the whole world. I’ve never known real happiness till I met you. You have changed me into another person—you and Sandy and Little Billee.
“Oh, it has been a jolly time, though it didn’t last long. It will have to do for me for life. So goodbye. I shall
