Sylvia begged Monkley not to go back and live in Fitzroy Street. She
felt the flat would be haunted by memories of her father and Mabel. It
was as well that she did not want to return there, for Jimmy assured her
that nothing would induce him to go near Fitzroy Street. A great deal of
money was owing, and he wished the landlord luck in his dispute with the
furnishing people when he tried to seize the furniture for arrears of
rent. It would be necessary to choose for their next abode a quarter of
London to which he was a stranger, because he disliked having to make
détours to avoid streets where he owed money. Finsbury Park was
melancholy; Highgate was inaccessible; Hampstead was expensive and
almost equally inaccessible; but they must go somewhere in the North of
London, for there did not remain a suburb in the West or South the
tradesmen and house-owners of which he had not swindled at one time or
another. On second thoughts, there was a part of Hampstead that was
neither so expensive nor so inaccessible, which was reached from
Haverstock Hill; they would look for rooms there. They settled down
finally in one of a row of old houses facing the southerly extremity of
the Heath, the rural aspect of which was heightened by long gardens in
front that now in late summer were filled with sunflowers and
hollyhocks. The old-fashioned house, which resembled a large cottage
both without and within, belonged to a decayed florist and nursery
gardener called Samuel Gustard, whose trade was now confined to the sale
of penny packets of seeds, though a weather-beaten sign-board facing the
road maintained a legend of greater glories. Mr. Gustard himself made no
effort to live up to his sign-board; indeed, he would not even stir
himself to produce a packet of seeds, for if his wife were about he
would indicate to her with the stem of his pipe which packet was
wanted, and if she were not about, he would tell the customer that the
variety was no longer in stock. A greenhouse kept from collapse by the
sturdy vine it was supposed to protect ran along the fence on one side
of the garden; the rest was a jungle of coarse herbaceous flowers,
presumably the survivors of Mr. Gustard's last horticultural effort,
about ten years ago.
The money made by the tour of the Pink Pierrots did not last very long,
and Jimmy was soon forced back to industry. Sylvia nowadays heard more
about his successes and failures than when her father was alive, and she
begged very hard to be allowed to help on some of his expeditions.
"You're no good to me yet," Monkley told her. "You're too old to be
really innocent and not old enough to pretend to be. Besides, people
don't take school-girls to race meetings. Later on, when you've learned
a bit more about life, we'll start a gambling club in the West End and
work on a swell scale what I do now in a small way in
railway-carriages."
This scheme of Jimmy's became a favorite topic; and Sylvia began to
regard a flash gambling-hell as the crown of human ambition. Jimmy's
imagination used to run riot amid the splendor of it all, as he
discoursed of the footmen with plush breeches; of the shaded lamps; of
the sideboard loaded with hams and jellies and fruit at which the guests
would always be able to refresh themselves, for it would never do to let
them go away because they were hungry, and people were always hungry at
three in the morning; of the smart page-boy in the entrance of the flats
who would know how to reckon up a visitor and give the tip up-stairs by
ringing a bell; and of the rigid exclusion of all women except Sylvia
herself.
"I can see it all before me," Jimmy used to sigh. "I can smell the
cigars and whisky. I'm flinging back the curtains when every one has
gone and feeling the morning air. And here we are stuck in this old
cucumber-frame at Hampstead! But we'll get it, we'll get it. I shall
have a scoop one of these days and be able to start saving, and when
I've saved a couple of hundred I'll bluff the rest."
In October Jimmy came home from Newmarket and told Sylvia he had run
against an old friend, who had proposed a money-making scheme which
would take him away from London for a couple of months. He could not
explain the details to Sylvia, but he might say that it was a confidence
trick on the grand scale and that it meant his residing in a northern
city. He had told his friend he would give him an answer to-morrow, and
wanted to know what Sylvia thought about it.
She was surprised by Jimmy's consulting her in this way. She had always
taken it for granted that from time to time she would be left alone.
Jimmy's action made her realize more clearly than ever that to a great
extent she already possessed that liberty of choice the prospect of
which had dawned upon her at Swanage.
She assured Jimmy of her readiness to be left alone in Hampstead. When
he expatiated on his consideration for her welfare she was bored and
longed for him to be gone; his solicitude gave her a feeling of
restraint; she became impatient of his continually wanting to know if
she should miss him and of his commendation of her to the care of Mr.
and Mrs. Gustard, from whom she desired no interference, being quite
content with the prospect of sitting in her window with a book and a
green view.
The next morning Monkley left Hampstead; and Sylvia inhaled freedom with
the autumn air. She had been given what seemed a very large sum of money
to sustain herself until Jimmy's return. She had bought a new hat; a
black kitten had adopted her; it was pearly October weather. Sylvia
surveyed life with a sense of pleasure that was nevertheless most
unreasonably marred by a faint breath of restlessness, an almost
imperceptible discontent. Life had always offered itself to her
contemplation, whether of the past or of the future, as a set of vivid
impressions that formed a crudely colored panorama of action without any
emotional light and shade, the intervals between which, like the
intervals of a theatrical performance, were only tolerable with plenty
of chocolates to eat. At the present moment she had plenty of chocolates
to eat, more, in fact, than she had ever had before, but the interval
was seeming most exasperatingly long.
"You ought to take a walk on the Heath," Mr. Gustard advised. "It isn't
good to sit about all day doing nothing."
"You don't take walks," Sylvia pointed out. "And you sit about all day
doing nothing. I do read a book, anyway."
"I'm different," Mr. Gustard pronounced, very solemnly. "I've lived my
life. If I was to take a walk round Hampstead I couldn't hardly peep
into a garden without seeing a tree as I'd planted myself. And when I'm
gone, the trees 'll still be there. That's something to _think_ about,
that is. There was a clergyman came nosing round here the other day to
ask me why I didn't go to church. I told him I'd done without church as
a lad, and I couldn't see why I shouldn't do without it now. 'But you're
growing old, Mr. Gustard,' he says to me. 'That's just it,' I says to
him. 'I'm getting very near the time when, if all they say is true, I
shall be in the heavenly choir for ever and ever, amen, and the less
singing I hear for the rest of my time on earth the better.' 'That's a
very blasphemous remark,' he says to me. 'Is it?' says I to him. 'Well,
here's another. Perhaps all this talk by parsons,' I says, 'about this
life on earth being just a choir practice for heaven won't bear looking
into. Perhaps we shall all die and go to sleep and never wake up and
never dream and never do nothing at all, never. And if that's true,' I
says, 'I reckon I shall bust my coffin with laughing when I think of my
trees growing and growing and growing and you preaching to a lot of old
women and children about something you don't know nothing about and they
don't know nothing about and nobody don't know nothing about.' With that
I offered him a pear, and he walked off very offended with his head in
the air. You get out and about, my dear. Bustle around and enjoy
yourself. That's my motto for the young."
Sylvia felt that there was much to be said for Mr. Gustard's attitude,
and she took his advice so far as to go for a long walk on the Heath
that very afternoon. Yet there was something lacking. When she got home
again she found that the book of adventure which she had been reading
was no longer capable of keeping her thoughts fixed. The stupid part of
it was that her thoughts wandered nowhere in particular and without
attaching themselves to a definite object. She would try to concentrate
them upon Jimmy and speculate what he was doing, but Jimmy would turn
into Claude Raglan; and when she began to speculate what Claude was
doing, Claude would turn back again into Jimmy. Her own innermost
restlessness made her so fidgety that she went to the window and stared
at the road along the dusky Heath. The garden gate of next door swung to
with a click, and Sylvia saw a young man coming toward the house. She
was usually without the least interest in young men, but on this
afternoon of indefinable and errant thoughts she welcomed the least
excuse for bringing herself back to a material object; and this young
man, though it was twilight and his face was not clearly visible,
managed to interest her somehow, so that at tea she found herself asking
Mr. Gustard who he might be and most unaccountably blushing at the
question.
