While her hair was growing long again Sylvia developed a taste for
reading. She had nothing else to do, for it was not to be supposed that
with her head cropped close she could show herself to the world in
petticoats. Her refusal any longer to wear male attire gave Monkley and
her father an excuse to make one of their hurried moves from Kennington
Park Road, where by this time they owed enough money to justify the
trouble of evading payment. Henry had for some time expressed a desire
to be more central; and a partially furnished top floor was found in
Fitzroy Street, or, as the landlord preferred to call it, a
self-contained and well-appointed flat. The top floor had certainly been
separated from the rest of the house by a wooden partition and a door of
its own, which possibly justified the first half of the description, but
the good appointments were limited to a bath that looked like an old
palette, and a geyser that was not always safe according to Mrs.
Bullwinkle, a decrepit charwoman, left behind by the last tenants,
together with some under-linen and two jars containing a morbid growth
that may formerly have been pickles.
"How d'ye mean, not safe?" Henry asked. "Is it liable to blow up?"
"It went off with a big bang last April and hasn't been lit since," the
charwoman said. "But perhaps it 'll be all right now. The worst of it is
I never can remember which tap you put the match to."
"You leave it alone, old lady," Henry advised. "Nobody's likely to do
much bathing in here; from what I can see of it that bath gives more
than it gets. What did the last people use it for--growing watercress or
keeping chickens?"
"It was a very nice bath once," the charwoman said.
"Do you mean to say you've ever tried it? Go on! You're mixing it up
with the font in which you were baptized. There's never been any water
in this bath since the flood."
Nevertheless, however inadequately appointed, the new abode had one
great advantage over any other they had known, which was a large
raftered garret with windows at either end that ran the whole depth of
the house. The windows at the back opened on a limitless expanse of
roofs and chimneys, those in front looked across to a dancing-academy on
the top floor but one of the house opposite, a view that gave perpetual
pleasure to Sylvia during the long period of her seclusion.
Now that Sylvia had become herself again, her father and Monkley
insisted upon her doing the housework, which, as Henry reminded her, she
was perfectly able to do on account of the excellent training she had
received in that respect from her mother. Sylvia perceived the logic of
this and made no attempt to contest it; though she stipulated that Mrs.
Bullwinkle should not be considered to be helping her.
"We don't want her," Henry protested, indignantly.
"Well, tell her not to come any more," Sylvia said.
"I've shoved her away once or twice," said Henry. "But I expect the
people here before us used to give her a saucer of milk sometimes. The
best way would be to go out one afternoon and tell her to light the
geyser. Then perhaps when we came back she'd be gone for good."
Nevertheless, Mrs. Bullwinkle was of some service to Sylvia, for one
day, when she was sadly washing down the main staircase of the house,
she looked up from her handiwork and asked Sylvia, who was passing at
the moment, if she would like some books to read, inviting her
down-stairs to take her choice.
"Mr. Bullwinkle used to be a big reader," the charwoman said. "A very
big reader. A very big reader indeed he used to be, did Mr. Bullwinkle.
In those days he was caretaker at a Congregational chapel in Gospel Oak,
and he used to say that reading took his mind off of religion a bit.
Otherwise he'd have gone mad before he did, which was shortly after he
left the chapel through an argument he had with Pastor Phillips, who
wrote his name in the dust on the reading-desk, which upset my old man,
because he thought it wasn't all a straightforward way of telling him
that his services wasn't considered satisfactory. Yes," said Mrs.
Bullwinkle, with a stertorous sniff, "he died in Bedlam, did my old man.
He had a very queer mania; he thought he was inside out, and it preyed
on his mind. He wouldn't never have been shut up at all if he hadn't of
always been undressing himself in the street and putting on his trousers
inside out to suit his complaint. They had to feed him with a chube in
the end, because he would have it his mouth couldn't be got at through
him being inside out. Queer fancies some people has, don't they? Oh,
well, if we was all the same, it would be a dull world I suppose."
Sylvia sat up in the big garret and read through one after another of
the late Mr. Bullwinkle's tattered and heterogeneous collection. She did
not understand all she read; but there were few books that did not give
her on one page a vivid impression, which she used to elaborate with her
imagination into something that was really a more substantial experience
than the book itself. The days grew longer and more sunny, and Sylvia
dreamed them away, reading and thinking and watching from her window the
little girls pirouette in the shadowy room opposite. Her hair was quite
long now, a warm brown with many glinting strands.
