Trilby Part 43

"His aunt. She cooked for us, and all that. She's coming here presently; she sent word from the hotel; she's very fond of him. Poor Marta! Poor Gecko! What _will_ they ever do without Svengali?"

"Then what did he do to live?"

"Oh! he played at concerts, I suppose--and all that."

"Did you ever hear him?"

"Yes. Sometimes Marta took me; at the beginning, you know. He was always very much applauded. He plays beautifully. Everybody said so."

"Did he never try and teach you to sing?"

"Oh, mae, ae! not he! Why, he always laughed when I tried to sing; and so did Marta; and so did Gecko! It made them roar! I used to sing 'Ben Bolt.' They used to make me, just for fun--and go into fits. _I_ didn't mind a sc.r.a.p. I'd had no training, you know!"

"Was there anybody else he knew--any other woman?"

"Not that _I_ know of! He always made out he was so fond of me that he couldn't even _look_ at another woman. Poor Svengali!" (Here her eyes filled with tears again.) "He was always very kind! But I never could be fond of him in the way he wished--never! It made me sick even to think of! Once I used to hate him--in Paris--in the studio; don't you remember?

"He hardly ever left me; and then Marta looked after me--for I've always been weak and ill--and often so languid that I could hardly walk across the room. It was that walk from Vibraye to Paris. I never got over it.

"I used to try and do all I could--be a daughter to him, as I couldn't be anything else--mend his things, and all that, and cook him little French dishes. I fancy he was very poor at one time; we were always moving from place to place. But I always had the best of everything. He insisted on that--even if he had to go without himself. It made him quite unhappy when I wouldn't eat, so I used to force myself.

"Then, as soon as I felt uneasy about things, or had any pain, he would say, 'Dors, ma mignonne!' and I would sleep at once--for hours, I think--and wake up, oh, so tired! and find him kneeling by me, always so anxious and kind--and Marta and Gecko! and sometimes we had the doctor, and I was ill in bed.

"Gecko used to dine and breakfast with us--you've no idea what an angel he is, poor little Gecko! But what a dreadful thing to strike Svengali!

_Why_ did he? Svengali taught him all he knows!"

"And you knew no one else--no other woman?"

"No one that I can remember--except Marta--not a soul!"

"And that beautiful dress you had on last night?"

"It isn't mine. It's on the bed up-stairs, and so's the fur cloak. They belong to Marta. She's got lots of them, lovely things--silk, satin, velvet--and lots of beautiful jewels. Marta deals in them, and makes lots of money.

"I've often tried them on; I'm very easy to fit," she said, "being so tall and thin. And poor Svengali would kneel down and cry, and kiss my hands and feet, and tell me I was his G.o.ddess and empress, and all that, which I hate. And Marta used to cry, too. And then he would say,

"'Et maintenant dors, ma mignonne!'

"And when I woke up I was so tired that I went to sleep again on my own account.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'ET MAINTENANT DORS, MA MIGNONNE!'"]

"But he was very patient. Oh, dear me! I've always been a poor, helpless, useless log and burden to him!

"Once I actually walked in my sleep--and woke up in the market-place at Prague--and found an immense crowd, and poor Svengali bleeding from the forehead, in a faint on the ground. He'd been knocked down by a horse and cart, he told me. He'd got his guitar with him. I suppose he and Gecko had been playing somewhere, for Gecko had his fiddle. If Gecko hadn't been there, I don't know what we should have done. You never saw such queer people as they were--such crowds--you'd think they'd never seen an Englishwoman before. The noise they made, and the things they gave me ... some of them went down on their knees, and kissed my hands and the skirts of my gown.

"He was ill in bed for a week after that, and I nursed him, and he was very grateful. Poor Svengali! G.o.d knows _I_ felt grateful to _him_ for many things! Tell me how he died! I hope he hadn't much pain."

They told her it was quite sudden, from heart-disease.

"Ah! I knew he had that; he wasn't a healthy man; he used to smoke too much. Marta used always to be very anxious."

Just then Marta came in.

