Little Billee went down, heart crushed, into brain fever, But what did that matter? Respectability was vindi- "A SHAME, A HIDEOUS SHAME." One word more and I leave this painful subject. Few passages in the book are finer, or have a truer ring, than that in which Little Billee blazes out at his friends, who, after the manner of men, had hinted that Trilby's past was not exactly that which was to be desired in a bride. Then Little Billee broke out in righteous wrath: "Oh! oh! good heavens! are you so precious immaculate, you two, that you should throw stones at poor Trilby? What a shame, what a hideous shame it is, that there should be one law for the woman and another for the man! . . . Poor weak women; poor, soft, affectionate things that beasts of men are always running after, and pestering, and ruining, and trampling under foot . . . Oh! oh! it makes me sick!" And finally he gasped and screamed, and fell down in a fit on the floor. These were his last words for months, save his muttered raving in the delirium of the fever, from which he emerged with a heart that had lost all power to love. III. THE STORY OF "TRILBY." The story of "Trilby " is very simple. Three English artists, occupying one studio in the Latin Quarter of Paris, make the acquaintance of Trilby, an artist's model, who meets at their studio a Polish Jew, named Svengali, and his companion Gecko. Svengali was a musician of diabolical genius, an artist of the uncanny and unapproachable perfection of Paganini, and a mesmerist to boot. Of the three Englishmen, two fall in love with Trilby, while Svengali and Ge ko are equally devoted to the fair creature, who possessed many charms, but whose supreme excellence was her foot. THE TRILBY FOOT. Of this foot Du Maurier writes much and always enthusiastically. Trilby's feet, we are told, were astonishingly beautiful, such as one only sees in pictures and statues, a true inspiration of shape and colour, all made up of delicate lines and subtle modulated curves and noble straightnesses, and happy little dainty arrangements in innocent young pink and white. Of the three Englishmen Trilby herself falls in love with Little Billee, a charming character, full of simplicity, innocence and genius. Taffy, the Laird of Cockpen, Little Billee's friend and companion, falls in love with her, aud proposes, only to be rejected. Trilby accepts Little Billee, only to give him up at his mother's wish, as I have just described. LITTLE BILLEE. Little Billee, finding his charmer gone, took brain fever, and for a long time lay between life and death. When he was nursed back to life the spring of his soul seemed to have been broken. He lost the faculty of loving; some clot of blood seemed to have formed on his brain, and life had lost its zest, youth its joy, and the dull dead 371 feeling of apathy and of utter inability to love even those nearest and dearest to him took possession of him. This did not, however, interfere with his professional success. He returned to England, rapidly achieved a great reputation, and became one of the lions of the artistic world. But success in his profession did not restore the bloom to his life or the glow to the cold, pale, dull grey sky which formed his horizon. SVENGALI. So the years passed by. nothing was heard of Trilby. Before the sudden destrucMeanwhile, all this time tion of all Little Billee's hopes Svengali was constantly meeting Trilby at the studio of the three Englishmen. On one occasion he had relieved her of a violent neuralgic pain in her eyes by making mesmeric passes over her. The ease with which she yielded to his treatment showed that she was an admirable subject for the hypnotist. Svengali invited her to her eyes troubled her again, and he would always come to him whenever cure her. She did not like him, but he fascinated her with a kind of horrible charm. On one occasion he declared, "When your pain arrives then you shall come once more to Svengali and he shall take it away from you and you shall hear nothing, see nothing. and think of nothing but Svengali, Svengali, Svengali.' Her English friends warned her against the uncanny musician, but both her fear and her repulsion grew together. The words Svengali, Svengali, Svengali, kept ringing in her head until it became an unendurable burden almost as hard to bear as the pain in her eyes. The Laird told her that Svengali had mesmerised her, "that's what it is-mesmerism. their power and then make you do anything they They get you into just too terrible to think of." please-lie, steal, murder, anything, and kill yourself into the bargain when they get done with you. It is. IN THE TOILS OF THE MAGICIAN. After Trilby left Paris, promising her lover's mother that she would never see him again, she went to Vibrais, where her poor little brother died. She went mad with grief and with the pain in her eyes. She wanted to kill herself. She dressed herself up as a workman in