"That 'ud be young Artie, wouldn't it?" he suggested to his wife. She
nodded over the squat teapot that she so much resembled:
"That must be him come back from his uncle's. Mrs. Madden was only
saying to me this morning, when we was waiting for the grocer's man,
that she was expecting him this evening. She spoils him something
shocking. If you please, his highness has been down into Hampshire to
see if he would like to be a gentleman farmer. Whoever heard, I should
like to know? Why he can't be long turned seventeen. It's a pity his
father isn't alive to keep him from idling his time away."
"There's no harm in giving a bit of liberty to the young," Mr. Gustard
answered, preparing to be as eloquent as the large piece of bread and
butter in his mouth would let him. "I'm not in favor of pushing a young
man too far."
"No, you was never in favor of pushing anything, neither yourself nor
your business," said Mrs. Gustard, sharply. "But I think it's a sin to
let a boy like that moon away all his time with a book. Books were only
intended for the gentry and people as have grown too old for anything
else, and even then they're bad for their eyes."
Sylvia wondered whether Mrs. Gustard intended to criticize unfavorably
her own manner of life, but she left the defense of books to Mr.
Gustard, who was so impatient to begin that he nearly choked:
"Because I don't read," he said, "that's no reason for me to try and
stop others from reading. What I say is 'liberty for all.' If young
Artie Madden wants to read, let him read. If Sylvia here wants to read,
let her read. Books give employment to a lot of people--binders,
printers, paper-makers, booksellers. It's a regular trade. If people
didn't like to smell flowers and sit about under trees, there wouldn't
be no gardeners, would there? Very well, then; and if there wasn't
people who wanted to read, there wouldn't be no printers."
"What about the people who write all the rubbish?" Mrs. Gustard
demanded, fiercely. "Nice, idle lot of good-for-nothings they are, I'm
sure."
"That's because the only writing fellow we ever knew got that
servant-girl of ours into trouble."
"Samuel," Mrs. Gustard interrupted, "that'll do!"
"I don't suppose every writing fellow's like him," Mr. Gustard went on.
"And, anyway, the girl was a saucy hussy."
"Samuel! That will do, I said."
"Well, so she was," Mr. Gustard continued, defiantly. "Didn't she used
to powder her face with your Borwick's?"
"I'll trouble you not to spit crumbs all over my clean cloth," said Mrs.
Gustard, "making the whole place look like a bird-cage!"
Mr. Gustard winked at Sylvia and was silent. She for her part had
already begun to weave round Arthur Madden a veil of romance, when the
practical side of her suddenly roused itself to a sense of what was
going on and admonished her to leave off dreaming and attend to her cat.
Up-stairs in her bedroom, she opened her window and looked out at the
faint drizzle of rain which was just enough to mellow the leafy autumnal
scents and diffuse the golden beams of the lamps along the Heath. There
was the sound of another window's being opened on a line with hers;
presently a head and shoulders scarcely definable in the darkness leaned
out, whistling an old French air that was familiar to her from earliest
childhood, the words of which had long ago been forgotten. She could not
help whistling the air in unison; and after a moment's silence a voice
from the head and shoulders asked who it was.
"A girl," Sylvia said.
"Anybody could tell that," the voice commented, a little scornfully.
"Because the noise is all woolly."
"It's not," Sylvia contradicted, indignantly. "Perhaps you'll say I'm
out of tune? I know quite well who you are. You're Arthur Madden, the
boy next door."
"But who are you?"
"I'm Sylvia Scarlett."
"Are you a niece of Mrs. Gustard?" the voice inquired.
"Of course not," Sylvia scoffed. "I'm just staying here."
"Who with?"
"By myself."
"By yourself?" the voice echoed, incredulously.
"Why not? I'm nearly sixteen."
This was too much for Arthur Madden, who struck a match to illuminate
the features of the strange unknown. Although he did not succeed in
discerning Sylvia, he lit up his own face, which she liked well enough
to suggest they should go for a walk, making the proposal a kind of test
for herself of Arthur Madden's character, and deciding that if he showed
the least hesitation in accepting she would never speak to him again.
The boy, however, was immediately willing; the two pairs of shoulders
vanished; Sylvia put on her coat and went down-stairs.
"Going out for a blow?" Mr. Gustard asked.
Sylvia nodded. "With the boy next door," she answered.
"You haven't been long," said Mr. Gustard, approvingly. "That's the way
I like to see it. When I courted Mrs. Gustard, which was forty years ago
come next November, it was in the time of toolip-planting, and I hove a
toolip bulb at her and caught her in the chignon. 'Whatever are you
doing of?' she says to me. 'It's a proposal of marriage,' I says, and
when she started giggling I was that pleased I planted half the toolips
upside down. But that's forty years ago, that is. Mrs. Gustard's grown
more particular since, and so as she's washing up the tea-things in the
scullery, I should just slip out, and I'll tell her you've gone out to
get a paper to see if it's true what somebody said about Buckingham
Palace being burned to a cinder."
Sylvia was not at all sure that she ought to recognize Mrs. Gustard's
opinion even so far as by slipping out and thereby giving her an idea
that she did not possess perfect liberty of action. However, she decided
that the point was too trifling to worry about, and, with a wave of her
hand, she left her landlord to tell what story he chose to his wife.
Arthur Madden was waiting for her by his gate when she reached the end
of the garden; while they wandered along by the Heath, indifferent to
the drizzle, Sylvia felt an extraordinary release from the faint
discontent of these past days, an extraordinary delight in finding
herself with a companion who was young like herself and who, like
herself, seemed full of speculation upon the world which he was setting
out to explore, regarding it as an adventure and ready to exchange hopes
and fears and fancies with her in a way that no one had ever done
hitherto; moreover, he was ready to be most flatteringly impressed by
her experiences, even if he still maintained she could not whistle
properly. The friendship between Sylvia and Arthur begun upon that night
grew daily closer. Mrs. Gustard used to say that they wasted each
other's time, but she was in the minority; she used to say also that
Arthur was being more spoiled than ever by his mother; but it was this
very capacity for being spoiled that endeared him to Sylvia, who had
spent a completely free existence for so long now that unless Arthur had
been allowed his freedom she would soon have tired of the friendship.
She liked Mrs. Madden, a beautiful and unpractical woman, who
unceasingly played long sonatas on a cracked piano; at least she would
have played them unceasingly had she not continually been jumping up to
wait on Arthur, hovering round him like a dark and iridescent butterfly.
In the course of many talks together Arthur told Sylvia the family
history. It seemed that his mother had been the daughter of a gentleman,
not an ordinary kind of top-hatted gentleman, but a squire with horses
and hounds and a park; his father had been a groom and she had eloped
with him, but Sylvia was not to suppose that his father had been an
ordinary kind of groom; he too came from good stock, though he had been
rather wild. His father's father had been a farmer in Sussex, and he had
just come back from staying at the farm, where his uncle had offered to
give him a start in life, but he had found he did not care much for
farm-work. His mother's family would have nothing to do with her beyond
allowing her enough to live upon without disturbing them.
"What are you going to do?" Sylvia asked.
Arthur replied that he did not know, but that he had thoughts of being a
soldier.
"A soldier?" said Sylvia, doubtfully. Her experience of soldiers was
confined to Blanche's lovers, and the universal connotation in France of
soldiery with a vile servitude that could hardly be avoided.
"But of course the worst of it is," Arthur explained, "there aren't any
wars nowadays."
They were walking over the Heath on a fine November day about Martinmas;
presently, when they sat down under some pines and looked at London
spread beneath them in a sparkling haze, Arthur took Sylvia's hand and
told her that he loved her.
