“It was six or seven years ago, and I really believe I’ve thought of it almost every day, and sometimes in the middle of the night!
“Ah! and when Jeannot was dying! and when he was dead—the remembrance of that Palm-Sunday!
“And if that’s not repenting, I don’t know what is!”
“Oh, Trilby, what nonsense! that’s nothing; good heavens!—putting off a small child! I’m thinking of far worse things—when you were in the quartier latin, you know—sitting to painters and sculptors. … Surely, so attractive as you are. …”
“Oh yes. … I know what you mean—it was horrid, and I was frightfully ashamed of myself; and it wasn’t amusing a bit; nothing was, till I met your son and Taffy and dear Sandy McAlister! But then it wasn’t deceiving or disappointing anybody, or hurting their feelings—it was only hurting myself!
“Besides, all that sort of thing, in women, is punished severely enough down here, God knows! unless one’s a Russian empress like Catherine the Great, or a grande dame like lots of them, or a great genius like Madame Rachel or George Sand!
“Why, if it hadn’t been for that, and sitting for the figure, I should have felt myself good enough to marry your son, although I was only a blanchisseuse de fin—you’ve said so yourself!
“And I should have made him a good wife—of that I feel sure. He wanted to live all his life at Barbizon, and paint, you know; and didn’t care for society in the least. Anyhow, I should have been equal to such a life as that! Lots of their wives are blanchisseuses over there, or people of that sort; and they get on very well indeed, and nobody troubles about it!
“So I think I’ve been pretty well punished—richly as I’ve deserved to!”
“Trilby, have you ever been confirmed?”
“I forget. I fancy not!”
“Oh dear, oh dear! And do you know about our blessed Saviour, and the Atonement and the Incarnation and the Resurrection. …”
“Oh yes—I used to, at least. I used to have to learn the Catechism on Sundays—mamma made me. Whatever her faults and mistakes were, poor mamma was always very particular about that! It all seemed very complicated. But papa told me not to bother too much about it, but to be good. He said that God would make it all right for us somehow, in the end—all of us. And that seems sensible, doesn’t it?
“He told me to be good, and not to mind what priests and clergymen tell us. He’d been a clergyman himself, and knew all about it, he said.
“I haven’t been very good—there’s not much doubt about that, I’m afraid. But God knows I’ve repented often enough and sore enough; I do now! But I’m rather glad to die, I think; and not a bit afraid—not a scrap! I believe in poor papa, though he was so unfortunate! He was the cleverest man I ever knew, and the best—except Taffy and the Laird and your dear son!
“There’ll be no hell for any of us—he told me so—except what we make for ourselves and each other down here; and that’s bad enough for anything. He told me that he was responsible for me—he often said so—and that mamma was too, and his parents for him, and his grandfathers and grandmothers for them, and so on up to Noah and ever so far beyond, and God for us all!
“He told me always to think of other people before myself, as Taffy does, and your son; and never to tell lies or be afraid, and keep away from drink, and I should be all right. But I’ve sometimes been all wrong, all the same; and it wasn’t papa’s fault, but poor mamma’s and mine; and I’ve known it, and been miserable at the time, and after! and I’m sure to be forgiven—perfectly certain—and so will everybody else, even the wickedest that ever lived! Why, just give them sense enough in the next world to understand all their wickedness in this, and that’ll punish them enough for anything, I think! That’s simple enough, isn’t it? Besides, there may be no next world—that’s on the cards too, you know!—and that will be simpler still!
“Not all the clergymen in all the world, not even the Pope of Rome, will ever make me doubt papa, or believe in any punishment after what we’ve all got to go through here! Ce serait trop bête!
“So that if you don’t want me to very much, and he won’t think it unkind, I’d rather not talk to Mr. Thomas Bagot about it. I’d rather talk to Taffy if I must. He’s very clever, Taffy, though he doesn’t often say such clever things as your son does, or paint nearly so well; and I’m sure he’ll think papa was right.”
And as a matter of fact the good Taffy, in his opinion on this solemn subject, was found to be at one with the late Reverend Patrick Michael O’Ferrall—and so was the Laird—and so (to his mother’s shocked and pained surprise) was Little Billee.
And so were Sir Oliver Calthorpe and Sir Jacob Wilcox and Doctor Thorne and Antony and Lorrimer and the Greek!
And so—in after-years, when grief had well pierced and torn and riddled her through and through, and time and age had healed the wounds, and nothing remained but the consciousness of great inward scars of recollection to remind her how deep and jagged and wide the wounds had once been—did Mrs. Bagot herself!
Late on one memorable Saturday afternoon, just as it was getting dusk in Charlotte Street, Trilby, in her pretty blue dressing-gown, lay on the sofa