cap, blouse and trousers, and went back to Paris, walking about all night until daylight. She tried to commit pain and put her to sleep. suicide, but had not the pluck to jump into the Seine. Finally she went to Svengali. He at once removed her two nights. Then he told her how fond he was of her. She slept for two days and how he would always cure her, and take care of her and marry her if she would go with him. She refused to marry him because she was faithful to the memory of Little Billee, but she consented to allow him to teach her how to sing. Poor Trilby had a voice as remarkable as her feet, but she had no idea of tune. Hence, when she tried to sing she was ridiculed mercilessly. Svengali, however, had observed the marvellous quality of her voice, and it occurred to him that, if he could mesmerise her, it would be possible to give her the suggestion of tune which she lacked, and so enable her to combine her marvellous voice with his own not less marvellous genius for music. CREATING A SONGSTRESS. Aided by Gecko, who was devoted to Trilby, the plan worked successfully. Gecko, after Trilby's death, told Little Billee's sister and her husband, Taffy the Laird, the whole story of how the enterprise was carried out. For three years Svengali and Gecko taught Trilby morn ing, noon and night for six or eight hours a day. "We took her voice note by note, Svengali with his little flexible flageolet, and I with my violin. That is how we taught her to make the sounds, and then how to use them. She could keep on one note and make it go through all the colours of the rainbow, according to the way Svengali looked at her." When Trilby was under mesmeric influence she could sing divinely, and her fame spread throughout Europe. It was as La Svengali while she was singing in Paris, that Little Billee and his friends were astonished to discover the lost Trilby in the person of Madame Svengali. When Svengali and Trilby drove by in their carriage she cut them dead, and shortly afterwards Little Billee, meeting Svengali in the courtyard of his hotel, was startled by Svengali spitting at him in the face. A fight immediately followed, which was terminated by Taffy the Laird seizing Svengali by the nose, twisting it violently, and then slapping his cheeks in a way which almost shattered the musician's nervous system for ever. Under the magic influence of Trilby's voice, wedded to the demoniac genius of Svengali, Little Billee's faculty of loving came back, and with it torment, for he believed that Trilby was the wife of Svengali. THE BREAKING OF THE SPELL. After a time Trilby was announced to appear in London. Everything went well until a few days before the concert, when Svengali, becoming impatient at a rehearsal, struck Trilby, a brutality which so enraged Gecko that he stabbed his master in the neck. The wound was not dangerous, but Svengali was unable to take his proper place when Trilby had to sing at the opera. He occupied a box, from which he hoped to be able to exercise his hypnotic influence, but the excitement, the wound, and the shock of meeting Little Billee and the Laird was too much for him, and he died suddenly of heart disease. His death broke the spell, and when Trilby was brought upon the stage she had no knowledge of what she was expected to do. When she was told to sing she did her best to sing her old song in her old way. In a moment the house dissolved in catcalls, shricks and hisses. This was not the Svengali whose marvellous singing had thrilled Europe. In the midst of all the hubbub she suddenly exclaimed, "Why, you are all English, ain't you? What is all the row about? Why have you brought me here? What have I done, I should like to know?" It was the voice of a being from another world. The tumult was stilled for a moment, then a voice from the gallery shouted, "Why don't you sing as you ought to sing? You have voice enough anyhow. Why don't you sing in tune?" "Sing in tune! I don't want to sing at all. I only sang because I was asked to sing. I won't sing another note." All this time the dead Svengali was sitting in his box with a grin of hate upon his pale and livid features. Amid indescribable tumult Trilby left the stage, the death of Svengali was announced, and the audience dispersed. Little Billee and his friends took Trilby home. They found that she had absolutely no memory of the life she had passed with Svengali. She knew nothing of her triumphs as a songstress, nothing whatever of the extraordinary enthusiasm which her singing had occasioned. Only on one occasion when she was staying in Prague and Svengali had fainted did she remember being puzzled at the extraordinary enthusiasm and the lavish generosity with which gifts were showered upon her. Beyond that she remembered nothing. All that she knew was that she used to be put to sleep by Svengali, and when she woke up she would be very . tired and would sleep for hours. All her singing was