Trifler

“ Many a time in my life I have had to do with trifles. When that English gentleman, my father left us, and poor mama broke her heart, a trifle perhaps to him,—and little sister and I lived on a few handfuls of rice a day, given by the poor out of their scanty store, it was a mere trifle, and when the good old faqir gave us a few handfuls of parched grain, it was only a trifle, but life to us, and when Mr. Percy found us in the serai, only a trifle, but what would I have been if that trifling incident had never occurred? ”

“ Du Maurier's 'Trilby' is curiously prefigured, in part at least, in Nodier's; and yet there is not the smallest thing that the most jealous critic could call a plagiarism; it is a legitimate parentage. As you go on with Nodier's story, you love his Trilby more and more, as you do du Maurier's, until you think that there was never so bewitching a fairy; and your love for Trilby is interwoven with your love for Jeannie, his mortal sweetheart, just as your love for du Manner's Trilby is forever mixed up with your tender sentiment for Little Billee. ”

“ She was about as tall as Miss Ellen Terry—and that is a charming height, I think.
"ALL AS IT USED TO BE"
One day Taffy remarked to the Laird: "Hang it! I'm blest if Trilby isn't the handsomest woman I know! She looks like a grande dame masquerading as a grisette—almost like a joyful saint at times. She's lovely! By Jove! I couldn't stand her hugging me as she does you! There'd be a tragedy—say the slaughter of Little Billee."
"Ah! Taffy, my boy," rejoined the Laird, "when those long sisterly arms are round my neck it isn't me she's hugging." ”

“ And the happiest day of all was when Trois Angliches took Trilby and Jeannot (for so the mite was called) to spend the Sunday in the woods at Meudon, and breakfast and dine at the garde champêtre's. Swings, peep-shows, donkey-rides; shooting at a mark with cross-bows and little pellets of clay, and smashing little plaster figures and winning macaroons; losing one's self in the beautiful forest; catching newts and tadpoles and young frogs; making music on mirlitons. Trilby singing "Ben Bolt" into a mirliton was a thing to be remembered, whether one would or no! ”

“ Little Billee stayed with his mother and sister in Devonshire till Christmas, Taffy staying at the village inn.
It was Taffy who told Mrs. Bagot about la Svengali's all but certain identity with Trilby, after Little Billee had gone to bed, tired and worn out, the night of their arrival.
"Good heavens!" said poor Mrs. Bagot. "Why, that's the new singing woman who's coming over here! There's an article about her in to-day's Times. It says she's a wonder, and that there's no one like her! Surely that can't be the Miss O'Ferrall I saw in Paris!" ”

“ Don't you like knowing Lord Peter and Lady Tanagra, Mr. Elton and all the rest of them?"
"It's not because they're in Society," began Mr. Triggs.
"Oh, yes it is! You imagine that you are now a very great personage. Soon you will be moving from Streatham into Park Lane, and then you will not know me."
"Oh, me dear!" said Mr. Triggs in distress.
"It's no good denying it," continued Patricia. "Look at the way you made friends with Lord Peter." Patricia was priding herself on the way which she had led the conversation round to Bowen; but Mr. Triggs was not to be drawn. ”

“ 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.
And when, besides being charming, they are simple, clever, affectionate, constant, and sincere, like Trilby and Little Billee! Then the lamentable hole their disappearance makes is not to be filled up! And when they are full of genius, like Little Billee—and like Trilby, funny without being vulgar! ”

“ The doctor blows through your nose into your Eustachian tube with a little India-rubber machine; some obstacle gives way, there is a snap in your head, and straightway you hear better than you had ever heard in all your life, almost too well; and all your life is once more changed for you!
At length he sat up again, in the middle of la Svengali's singing of the "Nussbaum," and saw her; and saw the Laird sitting by him, and Taffy, their eyes riveted on Trilby, and knew for certain that it was no dream this time, and his joy was almost a pain! ”

