Trilby | Page 8

dark red wall a three-quarter profile outline of
Trilby's left foot, which was perhaps the more perfect poem of the two.
Slight as it was, this little piece of impromptu etching, in its sense of
beauty, in its quick seizing of a peculiar individuality, its subtle
rendering of a strongly-received impression, was already v the work of
a master. It was Trilby's foot and nobody else's, nor could have been,
and nobody else but Little Billee could have drawn it in just that
inspired way.
'Qu'est-ce que c'est, "Ben Bolt"?' inquired Gecko.
Upon which Little Billee was made by Taffy to sit down to the piano
and sing it. He sang it very nicely with his pleasant little throaty

English baritone.
It was solely in order that Little Billee should have opportunities of
practising this graceful accomplishment of his, for his own and his
friends' delectation, that the piano had been sent over from London, at
great cost to Taffy and the Laird. It had belonged to Taffy's mother,
who was dead.
Before he had finished the second verse, Svengali exclaimed: 'Mais
c'est tout-a-fait chentil! Allons, Gecko, chouez-nous ca!' And he put his
big hands on the piano, over Little Billee's, pushed him off the
music-stool with his great gaunt body, and, sitting on it himself, he
played a masterly prelude. It was impressive to hear the complicated
richness and volume of the sounds he evoked after Little Billee's gentle
'tink-a-tink.'
And Gecko, cuddling lovingly his violin and closing his upturned eyes
played that simple melody as it had probably never been played
before--such passion, such pathos, such a tone!--and they turned it and
twisted it, and went from one key to another, playing into each other's
hands, Svengali taking the lead; and fugued and canoned and
counterpointed and battledored and shuttlecocked it, high and low, soft
and loud, in minor, in pizzicato, and in sordino--adagio, andante,
allegretto, scherzo--and exhausted all its possibilities of beauty; till
their susceptible audience of three was all but crazed with delight and
wonder; and the masterful Ben Bolt, and his over- tender Alice, and his
too submissive friend, and his old schoolmaster so kind and so true, and
his long-dead schoolmates, and the rustic porch and the mill, and the
slab of granite so gray.
'And the dear little nook
By the clear running brook,'
were all magnified into a strange, almost holy poetic dignity and
splendour quite undreamed of by whoever wrote the words and music
of that unsophisticated little song, which has touched so many simple
British hearts that don't know any better--and among them, once, that

of the present scribe--long, long ago!
'Sacrepleu! il choue pien, le Checko, hein?' said Svengali, when they
had brought this wonderful double improvisation to a climax and a
close. 'C'est mon elefe! che le fais chanter sur son fiolon, c'est comme
si c'etait moi qui chantais! ach! si ch'afais pour teux sous de voix, che
serais le bremier chanteur du monte! I cannot sing!' he continued. (I
will translate him into English, without attempting to translate his
accent, which is a mere matter of judiciously transposing p's and b's,
and t's and d's, and f's and v's, and g's and k's, and turning the soft
French j into sch, and a pretty language into an ugly one.)
'I cannot sing myself, I cannot play the violin, but I can teach-- hein,
Gecko? And I have a pupil--hein, Gecko?--la betite Hon-onne;' and
here he leered all round with a leer that was not engaging. 'The world
shall hear of la betite Honorine some day--hein, Gecko? Listen all--this
is how I teach la betite Honorine! Gecko, play me a little
accompaniment in pizzicato.'
And he pulled out of his pocket a kind of little flexible flageolet (of his
own invention, it seems), which he screwed together and put to his lips,
and on this humble instrument he played 'Ben Bolt,' while Gecko
accompanied him, using his fiddle as a guitar, his adoring eyes fixed in
reverence on his master.
And it would be impossible to render in any words the deftness, the
distinction, the grace, power, pathos, and passion with which this truly
phenomenal artist executed the poor old twopenny rone on his elastic
penny whistle--for it was little more--such thrilling, vibrating, piercing
tenderness, now loud and full, a shrill scream of anguish, now soft as a
whisper, a mere melodic breath, more human almost than the human
voice itself, a perfection unattainable even by Gecko, a master, on an
instrument which is the acknowledged king of all!
So that the tear, which had been so close to the brink of Little Billee's
eye while Gecko was playing, now rose and trembled under his eyelid
and spilled itself down his nose; and he had to dissemble and
surreptitiously mop