done during the time she was in the mesmeric sleep. Of course she remembered nothing. THE SECRET OF THE TWO TRILBYS. Long afterwards Gecko told the story. He said: I will tell you a secret. There were two Trilbys. There was the Trilby you knew, who could not sing one single note in tune. She was an angel of paradise. She is now; but she had no more idea of singing than I have of winning a steeplechase at the Croix de Berny. She could no more sing than a fiddle can play itself! She could never tell one tune from another-one note from the next. Do you remember how she tried to sing "Ben Bolt" that day when she first came to the studio in the Place St. Anatole des Arts? It was droll, hein? à se boucher les oreilles! Well, that was Trilby-your Trilby! That was my Trilby too and I loved her as one loves an only love, an only sister, an only child-a gentle martyr on earth, a blessed saint in heaven! And that Trilby was enough for me! And that was the Trilby that loved your brother, Madame -oh! but with all the love that was in her! He did not know what he had lost, your brother! Her love, it was, immense, like her voice, and just as full of celestial sweetness and sympathy! She told me everything! ce pauvre Litrebili ce qu'il a perdu ! But all at once-pr-r-r-out! presto! augenblick! with one wave of his hand over her-with one look of his eye--with a word-Svengali could turn her into the other Trilby, his Trilby-and make her do whatever he liked. . . you might have run a red-hot needle into her and she would not have felt it He had but to say "Dors!" and she suddenly became an . unconscious Trilby of marble, who could produce wonderful sounds-just the sounds he wanted, and nothing else—and think his thoughts and wish his wishes--and love him at his bidding with a strange, unreal, factitious love... just his own love for himself turned inside out à l'envers-and reflected back on him, as from a mirror... un écho, un simulacre, quoi! pas autre chose! ... It was not worth having! I was not even jealous. was -an Well, that was the Trilby he taught to sing-and-and I helped him, God of Heaven forgive me! That Trilby a singing machine organ to play upon -an instrument of music-a Stradivarius—a flexible flageolet of flesh and blood-a voice and nothing more-just the unconscious voice that Svengali sang with-for it takes two to sing like La Svengali, monsieur-the one who has got the voice, and the one who knows what to do with it . . So that when you heard her sing the "Nussbaum," the Impromptu," you heard Svengali singing with her voice, just as you hear Joachim play a chaconne of Bach with his fiddle! Herr Joachim's fiddle... what does it know of Sebastian Bach? And as for chaconnes... il s'en moque pas mal, ce fameux violon! And our Trilby... what did she know of Schumann, Chopin? Nothing at all! She mocked herself not badly of “Nussbaum" and Impromptus."... They would make her yawn to demantibulate her jaws!. When Svengali's Trilby was being taught to sing... when Svengali's Trilby was singing-or seemed to you as if she were singing- -our Trilby had ceased to exist... our Trilby was fast asleep... in fact, our Trilby was dead. Ah, monsieur. . . that Trilby of Svengali's I have heard her sing to Kings and Queens in royal palaces!. as no woman has ever sung before or since. I have seen emperors and grand-dukes kiss her hand, monsieur, and their wives and daughters kiss her lips, and weep. I have seen the horses taken out of her sledge and the pink of the nobility drag her home to the hotel... with torchlights, and choruses, and shoutings of glory and long life to her!... and serenades all night, under her window!... she never knew! she heard nothing-felt nothing-saw nothing! and she bowed to them, right and left, like a queen! I have played the fiddle for her while she sang in the streets, at fairs and festas and Kermessen... and seen the people go mad to hear her . . . and once, at Prague, O Dieu de Misère, ayez pitié de nous . . . It soon became evident that Trilby had been worn out TRILBY'S CREED. Then came the effort to prepare Trilby for death. Little Billee's mother was a good pious Christian of the Evangelical persuasion, and she wished Trilby to receive a visit from Little Billee's clergyman uncle. pages Mr. Du Maurier expresses his views as to the fate of mortals in the next world, which has, perhaps, something In these last to do with the anathemas which have been freely pronounced on his book. Trilby was absolutely free from all fear of death. much of death; it is all in the day's work, and we are all "Poor people," she said, in the same boat." Mrs. Bagot, Little Billee's mother, "don't think talked to her of the wrath of God if she died unrepentant. "Oh, but," said Trilby, "I have been repentant all my life; besides there will be no wrath for any of us, not even the worst. There will be a general amnesty. Papa told me so, and he had been a clergyman like Mr. Thomas Bagot. I often think of God. I am very fond of God." "Did you ever pray, Trilby ?" asked her mentor. "Well, no," she replied, "not often in words or on my knees with my hands together, don't you know. Thinking is praying very often-don't you think so?