Trilby. Du Maurier George

by friendly greetings on all sides.

      "Tiens! c'est la grande Trilby!" exclaimed Jules Guinot through his fencing-mask. "Comment! t'es déjà debout après hier soir? Avons-nous assez rigolé chez Mathieu, hein? Crénom d'un nom, quelle noce! V'là une crémaillère qui peut se vanter d'être diantrement bien pendue, j'espère! Et la petite santé, c'matin?"

      "Hé, hé! mon vieux," answered Trilby. "Ça boulotte, apparemment! Et toi? et Victorine? Comment qu'a s'porte à c't'heure? Elle avait un fier coup d'chasselas! c'est-y jobard, hein? de s'fich 'paf comme ça d'vant l'monde! Tiens, v'là, Gontran! ça marche-t-y, Gontran, Zouzou d'mon cœur?"

      "Comme sur des roulettes, ma biche!" said Gontran, alias l'Zouzou – a corporal in the Zouaves. "Mais tu t'es donc mise chiffonnière, à présent? T'as fait banqueroute?"

      (For Trilby had a chiffonnier's basket strapped on her back, and carried a pick and lantern.)

      "Mais-z-oui, mon bon!" she said. "Dame! pas d'veine hier soir! t'as bien vu! Dans la dêche jusqu'aux omoplates, mon pauv' caporal-sous-off! nom d'un canon – faut bien vivre, s'pas?"

      Little Billee's heart sluices had closed during this interchange of courtesies. He felt it to be of a very slangy kind, because he couldn't understand a word of it, and he hated slang. All he could make out was the free use of the "tu" and the "toi," and he knew enough French to know that this implied a great familiarity, which he misunderstood.

      So that Jules Guinot's polite inquiries whether Trilby were none the worse after Mathieu's house-warming (which was so jolly), Trilby's kind solicitude about the health of Victorine, who had very foolishly taken a drop too much on that occasion, Trilby's mock regrets that her own bad luck at cards had made it necessary that she should retrieve her fallen fortunes by rag-picking – all these innocent, playful little amenities (which I have tried to write down just as they were spoken) were couched in a language that was as Greek to him – and he felt out of it, jealous and indignant.

      "Good-afternoon to you, Mr. Taffy," said Trilby, in English. "I've brought you these objects of art and virtu to make the peace with you. They're the real thing, you know. I borrowed 'em from le père Martin, chiffonnier en gros et en détail, grand officier de la Légion d'Honneur, membre de l'Institut, et cetera, treize bis, Rue du Puits d'Amour, rez-de-chaussée, au fond de la cour à gauche, vis-à-vis le mont-de-piété! He's one of my intimate friends, and – "

      "You don't mean to say you're the intimate friend of a rag-picker?" exclaimed the good Taffy.

      "Oh yes! Pourquoi pas? I never brag; besides, there ain't any beastly pride about le père Martin," said Trilby, with a wink. "You'd soon find that out if you were an intimate friend of his. This is how it's put on. Do you see? If you'll put it on, I'll fasten it for you, and show you how to hold the lantern and handle the pick. You may come to it yourself some day, you know. Il ne faut jurer de rien! Père Martin will pose for you in person, if you like. He's generally disengaged in the afternoon. He's poor but honest, you know, and very nice and clean; quite the gentleman. He likes artists, especially English – they pay. His wife sells bric-à-brac and old masters: Rembrandts from two francs fifty upwards. They've got a little grandson – a love of a child. I'm his god-mother. You know French, I suppose?"

      "Oh yes," said Taffy, much abashed. "I'm very much obliged to you – very much indeed – a – I – a – "

      "Y a pas d'quoi!" said Trilby, divesting herself of her basket and putting it, with the pick and lantern, in a corner. "Et maintenant, le temps d'absorber une fine de fin sec [a cigarette] et je m'la brise [I'm off]. On m'attend à l'Ambassade d'Autriche. Et puis zut! Allez toujours, mes enfants. En avant la boxe!"

