Part 24 (1/2)

And if he no longer found the simple country pleasures, the junketings and picnics, the garden-parties and innocent little musical evenings, quite so exciting as of old, he never showed it.

Indeed, there was much that he did not show, and that his mother and sister tried in vain to guess--many things.

And among them one thing that constantly preoccupied and distressed him--the numbness of his affections. He could be as easily demonstrative to his mother and sister as though nothing had ever happened to him--from the mere force of a sweet old habit--even more so, out of sheer grat.i.tude and compunction.

But, alas! he felt that in his heart he could no longer care for them in the least!--nor for Taffy, nor the Laird, nor for himself; not even for Trilby, of whom he constantly thought, but without emotion; and of whose strange disappearance he had been told, and the story had been confirmed in all its details by Angele Boisse, to whom he had written.

It was as though some part of his brain where his affections were seated had been paralyzed, while all the rest of it was as keen and as active as ever. He felt like some poor live bird or beast or reptile, a part of whose cerebrum (or cerebellum, or whatever it is) had been dug out by the vivisector for experimental purposes; and the strongest emotional feeling he seemed capable of was his anxiety and alarm about this curious symptom, and his concern as to whether he ought to mention it or not.

He did not do so, for fear of causing distress, hoping that it would pa.s.s away in time, and redoubled his caresses to his mother and sister, and clung to them more than ever; and became more considerate of others in manner, word, and deed than he had ever been before, as though by constantly a.s.suming the virtue he had no longer he would gradually coax it back again. There was no trouble he would not take to give pleasure to the humblest.

Also, his vanity about himself had become as nothing, and he missed it almost as much as his affection.

Yet he told himself over and over again that he was a great artist, and that he would spare no pains to make himself a greater. But that was no merit of his own.

2+2=4, also 22=4; that peculiarity was no reason why 4 should be conceited; for what was 4 but a result, either way?

Well, he was like 4--just an inevitable result of circ.u.mstances over which he had no control--a mere product or sum; and though he meant to make himself as big a 4 as he could (to cultivate his peculiar _fourness_), he could no longer feel the old conceit and self-complacency; and they had been a joy, and it was hard to do without them.

At the bottom of it all was a vague, disquieting unhappiness, a constant fidget.

And it seemed to him, and much to his distress, that such mild unhappiness would be the greatest he could ever feel henceforward--but that, such as it was, it would never leave him, and that his moral existence would be for evermore one long, gray, gloomy blank--the glimmer of twilight--never glad, confident morning again!

So much for Little Billee's convalescence.

Then one day in the late autumn he spread his wings and flew away to London, which was very ready with open arms to welcome William Bagot, the already famous painter, _alias_ Little Billee!

Part Fifth

LITTLE BILLEE

_An Interlude_

”Then the mortal coldness of the Soul like death itself comes down; It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own; That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears, And, though the eye may sparkle yet, 'tis where the ice appears.

”Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract the breast, Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hope of rest: 'Tis but as ivy leaves around a ruined turret wreathe, All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and gray beneath.”

When Taffy and the Laird went back to the studio in the Place St.

Anatole des Arts, and resumed their ordinary life there, it was with a sense of desolation and dull bereavement beyond anything they could have imagined; and this did not seem to lessen as the time wore on.

They realized for the first time how keen and penetrating and unintermittent had been the charm of those two central figures--Trilby and Little Billee--and how hard it was to live without them, after such intimacy as had been theirs.

”Oh, it _has_ been a jolly time, though it didn't last long!” So Trilby had written in her farewell letter to Taffy; and these words were true for Taffy and the Laird as well as for her.

And that is the worst of those dear people who have charm: they are so terrible to do without, when once you have got accustomed to them and all their ways.