She nearly snatched her hand away and would have told him not to be
silly, but suddenly the beauty of the tranquil city below and the wind
through the pines conquered her spirit; she sat closer to him, letting
her head droop upon his shoulder; when his clasp tightened round her
unresisting hand she burst into tears, unable to tell him that her
sorrow was nothing but joy, that he had nothing to do with it nor with
her, and yet that he had everything to do with it, because with no one
else could she have borne this incommunicable display of life. Then she
dried her tears and told Arthur she thought he had better become a
highwayman.
"Highwaymen don't exist any longer," Arthur objected. "All the jolly
things have disappeared from the world--war and highwaymen and pirates
and troubadours and crusaders and maypoles and the Inquisition.
Everything."
Gradually Sylvia learned from Arthur how much of what she had been
reading was mere invention, and in the first bitterness of
disillusionment she wished to renounce books forever; but Arthur
dissuaded her from doing that, and they used to read simultaneously the
same books so as to be able to discuss them during their long walks.
They became two romantics born out of due season, two romantics that
should have lived a century ago and that now bewailed the inability of
the modern world to supply what their adventurous souls demanded.
Arthur was inclined to think that Sylvia had much less cause to repine
than he; the more tales she told him of her life, the more tributes of
envy he paid to her good fortune. He pointed out that Monkley scarcely
differed from the highwayman of romance; nor did he doubt but that if
all his enterprises could be known he would rival Dick Turpin himself.
Sylvia agreed with all he said, but she urged the inequality of her own
share in the achievement. What she wanted was something more than to sit
at home and enjoy fruits in the stealing of which she had played no
part. She wanted none of Arthur's love unless he were prepared to face
the problem of living life at its fullest in company with her. She would
let him kiss her sometimes, because, unhappily, it seemed that even very
young men were infected with this malady, and that if deprived of this
odious habit they were liable to lose determination and sink into
incomprehensible despondency. At the same time Sylvia made Arthur
clearly understand that she was yielding to his weakness, not to her
own, and that, if he wished to retain her compassion, he must prove that
the devotion of which he boasted was vital to his being.
"You mustn't just kiss me," Sylvia warned him, "because it's easy. It's
very difficult, really, because it's very difficult for me to let you do
it. I have to wind myself up beforehand just as if I were going to pull
out a loose tooth."
Arthur gazed at her with wide-open, liquid eyes; his mouth trembled.
"You say such cruel things," he murmured.
Sylvia punched him as hard as she could. "I won't be stared at like
that. You look like a cow when you stare at me like that. Buck up and
think what we're going to do."
"I'm ready to do anything," Arthur declared, "as long as you're decent
to me. But you're such an extraordinary girl. One moment you burst into
tears and put your head on my shoulder, and the next moment you're
punching me."
"And I shall punch you again," Sylvia said, fiercely, "if you dare to
remind me that I ever cried in front of you. You weren't there when I
cried."
"But I was," he protested.
"No, you weren't. You were only there like a tree or a cloud."
"Or a cow," said Arthur, gloomily.
"I think that if we did go away together," Sylvia said, meditatively, "I
should leave you almost at once, because you will keep returning to
things I said. My father used to be like that."
"But if we go away," Arthur asked, "how are we going to live? I
shouldn't be any use on racecourses. I'm the sort of person that gets
taken in by the three-card trick."
"You make me so angry when you talk like that," Sylvia said. "Of course
if you think you'll always be a fool, you always will be a fool. Being
in love with me must make you think that you're not a fool. Perhaps we
never shall go away together; but if we do, you'll have to begin by
stealing bicycles. Jimmy Monkley and my father did that for a time. You
hire a bicycle and sell it or pawn it a long way off from the shop it
came from. It's quite easy. Only, of course, it's best to disguise
yourself. Father used to paint out his teeth, wear blue glasses, and
powder his mustache gray. But once he made himself so old in a place
called Lewisham that the man in the bicycle-shop thought he was too old
to ride and wouldn't let him have a machine."
Sylvia was strengthened in her resolve to launch Arthur upon the stormy
seas of an independent existence by the placid harbor in which his
mother loved to see him safely at anchor. Sylvia could not understand
how a woman like Mrs. Madden, who had once been willing to elope with a
groom, could bear to let her son spend his time so ineffectively. Not
that she wished Mrs. Madden to exert her authority by driving him into a
clerkship, or indeed into any profession for which he had no
inclination, but she deplored the soft slavery which a fond woman can
impose, the slavery of being waited upon that is more deadening than the
slavery of waiting upon other people. She used to make a point of
impressing upon Mrs. Madden the extent to which she and Arthur went
shares in everything, lest she might suppose that Sylvia imitated her
complaisance, and when Mrs. Madden used to smile in her tired way and
make some remark about boy and girl lovers, Sylvia used to get angry and
try to demonstrate the unimportance of that side of life.
"You funny child," Mrs. Madden said. "When you're older, how you'll
laugh at what you think now. Of course, you don't know anything about
love yet, mercifully for you. I wish I were richer; I should so like to
adopt you."
"Oh, but I wouldn't be adopted," Sylvia quickly interposed. "I can't
tell you how glad I am that I belong to nobody. And please don't think
I'm so innocent, because I'm not. I've seen a great deal of love, you
must remember, and I've thought a lot about it, and made up my mind that
I'll never be a slave to that sort of thing. Arthur may be stupidly in
love with me, but I'm very strict with him and it doesn't do him any
harm."
"Come and sing your favorite song," Mrs. Madden laughed. "I'll play your
accompaniment."
All the discussions between them ended in music; Sylvia would sing that
she was off with the raggle-taggle gipsies--or, stamping with her foot
upon the floor of the old house until it shook and crossing her arms
with such resolution that Arthur's eyes would grow larger than ever, as
if he half expected to see her act upon the words and fling herself out
into the December night, regardless of all but a mad demonstration of
liberty.
Sylvia would sometimes sing about the gipsies to herself while she was
undressing, which generally called forth a protest from Mrs. Gustard,
who likened the effect to that of a young volcano let loose.
Another person that was pained by Sylvia's exuberance was Maria, her
black cat, so called on account of his color before he was definitely
established as a gentleman. He had no ear for music and he disapproved
of dancing; nor did he have the least sympathy with the aspirations of
the lawless song she sang. Mrs. Gustard considered that he was more
artful than what any one would think, but she repudiated as "heathenish"
Sylvia's contention that she outwardly resembled Maria.
"Still I do think I'm like a cat," Sylvia argued. "Perhaps not very like
a black cat, more like a tabby. One day you'll come up to my room and
find me purring on the bed."
Mrs. Gustard exclaimed against such an unnatural event.
Sylvia received one or two letters from Jimmy Monkley during the winter,
in which he wrote with considerable optimism of the success of his
venture and thought he might be back in Hampstead by February. He came
back unexpectedly, however, in the middle of January, and Sylvia was
only rather glad to see him; she had grown fond of her life alone and
dreaded Jimmy's habit of arranging matters over her head. He was not so
amiable as formerly, because the scheme had only been partially
successful and he had failed to make enough money to bring the flash
gambling-hell perceptibly nearer. Sylvia had almost forgotten that
project; it seemed to her now a dull project, neither worthy of herself
nor of him. She did not attempt, on Jimmy's return, to change her own
way of spending the time, and she persisted in taking the long walks
with Arthur as usual.
"What the devil you see to admire in that long-legged, saucer-eyed,
curly-headed mother's pet I don't know," Jimmy grumbled.
"I don't admire him," Sylvia said. "I don't admire anybody except Joan
of Arc. But I like him."
Jimmy scowled; and later on that day Mr. Gustard warned Sylvia that her
uncle (as such was Jimmy known in the lodgings) had carried on
alarmingly about her friendship with young Artie.
"It's nothing to do with him," Sylvia affirmed, with out-thrust chin.