In the summer Jimmy and Henry made a good deal of money by selling a
number of tickets for a non-existent stand in one of the best positions
on the route of the Diamond Jubilee procession; indeed they felt
prosperous enough to buy for themselves and Sylvia seats in a genuine
stand. Sylvia enjoyed the pageant, which seemed more like something out
of a book than anything in real life. She took advantage of the
temporary prosperity to ask for money to buy herself new clothes.
"Can't you see other people dressed up without wanting to go and do the
same yourself?" Henry asked. "What's the matter with the frock you've
got on?"
However, she talked to Monkley about it and had her own way. When she
had new clothes, she used to walk about the streets again, but, though
she was often accosted, she would never talk to anybody. Yet it was a
dull life, really, and once she brought up the subject of getting work.
"Work!" her father exclaimed, in horror. "Good heavens! what will you
think of next? First it's clothes. Now it's work. Ah, my dear girl, you
ought to have had to slave for your living as I had; you wouldn't talk
about work."
"Well, can I have a piano and learn to play?" Sylvia asked.
"Perhaps you'd like the band of the Grenadier Guards to come and
serenade you in your bedroom while you're dressing?" Henry suggested.
"Why shouldn't she have a piano?" Monkley asked. "I'll teach her to
play. Besides, I'd like a piano myself."
So the piano was obtained. Sylvia learned to play, and even to sing a
little with her deep voice; and another regular caller for money was
added to the already long list.
In the autumn Sylvia's father fell in love, and brought a woman to live
in what was henceforth always called the flat, even by Henry, who had
hitherto generally referred to it as The Hammam.
In Sylvia's opinion the advent of Mabel Bannerman had a most vitiating
effect upon life in Fitzroy Street. Her father began to deteriorate
immediately. His return to England and the unsurveyed life he had been
leading for nearly two years had produced an expansion of his
personality in every direction. He had lost the shiftless insignificance
that had been his chief characteristic in France, and though he was
still weak and lacking in any kind of initiative, he had acquired a
quaintness of outlook and faculty for expressing it which disguised his
radical futility under a veil of humor. He was always dominated by
Monkley in practical matters where subordination was reasonable and
beneficial, but he had been allowed to preserve his own point of view,
that with the progress of time had even come to be regarded as
important. When Sylvia was much younger she had always criticized her
father's behavior; but, like everybody else, she had accepted her
mother's leadership of the house and family as natural and inevitable,
and had regarded her father as a kind of spoiled elder brother whose
character was fundamentally worthless and whose relation to her mother
was the only one imaginable. Now that Sylvia was older, she did not
merely despise her father's weakness; she resented the shameful position
which he occupied in relation to this intruder. Mabel Bannerman belonged
to that full-blown intensely feminine type that by sheer excess of
femininity imposes itself upon a weak man, smothering him, as it were,
with her emotions and her lace, and destroying by sensuality every trait
of manhood that does not directly contribute to the justification of
herself. Within a week or two Henry stood for no more in the Fitzroy
Street house than a dog that is alternately patted and scolded, that
licks the hand of its mistress more abjectly for each new brutality, and
that asks as its supreme reward permission to fawn upon her lap. Sylvia
hated Mabel Bannerman; she hated her peroxide hair, she hated her full,
moist lips, she hated her rounded back and her shining finger-nails
spotted with white, she hated with a hatred so deep as to be forever
incommunicable each blowsy charm that went to make up what was called "a
fine woman"; she hated her inability ever to speak the truth; she hated
the way she looked at Monkley, who should have been nothing to her; she
hated the sight of her drinking tea in the morning; she hated the smell
of her wardrobe and the pink ribbons which she tied to every projection
in her bedroom; she hated her affectation of babyishness; she hated the
way she would make Henry give money to beggars for the gratification of
an impulsive and merely sensual generosity of her own; she hated her
embedded garters and smooth legs.
"O God," Sylvia cried aloud to herself once, when she was leaning out of
the window and looking down into Fitzroy Street, "O God, if I could only
throw her into the street and see her eaten by dogs."
Monkley hated her too; that was some consolation. Now often, when he was
ready for an expedition, Henry would be unable to accompany him, because
Mabel was rather seedy that morning; or because Mabel wanted him to go
out with her; or because Mabel complained of being left alone so much.
Monkley used to look at him with a savage contempt; and Sylvia used to
pray sometimes that he would get angry enough to rush into Mabel's room
and pound her, where she lay so softly in her soft bed.