“ Had he been in love with Trilby, too? Had he ever been in love with any one?
He couldn't say. But he thought of Trilby's sweetness and unselfishness, her gayety, her innocent kissings and caressings, her drollery and frolicsome grace, her way of filling whatever place she was in with her presence, the charming sight and the genial sound of her; and felt that no girl, no woman, no lady he had ever seen yet was a match for this poor waif and stray, this long-legged, cancan-dancing, quartier-latin grisette, blanchisseuse de fin, "and Heaven knows what besides!" ”

“ Little Billee seldom spoke of Trilby, or Trilby of him. Work went on every morning at the studio in the Place St. Anatole des Arts, and pictures were begun and finished—little pictures that didn't take long to paint—the Laird's Spanish bull-fighting scenes, in which the bull never appeared, and which he sent to his native Dundee and sold there; Taffy's tragic little dramas of life in the slums of Paris—starvings, drownings—suicides by charcoal and poison—which he sent everywhere, but did not sell. ”

“ I know all about that; still, facts are facts, and the world is the world, and we've got to live in it," said Mr. Bagot, whose satirical smile had died away under the gleam of Taffy's choleric blue eye.
Then said the good Taffy, frowning down on the parson (who looked mean and foolish, as people can sometimes do even with right on their side) : "And now, Mr. Bagot—I can't tell you how very keenly I have suffered during this—a—this most painful interview—on account of my very deep regard for Trilby O'Ferrall. ”

“ Loud and shrill and sweet beyond compare—drowning the orchestra; of a piercing quality quite ineffable; a joy there is no telling; a clear, purling, crystal stream that gurgles and foams and bubbles along over sunlit stones; "a wonder, a world's delight!"
And there is not a sign of effort, of difficulty overcome. All through, Trilby smiles her broad, angelic smile; her lips well parted, her big white teeth glistening as she gently jerks her head from side to side in time to Svengali's bâton, as if to shake the willing notes out quicker and higher and shriller.... ”

“ It was Trilby, Trilby, Trilby! a poor fallen sinner and waif all but lost amid the scum of the most corrupt city on earth. Trilby weak and mortal like himself, and in woful want of pardon! and in her gray dovelike eyes he saw the shining of so great a love that he was abashed; for well he knew that all that love was his, and would be his forever, come what would or could. ”

“ I swear—honor bright! Now there! Good-bye—good-bye; back on Sunday—good-bye!" And he was off.
"Now, what the devil does all that mean?" asked Taffy, much perturbed.
"I suppose he's shocked at seeing Trilby in that guise, or disguise, or unguise, sitting at Carrel's—he's such an odd little chap. And I must say, I'm surprised at Trilby. It's a bad thing for her when we're away. What could have induced her? She never sat in a studio of that kind before. I thought she only sat to Durien and old Carrel." ”

“ I will be Donal Grant, whether the coffee be cold or hot. A bit of practical philosophy for you, Davie!”
“I think I understand you, sir: you would not have a man make a fuss about a trifle.”
“Not about a real trifle. The co-relative of a trifle, Davie, is a smile. But I would take heed whether the thing that is called a trifle be really a trifle. Besides, there may be a point in a trifle that is the egg of an ought. It is a trifle whether this or that is nice; it is a point that I should not care. ”

“ Yet can I not beleeved bee.”—Old Ballad.
“Do you take trifle?” said Lady Olivia to my poor friend Halloran.
“No, Ma’am, I am reading philosophy,” said Halloran; waking from a fit of abstraction, with about as much consciousness and perception as exists in a petrified oyster, or an alderman dying of a surfeit. Halloran is a fool.
A trifle is the one good thing, the sole and surpassing enjoyment. ”

“ For in his love of outward form he could not understand that any woman who had eyes to see should ever quite condone the signs of physical weakness in man, in favor of any mental gifts or graces whatsoever.
Little Greek that he was, he worshipped the athlete, and opined that all women without exception—all English women especially—must see with the same eyes as himself.
He had once been vain and weak enough to believe in Trilby's love (with a Taffy standing by—a careless, unsusceptible Taffy, who was like unto the gods of Olympus!) ”