Marta was a fat, elderly Jewess of rather a grotesque and ign.o.ble type.

She seemed overcome with grief--all but prostrate.

Trilby hugged and kissed her, and took off her bonnet and shawl, and made her sit down in a big arm-chair, and got her a footstool.

She couldn't speak a word of anything but Polish and a little German.

Trilby had also picked up a little German, and with this and by means of signs, and no doubt through a long intimacy with each other's ways, they understood each other very well. She seemed a very good old creature, and very fond of Trilby, but in mortal terror of the three Englishmen.

Lunch was brought up for the two women and the nurse, and our friends left them, promising to come again that day.

They were utterly bewildered; and the Laird would have it that there was another Madame Svengali somewhere, the real one, and that Trilby was a fraud--self-deceived and self-deceiving--quite unconsciously so, of course.

Truth looked out of her eyes, as it always had done--truth was in every line of her face.

The truth only--nothing but the truth could ever be told in that "voice of velvet," which rang as true when she spoke as that of any thrush or nightingale, however rebellious it might be now (and forever perhaps) to artificial melodic laws and limitations and restraints. The long training it had been subjected to had made it "a wonder, a world's delight," and though she might never sing another note, her mere speech would always be more golden than any silence, whatever she might say.

Except on the one particular point of her singing, she had seemed absolutely sane--so, at least, thought Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee. And each thought to himself, besides, that this last incarnation of Trilbyness was quite the sweetest, most touching, most endearing of all.

They had not failed to note how rapidly she had aged, now that they had seen her without her rouge and pearl-powder; she looked thirty at least--she was only twenty-three.

Her hands were almost transparent in their waxen whiteness; delicate little frosty wrinkles had gathered round her eyes; there were gray streaks in her hair; all strength and straightness and elasticity seemed to have gone out of her with the memory of her endless triumphs (if she really _was_ la Svengali), and of her many wanderings from city to city all over Europe.

It was evident enough that the sudden stroke which had destroyed her power of singing had left her physically a wreck.

But she was one of those rarely gifted beings who cannot look or speak or even stir without waking up (and satisfying) some vague longing that lies dormant in the hearts of most of us, men and women alike; grace, charm, magnetism--whatever the nameless seduction should be called that she possessed to such an unusual degree--she had lost none of it when she lost her high spirits, her buoyant health and energy, her wits!

Tuneless and insane, she was more of a siren than ever--a quite unconscious siren--without any guile, who appealed to the heart all the more directly and irresistibly that she could no longer stir the pa.s.sions.

All this was keenly felt by all three--each in his different way--by Taffy and Little Billee especially.

All her past life was forgiven--her sins of omission and commission! And whatever might be her fate--recovery, madness, disease, or death--the care of her till she died or recovered should be the princ.i.p.al business of their lives.

Both had loved her. All three, perhaps. One had been loved by her as pa.s.sionately, as purely, as unselfishly as any man could wish to be loved, and in some extraordinary manner had recovered, after many years, at the mere sudden sight and sound of her, his lost share in our common inheritance--the power to love, and all its joy and sorrow; without which he had found life not worth living, though he had possessed every other gift and blessing in such abundance.

"Oh, Circe, poor Circe, dear Circe, divine enchantress that you were!"

he said to himself, in his excitable way. "A mere look from your eyes, a mere note of your heavenly voice, has turned a poor, miserable, callous brute back into a man again! and I will never forget it--never! And now that a still worse trouble than mine has befallen you, you shall always be first in my thoughts till the end!"

And Taffy felt pretty much the same, though he was not by way of talking to himself so eloquent about things as Little Billee.

As they lunched, they read the accounts of the previous evening's events in different papers, three or four of which (including the _Times_) had already got leaders about the famous but unhappy singer who had been so suddenly widowed and struck down in the midst of her glory. All these accounts were more or less correct. In one paper it was mentioned that Madame Svengali was under the roof and care of Mr. William Bagot, the painter, in Fitzroy Square.

The inquest on Svengali was to take place that afternoon, and also Gecko's examination at the Bow Street Police Court, for his a.s.sault.