Mabel used to bring her friends to the flat to cheer her up, as she used
to say, and when she had filled the room she had chosen as her
sitting-room (the garret was not cozy enough for Mabel) with a scented
mob of chattering women, she would fix upon one of them as the object of
her jealousy, accusing Henry of having looked at her all the evening.
There would sometimes be a scene at the moment when half the mob would
cluster around Mabel to console her outraged feelings and the rest of it
would hover about her rival to assure her she was guiltless. Sylvia,
standing sullenly apart, would ponder the result of throwing a lighted
lamp into the middle of the sickly sobbing pandemonium. The quarrel was
not so bad as the inevitable reconciliation afterward, with its profuse
kissing and interminable explanations that seemed like an orchestra from
which Mabel emerged with a plaintive solo that was the signal for the
whole scene to be lived over again in maddeningly reiterated accounts
from all the women talking at once. Worse even than such evenings were
those when Mabel restrained, or rather luxuriously hoarded up, her
jealousy until the last visitor had departed; for then through half the
night Sylvia must listen to her pouring over Henry a stream of
reproaches which he would weakly try to divert by arguments or more
weakly try to dam with caresses. Such methods of treatment usually ended
in Mabel's dressing herself and rushing from the bedroom to leave the
flat forever. Unfortunately she never carried out her threat.
"Why don't you go?" Sylvia once asked, when Mabel was standing by the
door, fully dressed, with heaving breast, making no effort to turn the
handle.
"These shoes hurt me," said Mabel. "He knows I can't go out in these
shoes. The heartless brute!"
"If you knew those shoes hurt, why did you put them on?" Sylvia asked,
scornfully.
"I was too much upset by Harry's treatment of me. Oh, whatever shall I
do? I'm so miserable."
Whereupon Mabel collapsed upon the mat and wept black tears, until Henry
came and tried to lift her up, begging her not to stay where she might
catch cold.
"You know when a jelly won't set?" Sylvia said, when she was recounting
the scene to Monkley afterward. "Well, she was just like a jelly and
father simply couldn't make her stand up on the plate."
Jimmy laughed sardonically.
These continued altercations between Mabel and Henry led to altercations
with their neighbors underneath, who complained of being kept awake at
night. The landlord, a fiery little Jew, told them that what between the
arrears of rent and the nuisance they were causing to his other tenants
he would have to give them notice. Sylvia could never get any money for
the purposes of housekeeping except from Jimmy, and when she wanted
clothes it was always Jimmy whom she must ask.
"Let's go away," she said to him one day. "Let's leave them here
together."
Monkley looked at her in surprise.
"Do you mean that?"
"Of course I mean it."
"But if we left Harry with her he'd starve and she'd leave him in a
week."
"Let him starve," Sylvia cried. "He deserves to starve."
"You hard-hearted little devil," Monkley said. "After all, he is your
father."
"That's what makes me hate him," Sylvia declared. "He's no right to be
my father. He's no right to make me think like that of him. He must be
wrong to make me feel as I do about him."
Monkley came close and took her hand. "Do you mean what you said about
leaving them and going away with me?"
Sylvia looked at him, and, meeting his eyes, she shook her head. "No, of
course I don't really mean it, but why can't you think of some way to
stop all this? Why should we put up with it any longer? Make him turn
her out into the street."
Monkley laughed. "You _are_ very young, aren't you? Though I've thought
once or twice lately that you seemed to be growing up."
Again Sylvia caught his eyes and felt a little afraid, not really
afraid, she said to herself, but uneasy, as if somebody she could not
see had suddenly opened a door behind her.
"Don't let's talk about me, anyway," she said. "Think of something to
change things here."
"I'd thought of a concert-party this summer. Pierrots, you know. How
d'ye think your father would do as a pierrot? He might be very funny if
she'd let him be funny."
Sylvia clapped her hands. "Oh, Jimmy, it would be such fun!"
"You wouldn't mind if she came too?"
"I'd rather she didn't," Sylvia said. "But it would be different,
somehow. We shouldn't be shut up with her as we are here. I'll be able
to sing, won't I?"
"That was my idea."
Before Henry met Mabel he would have had a great deal to say about this
concert-party; now he accepted Monkley's announcement with a dull
equanimity that settled Sylvia. He received the news that he would
become a pierrot just as he had received the news that, his nightgown
not having been sent back that week by the laundress, he would have to
continue with the one he was wearing.