“ A Broadway caterer now "molds his ice-cream in the shape of a model of Trilby's ever-famous foot." Mr. du Maurier can want no greater evidence of the popularity of his story in America. That there is not a "Trilby" shoe on the market reflects little credit upon the enterprise of our bootmakers. It is an opportunity that no soap-maker would neglect if it came his way. ”

“ At the time this story begins, this small waif and stray was "en pension" with le père Martin, the rag-picker, and his wife, the dealer in bric-à-brac and inexpensive old masters. They were very good people, and had grown fond of the child, who was beautiful to look at, and full of pretty tricks and pluck and cleverness—a popular favorite in the Rue du Puits d'Amour and its humble neighborhood.
Trilby, for some freak, always chose to speak of him as her godson, and as the grandchild of le père et la mère Martin, so that these good people had almost grown to believe he really belonged to them. ”

“ After all, he was right perhaps, from his point of view: you can get as dirty in a week as in a lifetime, so what's the use of taking such a lot of trouble? Besides, so long as you are clean enough to suit your kind, to be any cleaner would be priggish and pedantic, and get you disliked.
Just as Svengali was about to knock at the Laird's door, Trilby came down-stairs from Durien's, very unlike herself. Her eyes were red with weeping, and there were great black rings round them; she was pale under her freckles. ”

“ They have du Maurier's style, du Maurier's technique, du Maurier's peculiar little touches of humor, not merely in the broad idea but in that minute turn of the pen which makes all the difference in the world between an empty profile and a funny one. It is true that there is a dissimilarity between Trilby in one illustration and Trilby in another, but it should be remembered that du Maurier's eyesight has been failing him, that he has been compelled to be prolific at a time when he has most needed to lie fallow as an artist ”

“ I shall leave this hateful place and go and live in the country: I suppose I must manage to get through life somehow. I know of some poor people who were once very fond of me, and I could live with them and help them and keep myself. The difficulty is about Jeannot. I thought it all out before it came to this. I was well prepared, you see."
She smiled in a forlorn sort of way, with her upper lip drawn tight against her teeth, as if some one were pulling her back by the lobes of her ears.
"Oh! but Trilby—what shall we do without you? Taffy and I, you know! You've become one of us!" ”

“ For they meant to have a Homeric feast in the studio on Christmas Day—Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee—and invite all the delightful chums I have been trying to describe; and that is just why I tried to describe them—Durien, Vincent, Antony, Lorrimer, Carnegie, Petrolicoconose, l'Zouzou, and Dodor!
The cooking and waiting should be done by Trilby, her friend Angèle Boisse, M. et Mme. Vinard, and such little Vinards as could be trusted with glass and crockery and mince-pies; and if that was not enough, they would also cook themselves and wait upon each other. ”

“ And if people are to be judged by their works, this worthy pair are no doubt both equally well compensated by now for the trials and struggles of their sordid earthly life.
So much for Trilby's parentage.
And as she sat and wept at Madame Doche's impersonation of la Dame aux Camélias (with her hand in Durien's) she vaguely remembered, as in a waking dream, now the noble presence of Taffy as he towered cool and erect, foil in hand, gallantly waiting for his adversary to breathe, now the beautiful sensitive face of Little Billee and his deferential courtesy. ”

“ So that Jules Guinot's polite inquiries whether Trilby were none the worse after Mathieu's house-warming (which was so jolly) , Trilby's kind solicitude about the health of Victorine, who had very foolishly taken a drop too much on that occasion, Trilby's mock regrets that her own bad luck at cards had made it necessary that she should retrieve her fallen fortunes by rag-picking—all these innocent, playful little amenities (which I have tried to write down just as they were spoken) were couched in a language that was as Greek to him—and he felt out of it, jealous and indignant. ”

“ The only failure is the head (on page 59 of the book) which is in more senses than one "as bad as they make them." He is excellent where he laughs over the two Englishmen cleaning themselves; he is delightful where he examines the roof of Trilby's mouth, "like the dome of the Panthéon," "room in it for 'toutes les gloires de la France.'" Where he stands in the midst of the crowded studio, "All as it Used to Be," he looks every inch the artist, more so than the "idle apprentice," lounging against the door-jamb. ”