—and being sorry and ashamed when one has done a mean thing and glad when one has resisted a temptation, and grateful when it is a fine day and one is enjoying oneself without hurting any one else. try and bear up after you lost all you cared to live for, and What is it but praying when you very good praying too. There can be prayer without words, just as songs, and Svengali used to say that songs without words are the best." For her misdeeds in her youth Trilby maintained that she had been pretty well punished, "richly as I have deserved to be." She admitted that she had never been confirmed, and when she was asked about the atonement, the incarnation and the resurrection, she said she used to know about those things, as her mamma had been very particular about her learning the catechism on Sundays. "It all seemed very complicated, but papa told me not to bother too much about it, but to be good. He said God would make it all right to us somehow in the 373 end, all of us. He told me to be good, and not to mind what priests and clergymen told us. very good, there is not much doubt about that, I am afraid, but God knows I have repented often enough, I have not been and am sorry enough. I am rather glad to die, I think, and not a bit afraid-not a scrap. I believe in poor papa. There will be no hell for any of us-he told us so, excepting that we make for ourselves and each other down here, and that is bad enough for anything. He told me always to think of other people before myself, never to tell lies, and be afraid and keep away from drink, and I should be all right. wrong all the same, and I have known it and was But I have sometimes been all miserable at the time and after, and I am sure to be forgiven, perfectly certain, and so will everybody else, even the wickedest that ever lived. Why, just give them sense enough in the next world to understand all their wickedness in this, and that will punish them enough, I think. That is simple enough. Not all the clergymen in the world, not even the Pope of Rome, could make me doubt papa or believe in any punishment after that we have to go through here. That would be too stupid." HER SWAN SONG AT DEATH. So it came to pass that Trilby was allowed to die in her father's faith, but not before one last marvellous She was nearing the end; her four friends were with her when a portrait of Svengali was brought in; where it came from no one knew. But no sooner was it scene. set up than the sight of the familiar features exercised the full force of the old hypnotic suggestion. The Trilby who had been talking a short time before went out, and the mesmerised Trilby for the last time obeyed the irresistible impulse of the hypnotist. Suddenly she began to sing Chopin's impromptu in A flat. it just as she had sung it before, but it sounded still more ineffably seductive. She sang were not only listening to a most divinely beautiful, but The four watchers by that couch to the most astonishing feat of musical utterance ever heard out of the human throat. When it was over she murmured a few words in French, and then said, "My friends, I am fatigued; good night." Her head fell back on the pillow and she fell fast asleep. Billee knelt down, took her hand in his, and said, "Trilby, Trilby." He put his ear to her mouth to hear her Then Little breathe. Soon she folded her hands across her breast and uttered a short little sigh, and in a weak voice said, Svengali, Svengali, Svengali." remained silent, terror-stricken. Then the doctor entered For some minutes they and found her dead. 66 That was the end of Trilby. When Trilby was buried, IV. THE MORAL OF "TRILBY." appeals directly to the hearts of men and women. It is the latest and most popular sermon preached on the great saying of Jesus of Nazareth, "Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more." Trilby is not exactly a Mary Magdalene. But she has probably made thousands realise something of the significance of St. Mary Magdalene in the Catholic Church. Imagine Trilby mesmerised, not by a devil like Svengali, but by Little Billee himself, in order that under the magic influence of hypnotic suggestions he might develop all the latent potentialities of her womanhood, and you would have something still nearer the metamorphosis with which the cult of the Magdalene has familiarised Christendom for nineteen centuries. Trilby's life, her character, her fate, plead more eloquently than words for a little more tolerance, a little more charity, a little less draconic severity in stoning the woman whose frailty or whose eccentricity offends our sense of propriety or of virtue. Of the character of Little Billee I need say