"Nothing whatever," Mr. Gustard agreed. "But if I was you I wouldn't
throw young Artie in his face. I've never had a niece myself, but from
what I can make out an uncle feels something like a father; and a father
gets very worried about his rights."
"But you've never had any children, and so you can't know any more about
the feelings of a father," Sylvia objected.
"Ah, but I've got my own father to look back upon," Mr. Gustard said.
"He mostly took a spade to me, I remember, though he wasn't against
jabbing me in the ribs with a trowel if there wasn't a spade handy. I
reckon it was him as first put the notion of liberty for all into my
head. I never set much store by uncles, though. The only uncle I ever
had died of croup when he was two years old."
"My father didn't like his aunts," Sylvia added to the condemnation. "He
was brought up by two aunts."
"Aunts in general is sour bodies, 'specially when they're in charge and
get all the fuss of having children with none of the fun."
"Mr. Monkley isn't really my uncle," Sylvia abruptly proclaimed.
"Go on! you don't mean it?" said Mr. Gustard. "I suppose he's your
guardian?"
"He's nothing at all," Sylvia answered.
"He must be something."
"He's absolutely nothing," she insisted. "He used to live with my
father, and when my father died he just went on living with me. If I
don't want to live with him I needn't."
"But you must live with somebody," said Mr. Gustard. "There's a law
about having visible means of support. You couldn't have a lot of kids
living on their own."
"Why not?" Sylvia asked, in contemptuous amazement.
"Why not?" Mr. Gustard repeated. "Why because every one would get
pestered to death. It's the same with stray dogs. Stray dogs have got to
have a home. If they haven't a home of their own, they're taken to the
Dogs' Home at Battersea and cremated, which is a painless and mercenary
death."
"I don't call that much of a home," Sylvia scoffed. "A place where
you're killed."
"That's because we're speaking of dogs. Of course, if the police started
in cremating children, there'd be a regular outcry. So the law insists
on children having homes."
Sylvia tried hard to convince Mr. Gustard that she was different from
other children, and in any case no longer a child; but though the
discussion lasted a long time he would not admit the logic of Sylvia's
arguments; in the end she decided he did not know what he was talking
about.
Monkley so much disliked Sylvia's intimacy with Arthur that he began to
talk of moving from Hampstead, whereupon she warned him that if he tried
to go away without paying the rent she would make a point of letting Mr.
Gustard know where they had gone.
"It strikes me," Monkley said, and when he spoke, Sylvia was reminded of
the tone he used when she had protested against his treatment of Maudie
Tilt--"it strikes me that since I've been away you've taken things a bit
too much into your own hands. That's a trick you'd better drop with me,
or we shall quarrel."
Sylvia braced herself to withstand him as she had withstood him before;
but she could not help feeling a little apprehensive, so cold were his
green eyes, so thin his mouth.
"I don't care if we quarrel or not," she declared. "Because if we
quarreled it would mean that I couldn't bear you near me any longer and
that I was glad to quarrel. If you make me hate you, Jimmy, you may be
sorry, but I shall never be sorry. If you make me hate you, Jimmy, you
can't think how dreadfully much I shall hate you."
"Don't try to come the little actress over me," Monkley said. "I've
known too many women in my life to be bounced by a kid like you. But
that's enough. I can't think why I pay so much attention to you."
"No," Sylvia said. "All the women you've known don't seem to have been
able to teach you how to manage a little girl like me. What a pity!"
She laughed and left him alone.
There was a halcyon week that February, and Sylvia spent every day and
all day on the Heath with Arthur. People used to turn and stare after
them as they walked arm-in-arm over the vivid green grass.
"I think it's you they stare at," Sylvia said. "You look interesting
with your high color and dark curly hair. You look rather foreign.
Perhaps people think you're a poet. I read the other day about a poet
called Keats who lived in Hampstead and loved a girl called Fanny
Brawne. I wish I knew what she looked like. It's not a very pretty name.
Now I've got rather a pretty name, I think; though I'm not pretty
myself."
"You're not exactly pretty," Arthur agreed. "But I think if I saw you I
should turn round to look at you. You're like a person in a picture. You
seem to stand out and to be the most important figure. In paintings
that's because the chief figure is usually so much larger than the
others. Well, that's the impression you give me."
Speculation upon Sylvia's personality ceased when they got home; Monkley
threatened Arthur in a very abusive way, even going as far as to pick up
a stone and fling it through one of the few panes of glass left in the
tumble-down greenhouse in order to illustrate the violent methods he
proposed to adopt.
The next day, when Sylvia went to fetch Arthur for their usual walk, he
made some excuse and was obviously frightened to accompany her.
"What can he do to you?" Sylvia demanded, in scornful displeasure. "The
worst he can do is to kill you, and then you'd have died because you
wouldn't surrender. Haven't you read about martyrs?"
"Of course I've read about martyrs," said Arthur, rather querulously.
"But reading about martyrs is very different from being a martyr
yourself. You seem to think everybody can be anything you happen to read
about. You wouldn't care to be a martyr, Sylvia."
"That's just where you're wrong," she loftily declared. "I'd much sooner
be a martyr than a coward."
Arthur winced at her plain speaking. "You don't care what you say," was
his reproach.
"No, and I don't care what I do," Sylvia agreed. "Are you coming out
with me? Because if you're not, you shall never be my friend again."
Arthur pulled himself together and braved Monkley's threats. On a quiet
green summit he demanded her impatient kisses for a recompense; she,
conscious of his weakness and against her will made fonder of him by
this very weakness, kissed him less impatiently than was her wont, so
that Arthur, under the inspiration of that rare caress, vowed he cared
for nobody and for nothing, if she would but always treat him thus
kindly.
Sylvia, who was determined to make Jimmy pay for his bad behavior,
invited herself to tea with Mrs. Madden; afterward, though it was cloudy
and ominous, Arthur and she walked out on the Heath once more, until it
rained so hard that they were driven home. It was about seven o'clock
when Sylvia reached her room, her hair all tangled with moisture, her
eyes and cheeks on fire with the exhilaration of that scurry through the
rain. She had not stood a moment to regard herself in the glass when
Monkley, following close upon her heels, shut the door behind him and
turned the key in the lock. Sylvia looked round in astonishment; by a
trick of candle-light his eyes gleamed for an instant, so that she felt
a tremor of fear.
"You've come back at last, have you?" he began in a slow voice, so
deliberate and gentle in its utterance that Sylvia might not have
grasped the extent of his agitation, had not one of his legs, affected
by a nervous twitch, drummed upon the floor a sinister accompaniment.
"You shameless little b----h, I thought I forbade you to go out with
him again. You've been careering over the Heath. You've been encouraging
him to make love to you. Look at your hair--it's in a regular tangle!
and your cheeks--they're like fire. Well, if you can let that nancified
milksop mess you about, you can put up with me. I've wanted to long
enough, God knows; and this is the reward I get for leaving you alone.
You give yourself to the first b----y boy that comes along."
Before Sylvia had time to reply, Monkley had leaped across the room and
crushed her to him.
"Kiss me, damn you, kiss me! Put your arms round me."
Sylvia would not scream, because she could not have endured that anybody
should behold her in such an ignominious plight. Therefore she only
kicked and fought, and whispered all the while, with savage intensity!
"You frog! you frog! You look like a frog! Leave me alone!"
Monkley held her more closely and forced her mouth against his own, but
Sylvia bit through his under lip till her teeth met. The pain caused
him to start back and tread on Maria, who, searching in a panic for
better cover than the bed afforded, had run between his legs. The cat,
uttering one of those unimaginable wails with which only cats have power
so horribly to surprise, retired to a corner, where he hissed and
growled. In another corner Sylvia spat forth the unclean blood and wiped
from her lips the soilure of the kisses.
