Part VII
“The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;
The wind made thy bosom chill;
The night did shed
On thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.”
Next morning our three friends lay late abed, and breakfasted in their rooms.
They had all three passed “white nights”—even the Laird, who had tossed about and pressed a sleepless pillow till dawn, so excited had he been by the wonder of Trilby’s reincarnation, so perplexed by his own doubts as to whether it was really Trilby or not.
And certain haunting tones of her voice, that voice so cruelly sweet (which clove the stillness with a clang so utterly new, so strangely heart-piercing and seductive, that the desire to hear it once more became nostalgic—almost an ache!), certain bits and bars and phrases of the music she had sung, unspeakable felicities and facilities of execution; sudden exotic warmths, fragrances, tendernesses, graces, depths, and breadths; quick changes from grave to gay, from rough to smooth, from great metallic brazen clangors to soft golden suavities; all the varied modes of sound we try so vainly to borrow from vocal nature by means of wind and reed and string—all this new “Trilbyness” kept echoing in his brain all night (for he was of a nature deeply musical), and sleep had been impossible to him.
“As when we dwell upon a word we know,
Repeating, till the word we know so well
Becomes a wonder, and we know not why,”
so dwelt the Laird upon the poor old tune “Ben Bolt,” which kept singing itself over and over again in his tired consciousness, and maddened him with novel, strange, unhackneyed, unsuspected beauties such as he had never dreamed of in any earthly music.
It had become a wonder, and he knew not why!
They spent what was left of the morning at the Louvre, and tried to interest themselves in the Marriage of Cana, and the Woman at the Well, and Vandyck’s man with the glove, and the little princess of Velasquez, and Lisa Gioconda’s smile: it was of no use trying. There was no sight worth looking at in all Paris but Trilby in her golden raiment; no other princess in the world; no smile but hers, when through her parted lips came bubbling Chopin’s Impromptu. They had not long to stay in Paris, and they must drink of that bubbling fountain once more—coûte que coûte! They went to the Salle des Bashibazoucks, and found that all seats all over the house had been taken for days and weeks; and the “queue” at the door had already begun! and they had to give up all hopes of slaking this particular thirst.
Then they went and lunched perfunctorily, and talked desultorily over lunch, and read criticisms of la Svengali’s début in the morning papers—a chorus of journalistic acclamation gone mad, a frenzied eulogy in every key—but nothing was good enough for them! Brand-new words were wanted—another language!
Then they wanted a long walk, and could think of nowhere to go in all Paris—that immense Paris, where they had promised themselves to see so much that the week they were to spend there had seemed too short!
Looking in a paper, they saw it announced that the band of the Imperial Guides would play that afternoon in the Pré Catelan, Bois de Boulogne, and thought they might as well walk there as anywhere else, and walk back again in time to dine with the Passefils—a prandial function which did not promise to be very amusing; but still it was something to kill the evening with, since they couldn’t go and hear Trilby again.
Outside the Pré Catelan they found a crowd of cabs and carriages, saddle-horses and grooms. One might have thought one’s self in the height of the Paris season. They went in, and strolled about here and there, and listened to the band, which was famous (it has performed in London at the Crystal Palace), and they looked about and studied life, or tried to.
Suddenly they saw, sitting with three ladies (one of whom, the eldest, was in black), a very smart young officer, a guide, all red and green and gold, and recognized their old friend Zouzou. They bowed, and he knew them at once, and jumped up and came to them and greeted them warmly, especially his old friend Taffy, whom he took to his mother—the lady in black—and introduced to the other ladies, the younger of whom, strangely unlike the rest of her countrywomen, was so lamentably, so pathetically plain that it would be brutal to attempt the cheap and easy task of describing her. It was Miss Lavinia Hunks, the famous American millionairess, and her mother. Then the good Zouzou came back and talked to the Laird and Little Billee.
Zouzou, in some subtle and indescribable way, had become very ducal indeed.
He looked extremely distinguished, for one thing, in his beautiful guide’s uniform, and was most gracefully and winningly polite. He inquired warmly after Mrs. and Miss Bagot, and begged Little Billee would recall him to their amiable remembrance when he saw them again. He expressed most sympathetically his delight to see Little Billee looking so strong and so well (Little Billee looked like a pallid little washed-out ghost, after his white night).
They talked of Dodor. He said how attached he was to Dodor, and always should be; but Dodor, it seemed, had made a great mistake in leaving the army and going into a retail business (petit commerce). He had done for himself—dégringolé! He should have stuck to the dragons—with a little patience and good conduct he would have “won his epaulet”—and then one might have arranged for him a good little marriage—un parti
