So that Little Billee, who had the quick, prehensile, aesthetic eye, and knew by the grace of Heaven what the shapes and sizes and colors of almost every bit of man, woman, or child should be (and so seldom are), was quite bewildered to find that a real, bare, live human foot could be such a charming object to look at, and felt that such a base or pedestal lent quite an antique and Olympian dignity to a figure that seemed just then rather grotesque in its mixed attire of military overcoat and female petticoat, and nothing else!
Poor Trilby!
The shape of those lovely slender feet (that were neither large nor small), facsimiled in dusty, pale plaster of Paris, survives on the shelves and walls of many a studio throughout the world, and many a sculptor yet unborn has yet to marvel at their strange perfection, in studious despair.
For when Dame Nature takes it into her head to do her very best, and bestow her minutest attention on a mere detail, as happens now and then—once in a blue moon, perhaps—she makes it uphill work for poor human art to keep pace with her.
It is a wondrous thing, the human foot—like the human hand; even more so, perhaps; but, unlike the hand, with which we are so familiar, it is seldom a thing of beauty in civilized adults who go about in leather boots or shoes.
So that it is hidden away in disgrace, a thing to be thrust out of sight and forgotten. It can sometimes be very ugly, indeed—the ugliest thing there is, even in the fairest and highest and most gifted of her sex; and then it is of an ugliness to chill and kill romance, and scatter young love’s dream, and almost break the heart.
And all for the sake of a high heel and a ridiculously pointed toe—mean things, at the best!
Conversely, when Mother Nature has taken extra pains in the building of it, and proper care or happy chance has kept it free of lamentable deformations, indurations, and discolorations—all those gruesome boot-begotten abominations which have made it so generally unpopular—the sudden sight of it, uncovered, comes as a very rare and singularly pleasing surprise to the eye that has learned how to see!
Nothing else that Mother Nature has to show, not even the human face divine, has more subtle power to suggest high physical distinction, happy evolution, and supreme development; the lordship of man over beast, the lordship of man over man, the lordship of woman over all!
En, voilà, de l’éloquence—à propos de bottes!
Trilby had respected Mother Nature’s special gift to herself—had never worn a leather boot or shoe, had always taken as much care of her feet as many a fine lady takes of her hands. It was her one coquetry, the only real vanity she had.
Gecko, his fiddle in one hand and his bow in the other, stared at her in open-mouthed admiration and delight, as she ate her sandwich of soldier’s bread and fromage à la crème quite unconcerned.
When she had finished she licked the tips of her fingers clean of cheese, and produced a small tobacco-pouch from another military pocket, and made herself a cigarette, and lit it and smoked it, inhaling the smoke in large whiffs, filling her lungs with it, and sending it back through her nostrils, with a look of great beatitude.
Svengali played Schubert’s “Rosemonde,” and flashed a pair of languishing black eyes at her with intent to kill.
But she didn’t even look his way. She looked at Little Billee, at big Taffy, at the Laird, at the casts and studies, at the sky, the chimney-pots over the way, the towers of Notre Dame, just visible from where she sat.
Only when he finished she exclaimed: “Maïe, aïe! c’est rudement bien tapé, c’te musique-là! Seulement, c’est pas gai, vous savez! Comment q’ça s’appelle?”
“It is called the ‘Rosemonde’ of Schubert, matemoiselle,” replied Svengali. (I will translate.)
“And what’s that—Rosemonde?” said she.
“Rosemonde was a princess of Cyprus, matemoiselle, and Cyprus is an island.”
“Ah, and Schubert, then—where’s that?”
“Schubert is not an island, matemoiselle. Schubert was a compatriot of mine, and made music, and played the piano, just like me.”
“Ah, Schubert was a monsieur, then. Don’t know him; never heard his name.”
“That is a pity, matemoiselle. He had some talent. You like this better, perhaps,” and he strummed,
“Messieurs les étudiants,
S’en vont à la chaumière
Pour y danser le cancan,”
striking wrong notes, and banging out a bass in a different key—a hideously grotesque performance.
“Yes, I like that better. It’s gayer, you know. Is that also composed by a compatriot of yours?” asked the lady.
“Heaven forbid, matemoiselle.”
And the laugh was against Svengali.
But the real fun of it all (if there was any) lay in the fact that she was perfectly sincere.
“Are you fond of music?” asked Little Billee.
“Oh, ain’t I, just!” she replied. “My father sang like a bird. He was a gentleman and a scholar, my father was. His name was Patrick Michael O’Ferrall, fellow of Trinity, Cambridge. He used to sing ‘Ben Bolt.’ Do you know ‘Ben Bolt’?”
“Oh yes, I know it well,” said Little Billee. “It’s a very pretty song.”
“I can sing it,” said Miss O’Ferrall. “Shall I?”
“Oh, certainly, if you will be so kind.”
Miss O’Ferrall threw away the end of her cigarette, put her hands on her knees as she sat cross-legged on the model-throne, and sticking her elbows well out, she looked up to the ceiling with a tender, sentimental smile, and sang the touching song,
“Oh, don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?
Sweet Alice, with hair so brown?” etc., etc.
As some things are too sad and too deep for tears, so some things are too grotesque and too funny for laughter. Of such a kind was Miss O’Ferrall’s performance of “Ben Bolt.”
From that capacious mouth and through that high-bridged bony nose there rolled a volume of breathy sound, not loud, but so immense that it seemed to come from all round,