Monkley had had enough for the present. The pain and sudden noise had
shaken his nerves. When the blood ran down his chin, bedabbling his tie,
he unlocked the door and retired, crying out almost in a whimper for
something to stop a bad razor cut. Mrs. Gustard went to the wood-shed
for cobwebs; but Monkley soon shouted down that he had found some cotton
wool, and Sylvia heard a cork being drawn. She made up her mind to kill
him that night, but she was perplexed by the absence of a suitable
weapon, and gradually it was borne in upon her mind that if she killed
Monkley she would have to pay the penalty, which did not seem to her a
satisfactory kind of revenge. She gave up the notion of killing him and
decided to run away with Arthur instead.
For a long time Sylvia sat in her bedroom, thinking over her plan; then
she went next door and asked Arthur to come out and talk to her about
something important. They stood whispering in the wet garden, while she
bewitched him into offering to share her future. He was dazed by the
rapidity with which she disposed of every objection he brought forward.
She knew how to get enough money for them to start with. She knew how to
escape from the house, and because the creeper beneath Arthur's window
was not strong enough to bear his weight, he must tie his sheets
together. He must not bring much luggage; she would only bring a small
valise, and Maria could travel in her work-basket.
"Maria?" echoed Arthur, in dismay.
"Of course! it was Maria who saved me," said Sylvia. "I shall wait till
Monkley is asleep. I expect he'll be asleep early, because he's drinking
brandy hard now; then I shall whistle the last line of the raggle-taggle
gipsies and slither down from my window by the ivy."
She stuffed Arthur's reeling brain with further details, and, catching
him to her heart, she kissed him with as much enthusiasm as might have
been mistaken for passion. In the end, between coaxing and frightening
him, threatening and inspiring him, Sylvia made Arthur agree to
everything, and danced back indoors.
"Anybody would think you were glad because your guardian angel's gone
and sliced a rasher off of his mouth," Mr. Gustard observed.
By ten o'clock all was quiet in the house. Sylvia chose with the
greatest care her equipment for the adventure. She had recently bought a
tartan frock, which, not having yet been worn, she felt would
excellently become the occasion; this she put on, and plaited her
tangled hair in a long pigtail. The result was unsatisfactory, for it
made her look too prim for a heroine; she therefore undid the pigtail
and tied her hair loosely back with a nut-brown bow. It was still
impossibly early for an escape, so Sylvia sat down on the edge of her
bed and composed herself to read the escape of Fabrizio from the Sforza
tower in Parma. The book in which she read this was not one that she had
been able to read through without a great deal of skipping; but this
escape which she had only come across a day or two before seemed a
divine omen to approve her decision. Sylvia regretted the absence of the
armed men at the foot of the tower, but said to herself that, after all,
she was escaping with her lover, whereas Fabrizio had been compelled to
leave Clelia Conti behind. The night wore away; at half past eleven
Sylvia dropped her valise from the window and whistled that she was off
with the raggle-taggle gipsies--oh. Then she waited until a ghostly
snake was uncoiled from Arthur's window.
"My dearest boy, you're an angel," she trilled, in an ecstasy, when she
saw him slide safely down into the garden.
"Catch Maria," she whispered. "I'm coming myself in a moment."
Arthur caught her work-basket, and a faint protesting mew floated away
on the darkness. Sylvia wrapped herself up, and then very cautiously,
candle in hand, walked across to the door of Monkley's room and
listened. He was snoring loudly. She pushed open the door and beheld
him fast asleep, a red-and-white beard of cotton wool upon his chin.
Then risking all in an impulse to be quick, though she was almost
stifled by fear, she hurried across the room to his trunk. He kept all
his money in a tin box. How she hoped there was enough to make him rue
her flight. Monkley never stirred; the box was safe in her muff. She
stole back to her room, blew out the candle, flung the muff down to
Arthur, held her breath when the coins rattled, put one leg over the
sill, and scrambled down by the ivy.
"I wish it had been higher," she whispered, when Arthur clasped her with
affectionate solicitude where she stood in the sodden vegetation.
"I'm jolly glad it wasn't," he said. "Now what are we going to do?"
"Why, find a 'bus, of course!" Sylvia said. "And get as far from
Hampstead as possible."
"But it's after twelve o'clock," Arthur objected. "There won't be any
'buses now. I don't know what we're going to do. We can't look for rooms
at this time of night."
"We must just walk as far as we can away from Hampstead," said Sylvia,
cheerfully.
"And carry our luggage? Supposing a policeman asks us where we're
going?"
"Oh, bother policemen! Come along. You don't seem to be enjoying
yourself nearly as much as I am. I care for nobody. I'm off with the
raggle-taggle gipsies--oh," she lightly sang.
Maria mewed at the sound of his mistress's voice.
"You're as bad as Maria," she went on, reproachfully. "Look how nice the
lamp-posts look. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, I can see.
Let's bet how many lamp-posts we pass before we're safe in our own
house."
They set out for London by the road along the Heath. At first trees
overhung the path, and they passed pool after pool of checkered
lamplight that quivered in the wet road. Followed a space of open
country where they heard the last whispers of a slight and desultory
wind. Soon they were inclosed by mute and unillumined houses on either
side, until they found themselves on the top of Haverstock Hill, faced
by the tawny glow of the London sky, and stretching before them a double
row of lamp-posts innumerable and pale that converged to a dim point in
the heart of the city below.
"I think I'm rather frightened," Sylvia said. "Or perhaps I'm a little
tired."
"Shall we go back?" Arthur suggested.
"No, no. We'll just rest a moment or two, and I'll be all right." They
sat down on their bags, and she stroked Maria pensively.
Sylvia was relieved when the silence was interrupted by a policeman. She
felt the need of opposition to drive away the doubts that took advantage
of that first fatigue to shake her purpose.
"Now then, what are you doing?" he demanded, gruffly.
"We're sitting down," Sylvia informed him.
"Loitering isn't allowed here," the policeman said.
"Where is it allowed, please?" she asked, sweetly.
"Loitering isn't allowed nowhere," the policeman declared.
"Well, why did you say it wasn't allowed here?" she continued. "I
thought you were going to tell us of a place where it was allowed."
Arthur jogged Sylvia's elbow and whispered to her not to annoy the
policeman.
"Come along, now, move on," the policeman commanded. In order to
emphasize his authority he flashed his bull's-eye in Sylvia's face.
"Where do you live?" he asked, after the scrutiny.
"Lillie Road, Fulham. We missed the last train from Hampstead, and we're
walking home. I never heard of any rule against sitting on one's own
luggage in the middle of the night. I think you'd better take us to the
police station. We must rest somewhere."
The policeman looked puzzled.
"What did you want to miss your train for?" he asked.
"We didn't want to miss it," Sylvia gently explained. "We were very
angry when we missed it. Come on, Arthur, I don't feel tired any
longer."
She got up and started off down Haverstock Hill, followed by Arthur.
"I'm sorry you can't recommend any proper loitering-places on the road,"
said Sylvia, turning round, "because we shall probably have to loiter
about thirty-six times before we get to Lillie Road. Good night. If we
meet any burglars we'll give them your love and say there's a nice
policeman living on Haverstock Hill who'd like a chat."
"Suppose he had run us in?" Arthur said, when they had left the
policeman behind them.
"I wanted him to at first," Sylvia replied. "But afterward I thought it
might be awkward on account of Monkley's cash-box. I wish we could open
it now and see how much there is inside, but perhaps it would look funny
at this time of night."
They had nearly reached the bottom of Haverstock Hill, and there were
signs of life in the squalid streets they were approaching.
"I don't think we ought to hang about here," Arthur said. "These are
slums. We ought to be careful; I think we ought to have waited till the
morning."
"You wouldn't have come, if we'd waited," Sylvia maintained. "You'd have
been too worried about leaving your mother."
"I'm still worried about that," said Arthur, gloomily.
