Danny Lewis took Sylvia to an eating-house in Euston Road kept by a
married couple called Gonner. Here everything--the meat, the pies, the
butter, the streaky slabs of marble, the fly-blown face of the weary
clock, the sawdust sprinkled on the floor, the cane-seated
chairs--combined to create an effect of greasy pallor that extended even
to Mr. and Mrs. Gonner themselves, who seemed to have acquired the
nature of their environment. Sylvia shrank from their whitish arms bare
to the elbow and glistering with fats, and from their faces, which
seemed to her like bladders of lard, especially Mrs. Gonner's, who wore
on the top of her head a knob of dank etiolated hair. In such an
atmosphere Danny Lewis with his brilliant tie and green beaver hat
acquired a richness of personality that quite overpowered Sylvia's
judgment and preserved the condition of abnormal excitement set up by
the rapidity and completeness with which this time she had abandoned
herself to independence.
There was a brief conversation between Danny and the Gonners, after
which Mr. Gonner returned to his task of cutting some very fat bacon
into rashers and Mrs. Gonner held up the flap of the counter for Sylvia
and Danny to pass up-stairs through the back of the shop. For one moment
Sylvia hesitated when the flap dropped back into its place, for it
seemed to make dangerously irrevocable her admittance to the unknown
house above; Danny saw her hesitation and with a word or two of
encouragement checked her impulse to go no farther. Mrs. Gonner led the
way up-stairs and showed them into a bedroom prematurely darkened by
coarse lace curtains that shut out the fading daylight. Sylvia had a
vague impression of too much furniture, which was confirmed when Mrs.
Gonner lit a gas-jet over the mantelpiece; she looked round
distastefully at the double-bed pushed against the wall, at the crimson
vases painted with butterflies, at the faded oleograph of two children
on the edge of a precipice with a guardian angel behind them, whose face
had at some time been eaten away by mice. There was a short silence,
only broken by Mrs. Gonner's whispering breath.
"We shall be all right here, kid, eh?" exclaimed Danny, in a tone that
was at once suave and boisterous.
"What's your room like?" Sylvia asked.
He looked at her a moment, seemed about to speak, thought better of it,
and turned to Mrs. Gonner, who told Danny that he could have the front
room as well if he wanted it; they moved along the passage to inspect
this room, which was much larger and better lighted than the other and
was pleasantly filled with the noise of traffic. Sylvia immediately
declared that she preferred to be here.
"So I'm to have the rabbit-hutch," said Danny, laughing easily. "Trust a
woman to have her own way! That's right, isn't it, Mrs. Gonner?"
Mrs. Gonner stared at Sylvia a moment, and murmured that she had long
ago forgotten what she wanted, but that, anyway, for her one thing was
the same as another, which Sylvia was very ready to believe.
When Mrs. Gonner had left the room, Danny told Sylvia that he must go
and get a few things together from his flat in Shaftsbury Avenue, and
asked if she would wait till he came back.
"Of course I'll wait," she told him. "Do you think I want to run away
twice in one day?"
Danny still hesitated, and she wondered why he should expect her, who
was so much used to being left alone, to mind waiting for him an hour or
two.
"We might go to the Mo to-night," he suggested.
She looked blank.
"The Middlesex," he explained. "It's a music-hall. Be a good girl while
I'm out. I'll bring you back some chocolates."
He seemed anxious to retain her with the hint of pleasures that were in
his power to confer; it made Sylvia impatient that he should rely on
them rather than upon her capacity for knowing her own mind.
"I may be young," she said, "but I do know what I want. I'm not like
that woman down-stairs."
"And you know how to make other people want, eh?" Danny muttered. He
took a step forward, and Sylvia hoped he was not going to try to kiss
her--she felt disinclined at this moment for a long explanation--but he
went off, whistling.
For a long time Sylvia stood by the window, looking down at the traffic
and the lights coming out one by one in the windows opposite. She hoped
that Danny would not end like Monkley, and she determined to be prompt
in checking the first signs of his doing so. Standing here in this room,
that was now dark except for the faint transitory shadows upon the walls
and ceiling of lighted vehicles below, Sylvia's thoughts went back to
the time she had spent with Blanche. It seemed to her that then she had
been wiser than she was now, for all the books she had read since; or
was it that she was growing up and becoming an actress in scenes that
formerly she had regarded with the secure aloofness of a child?
