He left three thousand pounds, every penny of which (and of far larger sums that he had spent) had been earned by "la Svengali," but nothing came to Trilby of this; nothing but the clothes and jewels he had given her, and in this respect he had been lavish enough; and there were countless costly gifts from emperors, kings, great people of all kinds. Trilby was under the impression that all these belonged to Marta. Marta behaved admirably; she seemed bound hand and foot to Trilby by a kind of slavish adoration, as that of a plain old mother for a brilliant and beautiful but dying child.
It soon became evident that, whatever her disease might be, Trilby had but a very short time to live.
She was soon too weak even to be taken out in a Bath-chair, and remained all day in her large sitting-room with Marta; and there, to her great and only joy, she received her three old friends every afternoon, and gave them coffee, and made them smoke cigarettes of caporal as of old; and their hearts were daily harrowed as they watched her rapid decline.
Day by day she grew more beautiful in their eyes, in spite of her increasing pallor and emaciation—her skin was so pure and white and delicate, and the bones of her face so admirable!
Her eyes recovered all their old humorous brightness when les trois Angliches were with her, and the expression of her face was so wistful and tender for all her playfulness, so full of eager clinging to existence and to them, that they felt the memory of it would haunt them forever, and be the sweetest and saddest memory of their lives.
Her quick, though feeble gestures, full of reminiscences of the vigorous and lively girl they had known a few years back, sent waves of pity through them and pure brotherly love; and the incomparable tones and changes and modulations of her voice, as she chatted and laughed, bewitched them almost as much as when she had sung the "Nussbaum" of Schumann in the Salle des Bashibazoucks.
Sometimes Lorrimer came, and Antony and the Greek. It was like a genial little court of bohemia. And Lorrimer, Antony, the Laird, and Little Billee made those beautiful chalk and pencil studies of her head which are now so well known—all so singularly like her, and so singularly unlike each other! Trilby vue à travers quatre tempéraments!
These afternoons were probably the happiest poor Trilby had ever spent in her life—with these dear people round her, speaking the language she loved; talking of old times and jolly Paris days, she never thought of the morrow.
But later—at night, in the small hours—she would wake up with a start from some dream full of tender and blissful recollection, and suddenly realize her own mischance, and feel the icy hand of that which was to come before many morrows were over; and taste the bitterness of death so keenly that she longed to scream out loud, and get up, and walk up and down, and wring her hands at the dreadful thought of parting forever!