"Why? You can send a post-card to say that you're all right. Knowing
where you are won't make up for your being away. In any case, you'd have
had to go away soon. You couldn't have spent your whole life in that
house at Hampstead."
"Well, I think this running away will bring us bad luck."
Sylvia made a dramatic pause and dropped her valise on the pavement.
"Go home, then. Go home and leave me alone. If you can't enjoy yourself,
I'd rather you went home. I can't bear to be with somebody who is not
enjoying himself as much as I am."
"You can't be enjoying this waking about all night with two bags and a
cat," Arthur insisted. "But I'm not going home without you. If you want
to go on, I shall go on, too. I'm feeling rather tired. I expect I shall
enjoy myself more to-morrow."
Sylvia picked up her valise again. "I hope you will, I'm sure," she
said. "You're spoiling the fun by grumbling all the time like this. What
is there to grumble at? Just a small bag which makes your arm ache. You
ought to be glad you haven't got mine to carry as well as your own."
After another quarter of an hour among the ill-favored streets Sylvia
called a rest; this time they withdrew from the pavement into the area
of an unoccupied house, where they leaned against the damp brick wall,
quite exhausted, and heard without interest the footsteps of the people
who went past above. Maria began to mew and Sylvia let her out of the
basket. A lean and amorous tom-cat in pursuit of love considered that
Maria had prejudiced his chance of success, and their recriminations
ended in a noisy scuffle during which the lid of a dust-bin in the next
area was upset with a loud clatter; somebody, throwing open a window,
emptied a utensil partly over Arthur.
"Don't make such a noise. It was only a jug," Sylvia whispered. "You'll
wake up all the houses."
"It's your damned cat making the noise," Arthur said. "Come here, you
brute."
Maria was at last secured and replaced in his basket, and Arthur asked
Sylvia if she was sure it was only a jug.
"It's simply beastly in this area," he added. "Anything's better than
sitting here."
After making sure that nobody was in sight, they went on their way,
though by now their legs were so weary that from time to time the bags
scraped along the pavement.
"The worst of it is," Sylvia sighed, "we've come so far now that it
would be just as tiring to go back to Hampstead as to go on."
"Oh, _you're_ thinking now of going back!" Arthur jeered. "It's a pity
you didn't think of that when we were on Haverstock Hill."
"I'm not thinking at all of going back," Sylvia snapped. "I'm not
tired."
"Oh no," said Arthur, sarcastically. "And I'm not at all wet, really."
They got more and more irritable with each other. The bow in Sylvia's
hair dropped off, and with all the fretful obstinacy of fatigue she
would go wandering back on their tracks to see if she could find it; but
the bow was lost. At last they saw a hansom coming toward them at a
walking pace, and Sylvia announced that they would ride.
"But where shall we drive to?" Arthur asked. "We can't just get in and
drive anywhere."
"We'll tell him to go to Waterloo," said Sylvia. "Stations are always
open; we can wait there till the morning and then look for a house."
She hailed the cab; with sighs of relief they sank back upon the seat,
exhausted. Presently an odd noise like a fishmonger's smacking a cod
could be heard beside the cab, and, leaning out over the apron to see
what was the cause of it, Arthur was spattered with mud by a piece of
the tire which was flogging the road with each revolution of the wheel.
The driver pulled up and descended from the box to restrain it.
"I've been tying it up all day, but it will do it," he complained.
"There's nothing to worry over, but it fidgets one, don't it, flapping
like that? I've tied it up with string and I've tied it up with wire,
and last time I used my handkerchief. Now I suppose it's got to be my
bootlace. Well, here goes," he said, and with many grunts he stooped
over to undo his lace.
Neither Sylvia nor Arthur could ever say what occurred to irritate a
horse that with equanimity had tolerated the flapping all day, but
suddenly it leaped forward at a canter, while the loose piece of tire
slapped the road with increasing rapidity and noise. The reins slipped
down; and Sylvia, who had often been allowed to drive with Blanche,
managed to gather them up and keep the horse more or less in the middle
of the road. After the cab had traveled about a mile the tire that all
day had been seeking freedom achieved its purpose and, lancing itself
before the vehicle in a swift parabola, looped itself round the ancient
ragman who was shuffling along the gutter in pursuit of wealth. The
horse chose that moment to stop abruptly and an unpleasant encounter
with the ragman seemed inevitable. Already he was approaching the cab,
waving in angry fashion his spiked stick and swearing in a bronchial
voice; he stopped his abuse, however, on perceiving the absence of the
driver, and muttering to himself: "A lucky night, so help me! A lovely
long strip of india-rubber! Gor! what a find!" he turned round and
walked away as fast as he could, stuffing the tire into his basket as he
went.
"I wonder whether I could drive the cab properly if I climbed up on the
box," said Sylvia, thoughtfully.
"Oh no! For goodness' sake, don't do anything of the kind!" Arthur
begged. "Let's get down while the beast is quiet. Come along. We shall
never be able to explain why we're in this cab. It's like a dream."
Sylvia gave way so far as not to mount the box, but she declined to
alight, and insisted they ought to stay where they were and rest as long
as they could; there were still a number of dark hours before them.
"But my dear girl, this beast of a horse may start off again," Arthur
protested.
"Well, what if it does?" Sylvia said. "We can't be any more lost than we
are now. I don't know in the least what part of London we've got to."
"I'm sure there's something the matter with this cab," Arthur woefully
exclaimed.
"There is," she agreed. "You've just set fire to it with that match."
"I'm so nervous," said Arthur. "I don't know what I'm doing. Phew! what
a stink of burnt hair. Do let's get out."
He stamped on the smoldering mat.
"Shut up," Sylvia commanded. "I'm going to try and have a sleep. Wake me
up if the horse tries to walk into a shop or anything."
But this was more than Arthur could stand, and he shook her in
desperation. "You sha'n't go to sleep. You don't seem to mind what
happens to us."
"Not a bit," Sylvia agreed. Then suddenly she sang at the top of her
voice, "for I'm off with the raggle-taggle gipsies--oh!"
The horse at once trotted forward, and Arthur was in despair.
"Oh, damn!" he moaned. "Now you've started that horrible brute off
again. Whatever made me come away with you?"
"You can go home whenever you like," said Sylvia, coldly.
"What's the good of telling me that when we're tearing along in a cab
without a driver?" Arthur bewailed.
"We're not tearing along," Sylvia contradicted. "And I'm driving. I
expect the horse will go back to its stable if we don't interfere with
him too much."
"Who wants to interfere with the brute? Oh, listen to that wheel. I'm
sure it's coming off."
"Here's a cab shelter," Sylvia said, encouragingly. "I'm going to try
and pull up."
Luckily the horse was ready enough to stop, and both of them got out.
Sylvia walked without hesitation into the shelter, followed by Arthur
with the bags. There were three or four cabmen inside, eating
voluptuously in an atmosphere of tobacco smoke, steam, and burnt grease.
She explained to them about the cab's running away, was much gratified
by the attention her story secured, and learned that it was three
o'clock and that she was in Somers Town.
"Where are you going, missie?" one of the cabmen asked.
"We were going to Waterloo, but we don't mind staying here," Sylvia
said. "My brother is rather tired and my cat would like some milk."
"What did the driver look like, missie?" one of the men asked.
Sylvia described him vaguely as rather fat, a description which would
have equally suited any of the present company, with the exception of
the attendant tout, who was exceptionally lean.
"I wonder if it 'ud be Bill?" said one of the cabmen.
"I shouldn't be surprised."
"Wasn't Bill grumbling about his tire this morning?"
"I don't know if it was his tire; he was grumbling about something."
"I reckon it's Bill. Did you notice if the gentleman as drove you had a
swelling behind his ear?" asked the man who had first propounded the
theory of the missing driver's being Bill.
"I didn't notice," said Sylvia.
"About the size of a largish potato?" the theorist pressed,
encouragingly.