"I'm not innocent," she said to herself. "I know everything that can be
known. But yet when Monkley tried to do that I was horrified. I felt
sick and frightened and angry, oh, dreadfully angry! Yet when Blanche
behaved as she did I did not mind at all; I used to encourage her. Oh,
why am I not a boy? If I were a boy, I would show people that making
love isn't really a bit necessary. Yet sometimes I liked Arthur to make
love to me. I can't make myself out. I think I must be what people call
an exceptional person. I hope Danny won't make love to me. But I feel he
will; and if he does I shall kill myself; I can't go on living like this
with everybody making love to me. I'm not like Blanche or Mabel; I don't
like it. How I used to hate Mabel! Shall I ever get like her? Oh, I
wish, I wish, I wish I were a boy. I don't believe Danny will be any
better than Jimmy was. Yet he doesn't frighten me so much. He doesn't
seem so much there as Jimmy was. But if he does make love to me, it will
be more dangerous. How shall I ever escape from here? I'm sure Mrs.
Gonner will never lift the flap."
Sylvia began to be obsessed by that flap, and the notion of it wrought
upon her fancy to such an extent that she was impelled to go down-stairs
and see if the way out was open or shut, excusing her abrupt appearance
by asking for a box of matches. There were two or three people eating at
the white tables, who eyed her curiously; she wondered what they would
have done if she had suddenly begged their help. She was vexed with
herself for giving way to her nerves like this, and she went up-stairs
again with a grand resolve to be very brave. She even challenged her
terrors by going into that bedroom behind and contending with its
oppressiveness. So successful was she in calming her overwrought nerves
that, when Danny suddenly came back and found her in his bedroom, she
was no longer afraid; she looked at him there in the doorway, wearing
now a large tie of pale-blue silk, as she would have looked at any
brigand in an opera. When he presented her with a large box of
chocolates she laughed. He wondered why; she said it was she who ought
to give him chocolates, which left him blank. She tried to explain her
impression of him as a brigand, and he asked her if she meant that he
looked like an actor.
"Yes, that's what I mean," she said, impatiently, though she meant
nothing of the kind.
Danny seemed gratified as by a compliment and said that he was often
mistaken for an actor; he supposed it was his hair.
They dined at a restaurant in Soho, where Sylvia was conscious of
arousing a good deal of attention; afterward they went to the Middlesex
music-hall, but she felt very tired, and did not enjoy it so much as she
expected. Moreover, Danny irritated her by sucking his teeth with an air
of importance all through the evening.
For a fortnight Danny treated Sylvia with what was almost a luxurious
consideration. She was never really taken in by it, but she submitted so
willingly to being spoiled that, as she told herself, she could hardly
blame Danny for thinking he was fast making himself indispensable to her
happiness. He was very anxious for her to lead a lazy existence,
encouraged her to lie in bed the whole morning, fed her with chocolates,
and tried to cultivate in her a habit of supposing that it was
impossible to go anywhere without driving in a hansom; he also used to
buy her brightly colored blouses and scarves, which she used to wear out
of politeness, for they gave her very little pleasure. He flattered her
consistently, praising her cleverness and comparing her sense of humor
with that of other women always to their disadvantage. He told stories
very well, particularly those against his own race; and though Sylvia
was a little scornful of this truckling self-mockery, she could not help
laughing at the stories. Sylvia realized by the contempt with which
Danny referred to women that his victories had usually been gained very
easily, and she was much on her guard. Encouraged, however, by the way
in which Sylvia seemed to enjoy the superficial pleasures he provided
for her, Danny soon attempted to bestow his favors as he bestowed his
chocolates. Sylvia, who never feared Danny personally as she had feared
Monkley, repulsed him, yet not so firmly as she would have done had not
her first impression of the house still affected her imagination. Danny,
who divined her malaise, but mistook it for the terror he was used to
inspiring, began to play the bully. It was twilight, one of those
sapphire twilights of early spring; the gas had not been lighted and the
fire had died away to a glow. Sylvia had thrown off his caressing arm
three times, when Danny suddenly jumped up, pulled out a clasp-knife,
and, standing over Sylvia, threatened her with death if she would not
immediately consent to be his. Sylvia's heart beat a little faster at
such a threat delivered with all the additional force vile language
could give to it, but she saw two things quite clearly: first, that, if
Danny were really to kill her, death would be far preferable to
surrender; secondly, that the surest way of avoiding either would be by
assuming he would turn out a coward in the face of the unexpected. She
rose from the arm-chair; Danny rushed to the door, flourishing his knife
and forbidding her to think of escape.