      She sat herself down cross-legged on the model-throne, and made herself a cigarette, and watched the fencing and boxing. Little Billee brought her a chair, which she refused; so he sat down on it himself by her side, and talked to her, just as he would have talked to any young lady at home – about the weather, about Verdi's new opera (which she had never heard), the impressiveness of Notre Dame, and Victor Hugo's beautiful romance (which she had never read), the mysterious charm of Leonardo da Vinci's Lisa Gioconda's smile (which she had never seen) – by all of which she was no doubt rather tickled and a little embarrassed, perhaps also a little touched.

      Taffy brought her a cup of coffee, and conversed with her in polite formal French, very well and carefully pronounced; and the Laird tried to do likewise. His French was of that honest English kind that breaks up the stiffness of even an English party; and his jolly manners were such as to put an end to all shyness and constraint, and make self-consciousness impossible.

      Others dropped in from neighboring studios – the usual cosmopolite crew. It was a perpetual come and go in this particular studio between four and six in the afternoon.

      There were ladies, too, en cheveux, in caps and bonnets, some of whom knew Trilby, and thee'd and thou'd with familiar and friendly affection, while others mademoiselle'd her with distant politeness, and were mademoiselle'd and madame'd back again. "Absolument comme à l'Ambassade d'Autriche," as Trilby observed to the Laird, with a British wink that was by no means ambassadorial.

      Then Svengali came and made some of his grandest music, which was as completely thrown away on Trilby as fireworks on a blind beggar, for all she held her tongue so piously.

      Fencing and boxing and trapezing seemed to be more in her line; and indeed, to a tone-deaf person, Taffy lunging his full spread with a foil, in all the splendor of his long, lithe, youthful strength, was a far gainlier sight than Svengali at the key-board flashing his languid bold eyes with a sickly smile from one listener to another, as if to say: "N'est-ce pas que che suis peau! N'est-ce pas que ch'ai tu chénie? N'est-ce pas que che suis suplime, enfin?"

      Then enter Durien the sculptor, who had been presented with a baignoire at the Porte St. Martin to see "La Dame aux Camélias," and he invited Trilby and another lady to dine with him "au cabaret" and share his box.

      So Trilby didn't go to the Austrian embassy after all, as the Laird observed to Little Billee, with such a good imitation of her wink that Little Billee was bound to laugh.

      But Little Billee was not inclined for fun; a dulness, a sense of disenchantment, had come over him; as he expressed it to himself, with pathetic self-pity:

      "A feeling of sadness and longing

      That is not akin to pain,

      And resembles sorrow only

      As the mist resembles the rain."

      And the sadness, if he had known, was that all beautiful young women with kind sweet faces and noble figures and goddess-like extremities should not be good and pure as they were beautiful; and the longing was a longing that Trilby could be turned into a young lady – say the vicar's daughter in a little Devonshire village – his sister's friend and co-teacher at the Sunday-school; a simple, pure, and pious maiden of gentle birth.

      For he adored piety in woman, although he was not pious by any means. His inarticulate, intuitive perceptions were not of form and color secrets only, but strove to pierce the veil of deeper mysteries in impetuous and dogmatic boyish scorn of all received interpretations. For he flattered himself that he possessed the philosophical and scientific mind, and piqued himself on thinking clearly, and was intolerant of human inconsistency.

      That small reserve portion of his ever-active brain which should have lain fallow while the rest of it was at work or play, perpetually plagued itself about the mysteries of life and death, and was forever propounding unanswerable arguments against the Christian belief, through a kind of inverted sympathy with the believer. Fortunately for his friends, Little Billee was both shy and discreet, and very tender of other people's feelings; so he kept all his immature juvenile agnosticism to himself.

      To atone for such ungainly strong-mindedness in one so young and tender, he was the slave of many little traditional observances which have no very solid foundation in either science or philosophy. For instance, he wouldn't walk under a ladder for worlds, nor sit down thirteen to dinner, nor have his hair cut on a Friday, and was quite upset if he happened to see the new moon through glass. And he believed in lucky and unlucky numbers, and dearly loved the sights and