She was a consummate mistress of her art. How that could be seen! And also how splendid had been her training! It all seemed as easy to her as opening and shutting her eyes, and yet how utterly impossible to anybody else!
Between wonder, enchantment, and alarm they were frozen to statues—all except Marta, who ran out of the room, crying: “Gott im Himmel! wieder zurück! wieder zurück!”
She sang it just as she had sung it at the Salle des Bashibazoucks, only it sounded still more ineffably seductive, as she was using less voice—using the essence of her voice, in fact—the pure spirit, the very cream of it.
There can be little doubt that these four watchers by that enchanted couch were listening to not only the most divinely beautiful, but also the most astounding feat of musical utterance ever heard out of a human throat.
The usual effect was produced. Tears were streaming down the cheeks of Mrs. Bagot and Little Billee. Tears were in the Laird’s eyes, a tear on one of Taffy’s whiskers—tears of sheer delight.
When she came back to the quick movement again, after the adagio, her voice grew louder and shriller, and sweet with a sweetness not of this earth; and went on increasing in volume as she quickened the time, nearing the end; and then came the dying away into all but nothing—a mere melodic breath; and then the little soft chromatic ascending rocket, up to E in alt, the last parting caress (which Svengali had introduced as a finale, for it does not exist in the piano score).
When it was over, she said: “Ça y est-il, cette fois, Svengali? Ah! tant mieux, à la fin! c’est pas malheureux! Et maintenant, mon ami, je suis fatiguée—bon soir!”
Her head fell back on the pillow, and she lay fast asleep.
Mrs. Bagot took the portrait away gently. Little Billee knelt down and held Trilby’s hand in his and felt for her pulse, and could not find it.
He said, “Trilby! Trilby!” and put his ear to her mouth to hear her breathe. Her breath was inaudible.
But soon she folded her hands across her breast, and uttered a little short sigh, and in a weak voice said: “Svengali. … Svengali. … Svengali! …”
They remained in silence round her for several minutes, terror-stricken.
The doctor came; he put his hand to her heart, his ear to her lips. He turned up one of her eyelids and looked at her eye. And then, his voice quivering with strong emotion, he stood up and said, “Madame Svengali’s trials and sufferings are all over!”
“Oh, good God! is she dead?” cried Mrs. Bagot.
“Yes, Mrs. Bagot. She has been dead several minutes—perhaps a quarter of an hour.”
Vingt Ans Après
Porthos-Athos, alias Taffy Wynne, is sitting to breakfast (opposite his wife) at a little table in the courtyard of that huge caravanserai on the Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, where he had sat more than twenty years ago with the Laird and Little Billee; where, in fact, he had pulled Svengali’s nose.
Little is changed in the aspect of the place: the same cosmopolite company, with more of the American element, perhaps; the same arrivals and departures in railway omnibuses, cabs, hired carriages; and, airing his calves on the marble steps, stood just such another colossal and beautiful old man in black cloth coat and knee-breeches and silk stockings as of yore, with probably the very same pinchbeck chain. Where do they breed these magnificent old Frenchmen? In Germany, perhaps, “where all the good big waiters come from!”
And also the same fine weather. It is always fine weather in the courtyard of the Grand Hôtel. As the Laird would say, they manage these things better there!
Taffy wears a short beard, which is turning gray. His kind blue eye is no longer choleric, but mild and friendly—as frank as ever; and full of humorous patience. He has grown stouter; he is very big indeed, in all three dimensions, but the symmetry and the gainliness of the athlete belong to him still in movement and repose; and his clothes fit him beautifully, though they are not new, and show careful beating and brushing and ironing, and even a faint suspicion of all but imperceptible fine-drawing here and there.
What a magnificent old man he will make some day, should the Grand Hôtel ever run short of them! He looks as if he could be trusted down to the ground—in all things, little or big; as if his word were as good as his bond, and even better; his wink as good as his word, his nod as good as his wink; and, in truth, as he looks, so he is.
The most cynical disbeliever in “the grand old name of gentleman,” and its virtues as a noun of definition, would almost be justified in quite dogmatically asserting at sight, and without even being introduced, that, at all events, Taffy is a “gentleman,” inside and out, up and down—from the crown of his head (which is getting rather bald) to the sole of his foot (by no means a small one, or a lightly shod—ex pede Herculem)!
Indeed, this is always the first thing people say of Taffy—and the last. It means, perhaps, that he may be a trifle dull. Well, one can’t be everything!
Porthos was a trifle dull—and so was Athos, I think; and likewise his son, the faithful Viscount of Bragelonne—bon chien chasse de race! And so was Wilfred of Ivanhoe, the disinherited; and Edgar, the Lord of Ravenswood! and so, for that matter, was Colonel Newcome, of immortal memory!
Yet who does not love them—who would not wish to be like them, for better, for worse!
Taffy’s wife is unlike Taffy in many ways; but (fortunately for both) very like him in some. She is a little woman, very well shaped, very dark, with black, wavy hair, and very small hands and feet; a very graceful, handsome,