"I'm afraid I didn't notice," said Sylvia.
"It must be Bill," the theorist decided. "Any one wouldn't notice that
swelling in the dark, 'specially if Bill had his collar turned up."
"He did have his collar turned up," Arthur put in.
"There you are," said the theorist. "What did I tell you? Of course it's
Bill. No one wouldn't see his swelling with his coat turned up. Poor old
Bill, he won't half swear when he has to walk home to-night. Here, Joe,"
he went on, addressing the attending tout. "Give Bill's horse a bit of a
feed."
Sylvia and Arthur were given large slices of bread and butter and large
cups of coffee; Maria had a saucer of milk. Life was looking much more
cheerful. Presently a burly cabman appeared in the entrance of the
shelter and was greeted with shouts of merriment.
"What ho, Bill, old cock! Lost your ruddy cab, old sporty? Lor! we
haven't half laughed to think of you having to use your bacon and eggs
to get here. I reckon you didn't half swear."
"Who are you getting at, you blinking set of mugs? Who's lost his ruddy
cab?" demanded Bill.
"That's not the driver," Sylvia said.
"I thought it couldn't be Bill," said the theorist quickly. "As soon as
I heard she never noticed that lump behind his ear, I thought it wasn't
Bill."
"Here, less of it, you and your lumps behind the ear," said Bill,
aggressively. "You'll have a blurry lump behin' your own blurry ear,
Fred Organ, before you knows where you are."
Sylvia could not refrain from observing the famous lump with a good deal
of curiosity, and she wondered how any one could ever have supposed it
might be unnoticed. She would have described it as more like a beet root
than a potato, she thought.
A long discussion about the future of the driverless cab ensued; finally
it was decided that Joe the tout should lead it to the police station if
it were not claimed by daylight. The company then turned to the
discussion of the future of the abandoned fares. Sylvia had by this
time evolved an elaborate tale of running away from a stepfather whose
conduct to Arthur, herself, and Maria had been extremely brutal.
"Knocked the cat about, did he?" said the theorist, whose name was Fred
Organ. "I never could abide people as ill-treated dumb animals."
Sylvia went on to explain that they had intended to throw themselves on
the mercy of an aunt who lived at Dover, and with that intention had
been bound for Waterloo when they lost their driver. When she was told
that they were going to the wrong station for Dover, she began to
express fears of the reception her aunt might accord them. Did any one
present know where they could find lodgings, for which, of course, they
would pay, because their mother had provided them with the necessary
money.
"That's a mother all over," said Fred Organ, with enthusiastic
sentiment. "Ain't it, boys? Ah, I wish I hadn't lost my poor old
mother."
Various suggestions about rooms were made, but finally Fred Organ was so
much moved by the emotional details with which Sylvia continually
supplemented her tale that he offered to give them lodgings in his own
house near Finsbury Park. Sylvia would have preferred a suburb that was
barred to Monkley, but she accepted the offer because, with Arthur
turning out so inept at adventure, it seemed foolish to take any more
risks that night.
Fred Organ had succeeded to the paternal house and hansom about two
years before. He was now twenty-six, but his corpulence made him appear
older; for the chubby smoothness of youth had vanished with continual
exposure to the weather, leaving behind many folds and furrows in his
large face. Mr. Organ, senior, had bought No. 53 Colonial Terrace by
instalments, the punctual payment of which had worried him so much as
probably to shorten his life, the last one having been paid just before
his death. He had only a week or two for the enjoyment of possession,
which was as well; for the house that had cost its owner so much effort
to obtain was nearly as ripe for dissolution as himself, and the
maintenance of it in repair seemed likely to cause Fred Organ as much
financial stress in the future as the original purchase had caused his
father in the past.
So much of his history did Fred Organ give them while he was stabling
his horse, before he could introduce them to his inheritance. It was
five o'clock of a chill February morning, and the relief of finding
herself safely under a roof after such a tiring and insecure night
compensated Sylvia for the impression of unutterable dreariness that
Colonial Terrace first made upon her mind, a dreariness quite out of
accord with the romantic beginning to the life of independence of which
she had dreamed. They could not go to bed when they reached the house,
because Fred Organ, master though he was, doubted if it would be wise to
wake up his sister to accommodate the guests.
"Not that she'd have any call to make a fuss," he observed, "because if
I says a thing in No. 53, no one hasn't got the right to object. Still,
I'd rather you got a nice first impression of my sister Edith. Well,
make yourselves at home. I'll rout round and get the kitchen fire
going."
Fred routed round with such effect that he woke his sister, who began to
scream from the landing above:
"Hube! Get up, you great coward! There's somebody breaking in at the
back. Get up, Hube, and fetch a policeman before we're both murdered."
"It's only me, Ede," Fred called out. "Keep your hair on."
When Sylvia saw Edith Organ's curl-papers she thought the last
injunction was rather funny. Explanations were soon given and Edith was
so happy to find her alarm unnecessary that she was as pleasant as
possible and even invited Sylvia to come and share her bed and sleep
late into the morning; whereupon Fred Organ invited Arthur to share his
bed, which Arthur firmly declined to do, notwithstanding Sylvia's frown.
"Well, you can't go to bed with the girls," said Fred.
"Oh, Fred, you are a.... Oh, he is a.... Oh, isn't he? Oh, I never.
Fancy! What a thing to say! There! Well! Who ever did? I'm sure. What a
remark to pass!" Edith exclaimed, quite incoherent from embarrassment,
pleasure, and sleep.
"Where's Hube?" Fred asked.
"Oh, Hube!" snapped Edith. "He's well underneath the bedclothes. Trust
Hube for that. Nothing'd get him out of bed except an earthquake."
"Wouldn't it, then?" said a sleek voice, and Hube himself, an extremely
fat young man in a trailing nightgown, appeared in the doorway.
"You wouldn't think he was only nineteen, would you?" said Fred,
proudly.
"Nice noise to kick up in the middle of the night," Hubert grumbled. "I
dreamt the house was falling down on top of me."
"And it will, too," Fred prophesied, "if I can't soon scrape together
some money for repairs. There's a crack as wide as the strand down the
back."
Sylvia wondered how so rickety a house was able to withstand the wear
and tear of such a fat family when they all, with the exception of
Arthur, who lay down on the kitchen table, went creaking up-stairs to
bed.
The examination of Monkley's cash-box produced £35; Sylvia felt
ineffably rich, so rich that she offered to lend Fred Organ the money he
wanted to repair his property. He accepted the offer in the spirit in
which it was made, as he said, and Sylvia, whom contact with Monkley had
left curiously uncynical, felt that she had endeared herself to Fred
Organ for a long time to come. She was given a room of her own at No.
53, for which she was glad, because sleeping with Edith had been rather
like eating scented cornflour pudding, a combination of the flabby with
the stuffy that had never appeared to her taste. Arthur was given the
choice of sleeping with Hubert or in the bath, and he chose the latter
without a moment's hesitation.
Relations between Arthur and Hubert had been strained ever since. Hubert
offered Arthur a bite from an apple he was munching, which was refused
with a too obvious disgust.
"Go on, what do you take me for? Eve?" asked Hubert, indignantly. "It
won't poison you."
The strain was not relaxed by Hubert's obvious fondness for Sylvia.
"I thought when I came away with you," Arthur said, "that we were going
to live by ourselves and earn our own living; instead of which you let
that fat brute hang around you all day."
"I can't be always rude to him," Sylvia explained. "He's very
good-natured."
"Do you call it good-natured to turn the tap on me when I'm lying in
bed?" Arthur demanded.
"I expect he only did it for fun."
"Fun!" said Arthur, darkly. "I shall hit him one of these days."
