Part 34 (1/2)
She walked slowly down to the front, her hands hanging at her sides in quite a simple fas.h.i.+on, and made a slight inclination of her head and body towards the imperial box, and then to right and left. Her lips and cheeks were rouged; her dark level eyebrows nearly met at the bridge of her short high nose. Through her parted lips you could see her large glistening white teeth; her gray eyes looked straight at Svengali.
Her face was thin, and had a rather haggard expression, in spite of its artificial freshness; but its contour was divine, and its character so tender, so humble, so touchingly simple and sweet, that one melted at the sight of her. No such magnificent or seductive apparition has ever been seen before or since on any stage or platform--not even Miss Ellen Terry as the priestess of Artemis in the late Laureate's play, ”The Cup.”
The house rose at her as she came down to the front; and she bowed again to right and left, and put her hand to her heart quite simply and with a most winning natural gesture, an adorable gaucherie--like a graceful and unconscious school-girl, quite innocent of stage deportment.
_It was Trilby!_
Trilby the tone-deaf, who couldn't sing one single note in tune! Trilby, who couldn't tell a C from an F!!
What was going to happen!
Our three friends were almost turned to stone in the immensity of their surprise.
Yet the big Taffy was trembling all over; the Laird's jaw had all but fallen on to his chest; Little Billee was staring, staring his eyes almost out of his head. There was something, to them, so strange and uncanny about it all; so oppressive, so anxious, so momentous!
The applause had at last subsided. Trilby stood with her hands behind her, one foot (the left one) on a little stool that had been left there on purpose, her lips parted, her eyes on Svengali's, ready to begin.
He gave his three beats, and the band struck a chord. Then, at another beat from him, but in her direction, she began, without the slightest appearance of effort, without any accompaniment whatever, he still beating time--conducting her, in fact, just as if she had been an orchestra herself:
”Au clair de la lune, Mon ami Pierrot!
Prete-moi ta plume Pour ecrire un mot.
Ma chandelle est morte ...
Je n'ai plus de feu!
Ouvre-moi ta porte Pour l'amour de Dieu!”
This was the absurd old nursery rhyme with which la Svengali chose to make her debut before the most critical audience in the world! She sang it three times over--the same verse. There is but one.
The first time she sang it without any expression whatever--not the slightest. Just the words and the tune; in the middle of her voice, and not loud at all; just as a child sings who is thinking of something else; or just as a young French mother sings who is darning socks by a cradle, and rocking her baby to sleep with her foot.
But her voice was so immense in its softness, richness, freshness, that it seemed to be pouring itself out from all round; its intonation absolutely, mathematically pure; one felt it to be not only faultless, but infallible; and the seduction, the novelty of it, the strangely sympathetic quality! How can one describe the quality of a peach or a nectarine to those who have only known apples?
Until la Svengali appeared, the world had only known apples--Catalanis, Jenny Linds, Grisis, Albonis, Pattis! The best apples that can be, for sure--but still only apples!
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE”]
If she had spread a pair of large white wings and gracefully fluttered up to the roof and perched upon the chandelier, she could not have produced a greater sensation. The like of that voice has never been heard, nor ever will be again. A woman archangel might sing like that, or some enchanted princess out of a fairy-tale.
Little Billee had already dropped his face into his hands and hid his eyes in his pocket-handkerchief; a big tear had fallen on to Taffy's left whisker; the Laird was trying hard to keep his tears back.
She sang the verse a second time, with but little added expression and no louder; but with a sort of breathy widening of her voice that made it like a broad heavenly smile of universal motherhood turned into sound.
One felt all the genial gayety and grace and impishness of Pierrot and Columbine idealized into frolicsome beauty and holy innocence, as though they were performing for the saints in Paradise--a baby Columbine, with a cherub for clown! The dream of it all came over you for a second or two--a revelation of some impossible golden age--priceless--never to be forgotten! How on earth did she do it?
Little Billee had lost all control over himself, and was shaking with his suppressed sobs--Little Billee, who hadn't shed a single tear for five long years! Half the people in the house were in tears, but tears of sheer delight, of delicate inner laughter.
Then she came back to earth, and saddened and veiled and darkened her voice as she sang the verse for the third time; and it was a great and sombre tragedy, too deep for any more tears; and somehow or other poor Columbine, forlorn and betrayed and dying, out in the cold at midnight--sinking down to h.e.l.l, perhaps--was making her last frantic appeal! It was no longer Pierrot and Columbine--it was Marguerite--it was Faust! It was the most terrible and pathetic of all possible human tragedies, but expressed with no dramatic or histrionic exaggeration of any sort; by mere tone, slight, subtle changes in the quality of the sound--too quick and elusive to be taken count of, but to be felt with, oh, what poignant sympathy!