nothing, excepting that it is possibly the nearest counterpart in a man to Dickens's pathetic creation of Little Nell. The whole of the story of the Bohemian life of Little Billee and his two good friends is an admirable piece of portraiture-idealised perhaps, but still true enough to be valuable as a study from life. The other element in the book, which illustrates and emphasises one of the possibilities of hypnotism, has been handled very deftly. If Mr. Du Maurier's purpose had been to create a shudder, he might, without going beyond the authentic records of hypnotic experiment, have obtained much more gruesome examples of the new witchcraft than the comparatively innocent practices of Svengali. It is difficult to believe that if Svengali had such absolute power of suggestion over Trilby as to keep her in the hypnotic trance for so many hours every day for years, that he could not have used the same power to compel her to marry him. That, however, is only a passing criticism. On the whole, Trilby is a tale with a message-a message that has been recognised and acclaimed enthusiastically in the United States. It will be very interesting to see the reception which it will now be accorded in the United Kingdom. יס OUR MONTHLY PARCEL OF BOOKS. EAR MR. SMURTHWAYT,-A parcel which includes new volumes of fiction by Dr. Conan Doyle, Mr. Stanley Weyman, and Mr. H. G. Wells, reminiscences by Mr. Archibald Forbes, narratives of the adventures of the Chitral relieving force, and of two decades spent in Khama's country, and half-a-dozen really important new editions, cannot be cavilled at on the score of quality. As can be seen from the following list of what has been selling best during September, readers, now that the holiday season is over, are not confining themselves so exclusively to the lighter forms of literature, and, as a consequence, publishers are bringing up their heavy artillery, and the collection I send does not lack healthy variety: The Woman Who Wouldn't. By Lucas Cleeve. 3s. 6d.. The Chitral Campaign: Narratives of Events in Chitral, Swat, and Bajour. By H. C. Thomson. 148. net. Minor Dialogues. By W. Pett Ridge. 3s. 6d. Fred C. Roberts of Tientsin; or, For Christ and China. By Mrs. Bryson. 3s. 6d. Cartoons of the Campaign. By F. Carruthers Gould. 1s. From the Memoirs of a Minister of France. By Stanley Weyman. 6s. It is a testimony to the success "The Woman Who Did" has had that "The Woman Who Wouldn't (Simpkin, 3s. 6d.) heads the list, for it is written with the direct object of controverting Mr. Allen's novel. But although it has not the particular faults which made Miss Cross's "The Woman Who Didn't" so unwelcome, it isn't good enough for me to send you. And, after all, you agree with me, Mr. Allen's story is its own best antidote. Among the books of travel and adventure you will find none more thoroughly up to date than Mr. H. C. Thomson's "The Chitral Campaign" (Heinemann, 14s. net.), which contains no fewer than fifty-nine illustrations, reproduced from photographs, together with ns and plans. Mr. Thomson went with the relieving as a press correspondent, and his narrative of one of the most successful little wars in which we have been engaged is exceedingly interesting. On the vexed question of the retention of Chitral he is very careful to avoid saying anything that would prejudice his story. But no one can read carefully what he does say without recognising that in his eyes the occupation of Chitral is by no means the end, but rather the beginning, of a series of other wars. Some of Mr. Pett Ridge's "Minor Dialogues" (Arrowsmith, 3s. 6d.) I think it likely you will have read as they appeared in the Pall Mall Budget, the New Budget, and elsewhere. Mr. Ridge, although his humour is rather less subtle, his aims somewhat less high, emulates Mr. Anstey's "Voces Populi" with considerable success. He seems to know the vulgar side of London life absolutely down to the ground, and some of his cockney scenes are quite cruel in their uncompromising fidelity to nature. He knows, too, how to treat conversation, to concentrate its points and yet to convey an impression of reality. It is an amusing book. The next volume on the list, Mrs. Bryson's “Fred C. Roberts of Tientsin; or, For Christ and China" (Allenson, 3s. 6d.) is of a very different kind, but it has a very actual interest at the present moment. The Rev. F. B. Meyer, B.A., contributes a preface. The cream of "Cartoons of the Campaign" (Westminster Gazette Office, 1s.), Mr. F. C. Gould's inimitable contributions to political caricature during the recent crisis, you have already seen in the REVIEW, and, no doubt, in the Westminster Gazette itself. It is too late in the day to praise Mr. Gould: he is simply unique. The Conservatives have no artist to touch him in his own line. By the way, the edition I send you, bound in buckram, is the édition de luxe, and is signed by Mr. Gould himself; the ordinary