Arthur did hit him; but Hubert, with all his fat, hit harder than he,
and Arthur never tried again. Sylvia found herself growing very tired of
him; the universal censure upon his namby-pambyness was beginning to
react upon her. The poetical youth of Hampstead Heath seemed no longer
so poetical in Colonial Terrace. Yet she did not want to quarrel with
him finally, for in a curious way he represented to her a link with what
she still paradoxically spoke of as home. Sylvia had really had a great
affection for Monkley, which made her hate him more for what he had
tried to do. Yet, though she hated him and though the notion of being
with him again made her shudder, she could not forget that he had known
her father, who was bound up with the memory of her mother and of all
the past that, being so irreparably over, was now strangely cherished.
Sylvia felt that, were Arthur to go, she would indeed find herself
alone, in that state which first she had dreaded, then desired, and now
once again dreaded, notwithstanding her bold conceptions of independence
and belief in her own ability to determine the manner of life she
wished. There were times when she felt what almost amounted to a
passionate hatred of Colonial Terrace, which had brought her freedom,
indeed, but the freedom of a world too gray to make freedom worth
possessing. She was fond of Fred Organ, and she fancied that he would
have liked formally to adopt her; yet the idea of being adopted by him
somehow repelled her. She was fond of Edith Organ too, but no fonder
than she had been of Clara; Edith seemed to have less to tell her about
life than Clara, perhaps because she was older now and had read so many
books. As for Hubert, who claimed to be in love with her, he existed
about the house like a large over-fed dog; that was all, that and his
capacity for teasing Arthur, which amused her.
Everything about this escapade was so different from what she had
planned. Always in her dreams there had been a room with a green view
over trees or a silver view over water, and herself encouraging some one
(she supposed it must have been Arthur, though she could hardly believe
this when she looked at him now) to perform the kind of fantastic deeds
that people performed in books. Surely some books were true. Looking
back on her old fancies, Sylvia came to the conclusion that she had
always pictured herself married to Arthur; yet how ridiculous such an
idea now seemed. He had always talked with regret of the adventures that
were no longer possible in dull modern days; but when the very small
adventure of being in a runaway cab had happened, how miserably Arthur
had failed to rise to the occasion, and now here he was loafing in
Colonial Terrace. Hubert had secured a position in a bookshop near
Finsbury Park railway station, which he had forfeited very soon
afterward, but only because he had made a habit of borrowing for
Sylvia's perusal the books which customers had bought, and of sending
them on to their owners two or three days later. To be sure, they had
nearly all been very dull books of a religious bent, but in such a
district as Finsbury Park what else could be expected? At least Hubert
had sacrificed something for her. Arthur had done nothing; even when
Fred Organ, to please Sylvia, had offered to teach him to drive a
hansom, he had refused to learn.
One day Edith Organ announced that there was to be a supper-party at a
public house in Harringay where one of the barmaids was a friend of
hers. It seemed that Mrs. Hartle, the proprietress, had recently had
cause to rejoice over a victory, but whether it was domestic, political,
or professional Edith was unable to remember; at any rate, a jolly
evening could be counted upon.
"You must wear that new white dress, Syl; it suits you a treat," Edith
advised. "I was told only to bring one gentleman, and I think it's
Artie's turn."
"Why?" Hubert demanded, fiercely.
"Oh, Hube, you know you don't like parties. You always want to go home
early, and I'm out to enjoy myself and I don't care who knows it."
Sylvia suspected that Edith's real reason for wishing Arthur to be the
guest was his greater presentableness; she had often heard her praise
Arthur's appearance while deprecating his namby-pamby manner; however,
for a party like this, of which Edith was proclaiming the extreme
selectness, that might be considered an advantage. Mrs. Hartle was
reputed to be a woman to whom the least vulgarity was disgusting.
"She's highly particular, they tell me, not to say stand-offish. You
know, doesn't like to make herself cheap. Well, I don't blame her. She's
thought a lot of round here. She had some trouble with her husband--her
second husband that is--and everybody speaks very highly of the
dignified way in which she made him sling his hook out of it."
"I don't think so much of her," Hubert grunted. "I went into the
saloon-bar once, and she said, 'Here, my man, the public bar is the
hother side.' 'Oh, his it?' I said. 'Well, I can't round the corner for
the crowd,' I said, 'listening to your old man singing "At Trinity
Church I met my doom" on the pavement outside.' She didn't half color
up, I can tell you. So he was singing, too, fit to give any one the
earache to listen to him. I don't want to go to her supper-party."
"Well, if you're not going, you needn't be so nasty about it, Hube. I'd
take you if I could."
"I wouldn't come," Hubert declared. "Not if Mrs. Hartle was to go down
on her knees and ask me to come. So shut your mouth."
The chief event of the party for Sylvia was her meeting with Danny
Lewis, who paid her a good deal of attention at supper and danced with
her all the time afterward. Sylvia was grateful to him for his patience
with her bad dancing at first, and she learned so quickly under his
direction that when it was time to go she really danced rather well.
Sylvia's new friend saw them back to Colonial Terrace and invited
himself to tea the following afternoon. Edith, who could never bear the
suggestion of impoliteness, assured him that he would be most welcome,
though she confided in Sylvia, as they went up to bed, that she could
not feel quite sure about him. Sylvia insisted he was everything he
should be, and praised his manners so highly that Edith humbly promised
to believe in his perfection. Arthur went up-stairs and slammed his door
without saying good night.
The next morning, a morning of east wind, Arthur attacked Sylvia on the
subject of her behavior the night before.
"Look here," he opened, very grandly, "if you prefer to spend the
evenings waltzing with dirty little Jews, I won't stand it."
Sylvia regarded him disdainfully.
"Do you hear?" repeated Arthur. "I won't stand it. It's bad enough with
that great hulking lout here, but when it comes to a greasy Jew I've had
enough."
"So have I," Sylvia said. "You'd better go back to Hampstead."
"I'm going to-day," Arthur declared, and waited pathetically for Sylvia
to protest. She was silent. Then he tried to be affectionate, and vowed
he had not meant a word he said, but she brushed away his tentative
caress and meek apology.
"I don't want to talk to you any more," she said. "There are lots of
things I could tell you; but you'll always be unhappy anyway, because
you're soft and silly, so I won't. You'll be home for dinner," she
added.
When Arthur was ready to start he looked so forlorn that Sylvia was
sorry for him.
"Here, take Maria," she said, impulsively. "He'll remind you of me."
"I don't want anything to remind me of you," said Arthur in a hollow
voice, "but I'll take Maria."
That afternoon Danny Lewis, wearing a bright orange tie and a flashing
ring, came to visit Sylvia. She had already told him a good deal about
herself the night before, and when now she told him how she had
dismissed Arthur he suggested that Monkley would probably find out where
she was and come to take her back. Sylvia turned pale; the possibility
of Arthur's betrayal of her address had never struck her. She cried in
a panic that she must leave Finsbury Park at once. Danny offered to find
her a room.
"I've got no money. I spent all I had left on new frocks," she bewailed.
"That's all right, kid; bring the frocks along with you. I've got plenty
of money."
Sylvia packed in a frenzy of haste, expecting every moment to hear the
bell ring and see Monkley waiting grimly outside; his cold eyes, when
her imagination recalled them, made her shiver with fear. When they got
down-stairs Hubert, who was in the passage, asked where she was going,
and she told him that she was going away.
"Not with that--" said Hubert, barring the way to the front door.
Danny did not hesitate; his arm shot out, and Hubert went over, bringing
down the hat-stand with a crash.
"Quick, quick!" cried Sylvia, in exultation at being with some one who
could act. "Edie's gone round to the baker's to fetch some crumpets for
tea. Let's go before she gets back."
They hurried out. The wind had fallen. Colonial Terrace looked very
gray, very quiet, very long in the bitter March air. Danny Lewis with
his orange tie promised a richer, warmer life beyond these ridiculous
little houses that imitated one another.