This project our three heroes did not think it necessary to discuss with her just yet; she seemed quite unfit for work of any kind.
The doctor, who had seen her again, had been puzzled by her strange physical weakness, and wished for a consultation with some special authority; Little Billee, who was intimate with most of the great physicians, wrote about her to Sir Oliver Calthorpe.
She seemed to find a deep happiness in being with her three old friends, and talked and listened with all her old eagerness and geniality, and much of her old gayety, in spite of her strange and sorrowful position. But for this it was impossible to realize that her brain was affected in the slightest degree, except when some reference was made to her singing, and this seemed to annoy and irritate her, as though she were being made fun of. The whole of her marvellous musical career, and everything connected with it, had been clean wiped out of her recollection.
She was very anxious to get into other quarters, that Little Billee should suffer no inconvenience, and they promised to take rooms for her and Marta on the morrow.
They told her cautiously all about Svengali and Gecko; she was deeply concerned, but betrayed no such poignant anguish as might have been expected. The thought of Gecko troubled her most, and she showed much anxiety as to what might befall him.
Next day she moved with Marta to some lodgings in Charlotte Street, where everything was made as comfortable for them as possible.
Sir Oliver saw her with Dr. Thorne (the doctor who was attending her) and Sir Jacob Wilcox.
Sir Oliver took the greatest interest in her case, both for her sake and his friend Little Billee’s. Also his own, for he was charmed with her. He saw her three times in the course of the week, but could not say for certain what was the matter with her, beyond taking the very gravest view of her condition. For all he could advise or prescribe, her weakness and physical prostration increased rapidly, through no cause he could discover. Her insanity was not enough to account for it. She lost weight daily; she seemed to be wasting and fading away from sheer general atrophy.
Two or three times he took her and Marta for a drive.
On one of these occasions, as they went down Charlotte Street, she saw a shop with transparent French blinds in the window, and through them some French women, with neat white caps, ironing. It was a French blanchisserie de fin, and the sight of it interested and excited her so much that she must needs insist on being put down and on going into it.
“Je voudrais bien parler à la patronne, si ça ne la dérange pas,” she said.
The patronne, a genial Parisian, was much astonished to hear a great French lady, in costly garments, evidently a person of fashion and importance, applying to her rather humbly for employment in the business, and showing a thorough knowledge of the work (and of the Parisian work-woman’s colloquial dialect). Marta managed to catch the patronne’s eye, and tapped her own forehead significantly, and Sir Oliver nodded. So the good woman humored the great lady’s fancy, and promised her abundance of employment whenever she should want it.
Employment! Poor Trilby was hardly strong enough to walk back to the carriage; and this was her last outing.
But this little adventure had filled her with hope and good spirits—for she had as yet received no answer from Angèle Boisse (who was in Marseilles), and had begun to realize how dreary the quartier latin would be without Jeannot, without Angèle, without the trois Angliches in the Place St. Anatole des Arts.
She was not allowed to see any of the strangers who came and made kind inquiries. This her doctors had strictly forbidden. Any reference to music or singing irritated her beyond measure. She would say to Marta, in bad German:
“Tell them, Marta—what nonsense it is! They are taking me for another—they are mad. They are trying to make a fool of me!”
And Marta would betray great uneasiness—almost terror—when she was appealed to in this way.
Part VIII
“La vie est vaine:
Un peu d’amour,
Un peu de haine. …
Et puis—bonjour!
“La vie est brève:
Un peu d’espoir,
Un peu de rève. …
Et puis—bonsoir.”
Svengali had died from heart-disease. The cut he had received from Gecko had not apparently (as far as the verdict of a coroner’s inquest could be trusted) had any effect in aggravating his malady or hastening his death.
But Gecko was sent for trial at the Old Bailey, and sentenced to hard labor for six months (a sentence which, if I remember aright, gave rise to much comment at the time). Taffy saw him again, but with no better result than before. He chose to preserve an obstinate silence on his relations with the Svengalis and their relations with each other.
When he was told how hopelessly ill and insane Madame Svengali was, he shed a few tears, and said: “Ah, pauvrette, pauvrette—ah! monsieur—je l’aimais tant, je l’aimais tant! il n’y en a pas beaucoup comme elle, Dieu de misère! C’est un ange du Paradis!”
And not another word was to be got out of him.
It took some time to settle Svengali’s affairs after his death. No will was found. His old mother came over from Germany, and two of his sisters, but no wife. The comic wife and the three children, and the sweet-stuff shop in Elberfeld, had been humorous inventions of his own—a kind of Mrs. Harris!
He left three thousand pounds, every penny of which (and of far larger sums that