issue, bound in paper covers, costs only a shilling. It was Mr. Chamberlain, I believe, himself the subject of a great number of the most pungent drawings, who first suggested their republication in collected form. It was a happy idea. OUR MONTHLY PARCEL OF BOOKS. Since Mr. Stanley Weyman's "A Gentleman of France" followed so hard upon Dr. Conan Doyle's "The Refugees," it was inevitable that the two writers should rank as rivals in the public mind. Both books sent one back to Dumas; both had for background the history of France. One was reminded of this comparison by the appearance almost simultaneously of a new volume from each writer; but they are volumes luckily that cannot be compared. "From the Memoirs of a Minister of France" (Cassell, 6s.) shows Mr. Weyman still faithful to the scenes and period which helped to make his previous book so successful. Didn't he tell some interviewer that living in England he found it impossible to realise the romance of its history? That is as it may be, but certainly it is difficult to imagine a field which would afford Mr. Weyman's talent better material than he has worked up and invented from suggestions given by old French chronicles and the memoirs of the Duc de Sully, the "Minister" of his title. Critics said of "A Gentleman of France" that its string of adventures were too little connected. The adventures in his new book Mr. Weyman presents in a series of short stories, which hang together naturally enough, however, from the fact that Rosny is the hero of each (as Sherlock Holmes and the Brigadier Gerard are the heroes of collections of tales made on very much the same p'an by Dr. Doyle), and that the same characters, including the King, appear again and again. They are admirable stories, displaying an almost Dumasesque fertility of invention, full of humour and legitimate sensation. You will escape noticing the inevitable monotony of subject 375 ticularly interesting, but there is a certain Dr. Cullingworth who plays a considerable part who is a really fine piece of character drawing. A magnificent quack, his doings are diverting in the extreme, and of themselves make the book readable. Here and there his creator introduces a touch too extravagant. As in his description of Cullingworth, after his day's work at healing the sick, parading "slowly through the principal streets with his canvas bag, full of money, outstretched at the full length of his arm." The bag contained the takings of the day, 66 and on his either side walked his wife and Dr. Munro, his colleague, the whole proceeding being in order to impress the town. But he is certainly Ian original" of the first water. You will skip a great deal of these letters, I expect for after all we have had over and over again in fiction a detailed description of the first troubles of a young and penniless doctor endeavouring without influence to make his way in his profession and build up a practice. It is the kind of reading you can recommend your family physician the next time you are unlucky enough to require him in house: perhaps it will your remind him of his own young days. And here, after Mr. Weyman and Dr. Doyle, I must draw your attention to "The Wonderful Visit" (Dent, 5s. net), the new book, successor to "The Time Machine," which Mr. H. G. Wells has just published. But it has little of the peculiar power of its predecessor. A huge strange bird has been seen by the natives of a country parish, and the rector, a zealous ornithologist, sallies forth and shoots it. It turns out to be an angel-an angel of our dreamland, of the an angel from Heaven. Luckily the shot only breaks Fourth Dimension, not his wing, and he recovers, to make, not unnaturally, a tremendous sensation in the village. called in to tend the injured wing declares him one of Nordau's mattoids, and remarks with mild curiosity The doctor, on the "reduplication" of the arms and the strange feathery effect. Mr. Wells has treated his idea much as Mr. Anstey might have treated it. ject of farce. creature, with his wings concealed under his ill-fitting Nobody will believe that the strange It is a subclerical coat, borrowed from his captor and benefactor. is other than a hump-backed adventurer: and MR. H. G. WELLS. (From a photograph by Elliott and Fry.) if you refrain from reading more than one story at a time. Dr. Doyle's new book, (Longmans, 6s), is not exactly a success, I fear, although "The Stark Munro Letters it is worth reading. So much of the volume is "in the air," vague theorising about religion and the facts of life that is so common in type that it does not help the reader much in realising the character of Dr. Stark Munro, the unfledged physician whose sixteen letters to a friend Dr. Doyle pretends to have edited. By the way, I should hardly have expected so old a hand at novelwriting as Dr. Doyle to return to the antiquated epistolary form. The hero is of a kind too common to be par |