Early summer passed away quickly enough in constant rehearsals. Sylvia
was pleased to find that she had been right in supposing that the state
of domestic affairs would be improved by Jimmy's plan. Mabel turned out
to be a good singer for the kind of performance they were going to give,
and the amount of emotion she put into her songs left her with less to
work off on Henry, who recovered some of his old self and was often
really funny, especially in his duologues with Monkley. Sylvia picked
out for herself and learned a few songs, most of which were condemned as
unsuitable by Jimmy. The one that she liked best and in her own opinion
sang best was the "Raggle Taggle Gipsies," though the others all
prophesied for it certain failure. Monkley himself played all the
accompaniments and by his personality kept the whole show together; he
also sang a few songs, which, although he had practically no voice,
were given with such point that Sylvia felt convinced that his share in
the performance would be the most popular of the lot. Shortly before
they were to start on tour, which was fixed for the beginning of July,
Monkley decided that they wanted another man who could really sing, and
a young tenor known as Claude Raglan was invited to join the party. He
was a good-looking youth, much in earnest, and with a tendency toward
consumption, of which he was very proud.
"Though what there is to be proud of in losing one of your lungs I don't
know. I might as well be proud because I lost a glove the other day."
Henry was severe upon Claude Raglan from the beginning. Perhaps he
suspected him of admiring Mabel. There was often much tension at
rehearsals on account of Henry's attitude; once, for instance, when
Claude Raglan had sung "Little Dolly Daydreams" with his usual romantic
fervor, Henry took a new song from his pocket and, having planted it
down with a defiant snap on the music-stand, proceeded to sing:
"I'll give him Dolly Daydreams
Down where the poppies grow;
I'll give him Dolly Daydreams,
The pride of Idaho.
And if I catch him kissing her
There's sure to be some strife,
Because if he's got anything he wants to give away,
Let him come and give it to his wife."
The tenor declared that Henry's song, which was in the nature of a
derogatory comment upon his own, could only have the effect of spoiling
the more serious contribution.
"What of it?" Henry asked, truculently.
"It seems to me perfectly obvious," Claude said, with an effort to
restrain his annoyance.
"I consider that it won't hurt your song at all," Henry declared. "In
fact, I think it will improve it. In my opinion it will have a much
greater success than yours. In fact, I may as well say straight out that
if it weren't for my song I don't believe the audience would let you
sing yours more than once. ''Cos no one's gwine ter kiss dat gal but
me!'" he went on, mimicking the indignant Claude. "No wonder you've got
consumption coming on! And the audience will notice there's something
wrong with you, and start clearing out to avoid infection. That's where
my song will come in. My song will be a tonic. Now don't start breathing
at me, or you'll puncture the other lung. Let's try that last verse over
again, Jimmy."
In the end, after a long discussion, during which Mabel introduced the
most irrelevant arguments, Monkley decided that both songs should be
sung, but with a long enough interval between them to secure Claude
against the least impression that he was being laughed at.
At last the company, which called itself The Pink Pierrots, was ready to
start for the South Coast. It took Monkley all his ingenuity to get out
of London without paying for the dresses or the properties, but it was
managed somehow; and at the beginning of July they pitched a small tent
on the beach at Hastings. There were many rival companies, some of which
possessed the most elaborate equipment, almost a small theater with
railed-off seats and a large piano; but Sylvia envied none of these its
grandeur. She thought that none was so tastefully dressed as themselves,
that there was no leader so sure of keeping the attention of an audience
as Jimmy was, that no tenor could bring tears to the eyes of the young
women on the Marina as Claude could, that no voice could be heard
farther off than Mabel's, and that no comedian could so quickly gain the
sympathy of that large but unprofitable portion of an audience--the
small boys--as her father could.
Sylvia enjoyed every moment of the day from the time they left their
lodgings, pushing before them the portable piano in the morning
sunshine, to the journey home after the last performance, which was
given in a circle of rosy lantern-light within sound of the sea. They
worked so hard that there was no time for quarreling except with
competitors upon whose preserves they had trespassed. Mabel was so bent
upon fascinating the various patrons, and Henry was so obviously a
success only with the unsentimental small boys, that she never once
accused him of making eyes even at a nursemaid. Sylvia was given a duet
with Claude Raglan, and, whether it was that she was conscious of being
envied by many of the girls in the audience or whether the sentimental
tune influenced her imagination, she was certainly aware of a faint
thrill of pleasure--a hardly perceptible quickening of the heart--every
time that Claude took her in his arms to sing the last verse. After they
had sung together for a week, Jimmy said the number was a failure and
abolished it, which Sylvia thought was very unfair, because it had
always been well applauded.
