"You mustn't try and find out where I am going; I know you won't if I beg you, nor any one else. It would make everything so much harder for me.

"Angele knows; she has promised me not to tell. I should like to have a line from you very much. If you send it to her she will send it on to me.

"Dear Taffy, next to Little Billee, I love you and the Laird better than any one else in the whole world. I've never known real happiness till I met you. You have changed me into another person--you and Sandy and Little Billee.

"Oh, it _has_ been a jolly time, though it didn't last long. It will have to do for me for life. So good-bye. I shall never, never forget; and remain, with dearest love,

"Your ever faithful and most affectionate friend,

"TRILBY O'FERRALL.

"P.S.--When it has all blown over and settled again, if it ever does, I shall come back to Paris, perhaps, and see you again some day."

The good Taffy pondered deeply over this letter--read it half a dozen times at least; and then he kissed it, and put it back into its envelope and locked it up.

He knew what very deep anguish underlay this somewhat trivial expression of her sorrow.

He guessed how Trilby, so childishly impulsive and demonstrative in the ordinary intercourse of friendship, would be more reticent than most women in such a case as this.

He wrote to her warmly, affectionately, at great length, and sent the letter as she had told him.

The Laird also wrote a long letter full of tenderly worded friendship and sincere regard. Both expressed their hope and belief that they would soon see her again, when the first bitterness of her grief would be over, and that the old pleasant relations would be renewed.

And then, feeling wretched, they went and silently lunched together at the Cafe de l'Odeon, where the omelets were good and the wine wasn't blue.

Late that evening they sat together in the studio, reading. They found they could not talk to each other very readily without Little Billee to listen--three's company sometimes and two's none!

Suddenly there was a tremendous getting up the dark stairs outside in a violent hurry, and Little Billee burst into the room like a small whirlwind--haggard, out of breath, almost speechless at first with excitement.

"Trilby? where is she?... what's become of her?... She's run away ...

oh! She's written me such a letter!... We were to have been married ...

at the Emba.s.sy ... my mother ... she's been meddling; and that cursed old a.s.s ... that beast ... my uncle!... They've been here! I know all about it.... Why didn't you stick up for her?..."

"I did ... as well as I could. Sandy couldn't stand it, and cut."

"_You_ stuck up for her ... _you_--why, you agreed with my mother that she oughtn't to marry me--you--you false friend--you.... Why, she's an angel--far too good for the likes of _me_ ... you know she is. As ... as for her social position and all that, what degrading rot! Her father was as much a gentleman as mine ... besides ... what the devil do I care for her father?... it's _her_ I want--_her_--_her_--_her_, I tell you.... I can't _live_ without her.... I must have her _back_--I must have her _back_ ... do you _hear_? We were to have lived together at Barbizon ...

all our lives--and I was to have painted stunning pictures ... like those other fellows there. Who cares for _their_ social position, I should like to know ... or that of their wives? _d.a.m.n_ social position!... we've often said so--over and over again. An artist's life should be _away_ from the world--above all that meanness and paltriness ... all in his work. Social position, indeed! Over and over again we've said what fetid, b.e.s.t.i.a.l rot it all was--a thing to make one sick and shut one's self away from the world.... Why say one thing and act another?... Love comes before all--love levels all--love and art ... and beauty--before such beauty as Trilby's rank doesn't exist. Such rank as mine, too! Good G.o.d! I'll never paint another stroke till I've got her back ... never, never, I tell you--I can't--I won't!..."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'TRILBY! WHERE IS SHE?'"]

And so the poor boy went on, tearing and raving about in his rampage, knocking over chairs and easels, stammering and shrieking, mad with excitement.

They tried to reason with him, to make him listen, to point out that it was not her social position alone that unfitted her to be his wife and the mother of his children, etc.

It was no good. He grew more and more uncontrollable, became almost unintelligible, he stammered so--a pitiable sight and pitiable to hear.

