She distinctly belongs to the rare, and ever-blessed, and most precious race of charmers.
She had fallen in love with the stalwart Taffy more than a quarter of a century ago in the Place St. Anatole des Arts, where he and she and her mother had tended the sick-couch of Little Billee—but she had never told her love. Tout vient à point, pour qui sait attendre!
That is a capital proverb, and sometimes even a true one. Blanche Bagot had found it to be both!
One terrible night, never to be forgotten, Taffy lay fast asleep in bed, at his rooms in Jermyn Street, for he was very tired; grief tires more than anything, and brings a deeper slumber.
That day he had followed Trilby to her last home in Kensal Green, with Little Billee, Mrs. Bagot, the Laird, Antony, the Greek, and Durien (who had come over from Paris on purpose) as chief mourners; and very many other people, noble, famous, or otherwise, English and foreign; a splendid and most representative gathering, as was duly chronicled in all the newspapers here and abroad; a fitting ceremony to close the brief but splendid career of the greatest pleasure-giver of our time.
He was awakened by a tremendous ringing at the street-door bell, as if the house were on fire; and then there was a hurried scrambling up in the dark, a tumbling over stairs and kicking against banisters, and Little Billee had burst into his room, calling out: “Oh! Taffy, Taffy! I’m g‑going mad—I’m g‑going m‑mad! I’m d‑d‑done for. …”
“All right, old fellow—just wait till I strike a light!”
“Oh, Taffy! I haven’t slept for four nights—not a wink! She d‑d‑died with Sv—Sv—Sv … damn it, I can’t get it out! that ruffian’s name on her lips! … it was just as if he were calling her from the t‑t‑tomb! She recovered her senses the very minute she saw his photograph—she was so f‑fond of him she f‑forgot everybody else! She’s gone straight to him, after all—in some other life! … to slave for him, and sing for him, and help him to make better music than ever! Oh, T—T—oh—oh! Taffy—oh! oh! oh! catch hold! c‑c‑catch. …” And Little Billee had all but fallen on the floor in a fit.
And all the old miserable business of five years before had begun over again!
There has been too much sickness in this story, so I will tell as little as possible of poor Little Billee’s long illness, his slow and only partial recovery, the paralysis of his powers as a painter, his quick decline, his early death, his manly, calm, and most beautiful surrender—the wedding of the moth with the star, of the night with the morrow!
For all but blameless as his short life had been, and so full of splendid promise and performance, nothing ever became him better than the way he left it. It was as if he were starting on some distant holy quest, like some gallant knight of old—“A Bagot to the Rescue!” It shook the infallibility of a certain vicar down to its very foundations, and made him think more deeply about things than he had ever thought yet. It gave him pause! … and so wrung his heart that when, at the last, he stooped to kiss his poor young dead friend’s pure white forehead, he dropped a bigger tear on it than Little Billee (once so given to the dropping of big tears) had ever dropped in his life.
But it is all too sad to write about.
It was by Little Billee’s bedside, in Devonshire, that Taffy had grown to love Blanche Bagot, and not very many weeks after it was all over that Taffy had asked her to be his wife; and in a year they were married, and a very happy marriage it turned out—the one thing that poor Mrs. Bagot still looks upon as a compensation for all the griefs and troubles of her life.
During the first year or two Blanche had perhaps been the most ardently loving of this well-assorted pair. That beautiful look of love surprised (which makes all women’s eyes look the same) came into hers whenever she looked at Taffy, and filled his heart with tender compunction, and a queer sense of his own unworthiness.
Then a boy was born to them, and that look fell on the boy, and the good Taffy caught it as it passed him by, and he felt a helpless, absurd jealousy, that was none the less painful for being so ridiculous! and then that look fell on another boy and yet another, so that it was through these boys that she looked at their father. Then his eyes caught the look, and kept it for their own use; and he grew never to look at his wife without it; and as no daughter came, she retained for life the monopoly of that most sweet and expressive regard.
They are not very rich. He is a far better sportsman than he will ever be a painter; and if he doesn’t sell his pictures, it is not because they are too good for the public taste: indeed, he has no illusions on that score himself, even if his wife has! He is quite the least conceited art-duffer I ever met—and I have met many far worse duffers than Taffy.
Would only that I might kill off his cousin Sir Oscar, and Sir Oscar’s five sons (the Wynnes are good at sons), and his seventeen grandsons, and the fourteen cousins (and their numerous male progeny), that stand between Taffy and the baronetcy, and whatever property goes with it, so that he might be Sir Taffy, and dear Blanche Bagot (that was) might be called “my lady”! This Shakespearian holocaust would scarcely cost me a pang!
It is a great temptation, when you have duly