She grumbled to Claude about their deprivation, while they were toiling
home to dinner (they were at Bournemouth now, and the weather was
extremely hot), and he declared in a tragical voice that people were
always jealous of him.
"It's the curse of being an artist," he announced. "Everywhere I go I
meet with nothing but jealousy. I can't help having a good voice. I'm
not conceited about it. I can't help the girls sending me chocolates and
asking me to sign the post-cards of me which they buy. I'm not conceited
about that, either. There's something about my personality that appeals
to women. Perhaps it's my delicate look. I don't suppose I shall live
very long, and I think that makes women sorry for me. They're quicker to
see these things than men. I know Harry thinks I'm as healthy as a
beefsteak. I'm positive I coughed up some blood this morning, and when I
told Harry he asked me with a sneer if I'd cleaned my teeth. You're not
a bit like your dad, Sylvia. There's something awfully sympathetic about
you, little girl. I'm sorry Jimmy's cut out our number. He's a jolly
good manager and all that, but he does not like anybody else to make a
hit. Have you noticed that lately he's taken to gagging during my songs?
Luckily I'm not at all easy to dry up."
Sylvia wondered why anybody like Jimmy should bother to be jealous of
Claude. He was pleasant enough, of course, and he had a pretty, girlish
mouth and looked very slim and attractive in his pierrot's dress; but
nobody could take him seriously except the stupid girls who bought his
photograph and sighed over it, when they brushed their hair in the
morning.
The weather grew hotter and the hard work made them all irritable; when
they got home for dinner at midday it was impossible to eat, and they
used to loll about in the stuffy sitting-room, which the five of them
shared in common, while the flies buzzed everywhere. It was never worth
while to remove the make-up; so all their faces used to get mottled with
pale streaks of perspiration, the rouge on their lips would cake, and
their ruffles hung limp and wet, stained round the neck with dirty
carmine. Sylvia lost all enjoyment in the tour, and used to lie on the
horsehair sofa that pricked her cheeks, watching distastefully the cold
mutton, the dull knives, and the spotted cloth, and the stewed fruit
over which lay a faint silvery film of staleness. Round the room her
fellow-mountebanks were still seated on the chairs into which they had
first collapsed when they reached the lodgings, motionless, like great
painted dolls.
The weather grew hotter. The men, particularly Henry, took to drinking
brandy at every opportunity; toward the end of their stay in Bournemouth
the quarrels between him and Mabel broke out again, but with a
difference, because now it was Henry who was the aggressor. He had never
objected to Mabel's admirers hitherto, had, indeed, been rather proud of
their existence in a fatuous way and derived from their numbers a
showman's satisfaction. When it was her turn to take round the hat, he
used to smirk over the quantity of post-cards she sold of herself and
call everybody's attention to her capricious autography that was so
successful with the callow following. Then suddenly one day he made an
angry protest against the admiration which an older man began to accord
her, a pretentious sort of man with a diamond ring and yellow
cummerbund, who used to stand with his straw hat atilt and wink at
Mabel, tugging at his big drooping mustache and jingling the money in
his pockets.
Everybody told Henry not to be foolish; he only sulked and began to
drink more brandy than ever. The day after Henry's outbreak, the Pink
Pierrots moved to Swanage, where their only rivals were a troupe of
niggers, upon whom Henry was able to loose some of his spleen in a
dispute that took place over the new-comers' right to plant their pink
tent where they did.
"This isn't Africa, you know," Henry said. "This is Swanage. It's no
good your waving your banjo at me. I know it's a banjo, all right,
though I may forget, next time I hear you play it."
"We've been here every year for the last ten years," the chief nigger
shouted.
"I thought so by your songs," Henry retorted. "If you told me you got
wrecked here with Christopher Columbus I shouldn't have contradicted
you."
"This part of the beach belongs to us," the niggers proclaimed.
"I suppose you bought it off Noah, didn't you, when he let you out of
the ark?" said Henry.
In the end, however, the two companies adjusted their differences and
removed themselves out of each other's hearing. Mabel's voice defeated
even the tambourines and bones of the niggers. Swanage seemed likely to
be an improvement upon Bournemouth, until one day Mabel's prosperous
admirer appeared on the promenade and Henry's jealousy rose to fury.
"Don't you tell me you didn't tell him to follow you here," he said,
"because I don't believe you. I saw you smile at him."