"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 underfoot.... Oh! oh! it makes me sick--it makes me sick!" And finally he gasped and screamed and fell down in a fit on the floor.

The doctor was sent for; Taffy went in a cab to the Hotel de Lille et d'Albion to fetch his mother; and poor Little Billee, quite unconscious, was undressed by Sandy and Madame Vinard and put into the Laird's bed.

The doctor came, and not long after Mrs. Bagot and her daughter. It was a serious case. Another doctor was called in. Beds were got and made up in the studio for the two grief-stricken ladies, and thus closed the eve of what was to have been poor Little Billee's wedding-day, it seems.

Little Billee's attack appears to have been a kind of epileptic seizure.

It ended in brain-fever and other complications--a long and tedious illness. It was many weeks before he was out of danger, and his convalescence was long and tedious too.

His nature seemed changed. He lay languid and listless--never even mentioned Trilby, except once to ask if she had come back, and if any one knew where she was, and if she had been written to.

She had not, it appears. Mrs. Bagot had thought it was better not, and Taffy and the Laird agreed with her that no good could come of writing.

Mrs. Bagot felt bitterly against the woman who had been the cause of all this trouble, and bitterly against herself for her injustice. It was an unhappy time for everybody.

There was more unhappiness still to come.

One day in February Madame Angele Boisse called on Taffy and the Laird in the temporary studio where they worked. She was in terrible tribulation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LA SUR DE LITREBILI]

Trilby's little brother had died of scarlet-fever and was buried, and Trilby had left her hiding-place the day after the funeral and had never come back, and this was a week ago. She and Jeannot had been living at a village called Vibraye, in la Sarthe, lodging with some poor people she knew--she washing and working with her needle till her brother fell ill.

She had never left his bedside for a moment, night or day, and when he died her grief was so terrible that people thought she would go out of her mind; and the day after he was buried she was not to be found anywhere--she had disappeared, taking nothing with her, not even her clothes--simply vanished and left no sign, no message of any kind.

All the ponds had been searched--all the wells, and the small stream that flows through Vibraye--and the old forest.

Taffy went to Vibraye, cross-examined everybody he could, communicated with the Paris police, but with no result, and every afternoon, with a beating heart, he went to the Morgue....

The news was of course kept from Little Billee. There was no difficulty about this. He never asked a question, hardly ever spoke.

When he first got up and was carried into the studio he asked for his picture "The Pitcher Goes to the Well," and looked at it for a while, and then shrugged his shoulders and laughed--a miserable sort of laugh, painful to hear--the laugh of a cold old man, who laughs so as not to cry! Then he looked at his mother and sister, and saw the sad havoc that grief and anxiety had wrought in them.

It seemed to him, as in a bad dream, that he had been mad for many years--a cause of endless sickening terror and distress; and that his poor weak wandering wits had come back at last, bringing in their train cruel remorse, and the remembrance of all the patient love and kindness that had been lavished on him for many years! His sweet sister--his dear, long-suffering mother! what had really happened to make them look like this?

And taking them both in his feeble arms, he fell a-weeping, quite desperately and for a long time.

And when his weeping-fit was over, when he had quite wept himself out, he fell asleep.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE FELL A-WEEPING, QUITE DESPERATELY"]

And when he awoke he was conscious that another sad thing had happened to him, and that for some mysterious cause his power of loving had not come back with his wandering wits--had been left behind--and it seemed to him that it was gone for ever and ever--would never come back again--not even his love for his mother and sister, not even his love for Trilby--where all _that_ had once been was a void, a gap, a blankness....

Truly, if Trilby had suffered much, she had also been the innocent cause of terrible suffering. Poor Mrs. Bagot, in her heart, could not forgive her.

I feel this is getting to be quite a sad story, and that it is high time to cut this part of it short.

As the warmer weather came, and Little Billee got stronger, the studio became more pleasant. The ladies' beds were removed to another studio on the next landing, which was vacant, and the friends came to see Little Billee, and make it more lively for him and his sister.