Monkley remonstrated with Mabel, when Henry had gone off in a fever of
rage to his room, but she seemed to be getting a certain amount of
pleasure from the situation.
"You must cut it out," Monkley said. "I don't want the party broken up
on account of you and Henry. I tell you he really is upset. What the
deuce do you want to drag in all this confounded love business now for?
Leave that to Claude. It'll burst up the show, and it's making Harry
drink, which his head can't stand."
Mabel looked at herself in the glass over the fireplace and patted her
hair complacently. "I'm rather glad to see Harry can get jealous. After
all, it's always a pleasure to think some one's really fond of you."
Sylvia watched Mabel very carefully and perceived that she actually was
carrying on a flirtation with the man who had followed her from
Bournemouth. She hoped that it would continue and that her father would
get angry enough with Mabel to get rid of her when the tour came to an
end.
One Saturday afternoon, when Mabel was collecting, Sylvia distinctly saw
her admirer drop a note into the hat, which she took with her into the
tent to read and tore up; during her next song Sylvia noticed that the
man with the yellow cummerbund was watching her with raised eyebrows,
and that, when Mabel smiled and nodded, he gently clapped his hands and
went away.
Sylvia debated with herself the advisability of telling her father at
once what she had seen, thus bringing things to an immediate climax and
getting rid of Mabel forever, even if by doing so the show were spoilt.
But when she saw his glazed eyes and realized how drunk he was, she
thought she would wait. The next afternoon, when Henry was taking his
Sunday rest, Mabel dressed herself and went out. Sylvia followed her
and, after ascertaining that she had taken the path toward the cliffs to
the east of the town, came back to the lodgings and again debated with
herself a course of action. She decided in the end to wait a little
longer before she denounced Mabel. Later on, when her father had wakened
and was demanding Mabel's company for a stroll in the moonlight, a
letter was brought to the lodgings by a railway porter from Mabel
herself to say that she had left the company and had gone away with her
new friend by train. Sylvia thought how near she had been to spoiling
the elopement and hugged herself with pleasure; but she could not resist
telling her father now that she had seen the intrigue in progress and of
her following Mabel that afternoon and seeing her take the path toward
the cliffs. Henry seemed quite shattered by his loss, and could do
nothing but drink brandy, while Monkley swore at Mabel for wrecking a
good show and wondered where he was going to find another girl, even
going so far as to suggest telegraphing on the off chance to Maudie
Tilt.
It was very hot on Monday, and after the morning performance Henry
announced that he did not intend to walk all the way back to the
lodgings for dinner. He should go to the hotel and have a snack. What
did it matter about his being in his pierrot's rig? Swanage was a small
place, and if the people were not used to his costume by now, they
never would be. It was no good any one arguing; he intended to stay
behind this morning. The others left him talking in his usual style of
melancholy humor to the small boy who for the sum of twopence kept an
eye on the portable piano and the book of songs during the hot midday
hours. When they looked round he was juggling with one of the pennies,
to the admiration of the owner. They never saw him alive again. He was
brought back dead that evening on a stretcher, his pink costume splashed
with blood. The odd thing was that the hotel carving-knife was in his
pocket, though it was proved conclusively at the inquest that death was
due to falling over the cliffs on the east side of the town.
Sylvia wondered if she ought to blame herself for her father's death,
and she confided in Jimmy what she had told him about Mabel's behavior.
Jimmy asked her why she could not have let things alone, and made her
very miserable by his strictures upon her youthful tactlessness; so
miserable, indeed, that he was fain to console her and assure her that
it had all been an accident due to Henry's fondness for brandy--that and
the sun must have turned his head.
"You don't think he took the knife to kill himself?" she asked.
"More likely he took it with some idea of killing them, and, being
drunk, fell over the cliff. Poor old Harry! I shall miss him, and now
you're all alone in the world."
That was true, and the sudden realization of this fact drove out of
Sylvia's mind the remorse for her father's death by confronting her with
the instancy of the great problem that had for so long haunted her mind.
She turned to Jimmy almost fearfully.
"I shall have you to look after me?"
Jimmy took her hand and gazed into her eyes.
"You want to stay with me, then?" he asked, earnestly.
"Of course I do. Who else could I stay with?"
"You wouldn't prefer to be with Claude, for example?" he went on.
"Claude?" she repeated, in a puzzled voice. And then she grasped in all
its force the great new truth that for the rest of her life the choice
of her companions lay with herself alone. She had become at this moment
grown up and was free, like Mabel, to choose even a man with a yellow
cummerbund.