"Who wants to escape?" she asked, in so cool a tone that Danny, who had
naturally anticipated a more feminine reception of his violence, failed
to sustain his part by letting her see that he was puzzled. She strolled
across the room to the wash-stand; then she strolled up to the brigand.
"Put that knife away," she said. "I want to tell you something, darling
Danny."
In the gloom she could see that he threw a suspicious glance at her for
the endearing epithet, but he put away the knife.
"What do you want to say?" he growled.
"Only this." She brought her arm swiftly round and emptied the
water-bottle over him. "Though I ought to smash it on your greasy head.
I read in a book once that the Jews were a subject race. You'd better
light the gas."
He spluttered that he was all wet, and she turned away from him,
horribly scared that in a moment his fingers would be tightening round
her neck; but he had taken off his coat and was shaking it.
Sylvia poked the fire and sat down again in the arm-chair. "Listen," she
began.
He came across the room in his shirt-sleeves, his tie hanging in a
cascade of amber silk over his waistcoat.
"No, don't pull down the blinds," she added. "I want to be quite sure
you really have cooled down and aren't going to play with that knife
again. Listen. It's no good your trying to make love to me. I don't want
to be made love to by anybody, least of all by you."
Danny looked more cheerful when she assured him of her indifference to
other men.
"It's no use your killing me, because you'll only be hanged. It's no use
your stabbing me, because you'll go to prison. If you hit me, I shall
hit you back. You thought I was afraid of you. I wasn't. I'm more afraid
of a bug than I am of you. I saw a bug to-day; so I'm going to leave
this house. The weather's getting warmer. You and the bugs have come out
together. Come along, Danny, dry your coat and tell me a story that will
make me laugh. Tell me the story of the Jew who died of grief because he
bought his wife a new hat and found his best friend had bought her one
that day and he might have saved his money. Do make me laugh, Danny."
They went to the Middlesex music-hall that evening, and Danny did not
suck his teeth once. The next morning he told Sylvia that he had been to
visit a friend who wished very much to meet her, and that he proposed to
introduce him that afternoon, if she agreed. He was a fellow in a good
way of business, the son of a bootmaker in Drury Lane, quite a superior
sort of fellow and one by whom she could not fail to be impressed; his
name was Jay Cohen. The friend arrived toward four o'clock, and Danny on
some excuse left him with Sylvia. He had big teeth and round, prominent
eyes; his boots were very glossy and sharply pointed at the toes, with
uppers of what looked like leopard-skin. Observing Sylvia's glances
directed to his boots, he asked with a smile if she admired the latest
thing. She confessed they were rather too late for her taste, and Mr.
Cohen excused them as a pair sent back to his father by a well-known
music-hall comedian, who complained of their pinching him. Sylvia said
it was lucky they only pinched him; she should not have been astonished
if they had bitten him.
"You're a Miss Smartie, aren't you?" said Jay Cohen.
The conversation languished for a while, but presently he asked Sylvia
why she was so unkind to his friend Danny.
"What do you mean, 'unkind'?" she repeated. "Unkind what about?"
Mr. Cohen smiled in a deprecating way. "He's a good boy, is Danny. Real
good. He is, really. All the girls are mad about Danny. You know, smart
girls, girls that get around. He's very free, too. Money's nothing to
Danny when he's out to spend. His father's got a tobacconist's shop in
the Caledonian Road. A good business--a very good business. Danny told
me what the turn-over was once, and I was surprised. I remember I
thought what a rare good business it was. Well, Danny's feeling a bit
upset to-day, and he came round to see me early this morning. He must
have been very upset, because it was very early, and he said to me that
he was mad over a girl and would I speak for him? He reckoned he'd made
a big mistake and he wanted to put it right, but he was afraid of being
laughed at, because the young lady in question was a bit high-handed. He
wants to marry you. There it is right out. He'd like to marry you at
once, but he's afraid of his father, and he thought...."
Mr. Cohen broke off suddenly in his proposal and listened: "What's
that?"
"It sounds like some one shouting down-stairs," Sylvia said. "But you
often hear rows going on down there. There was a row yesterday because a
woman bit on a stone in a pie and broke her tooth."
"That's Jubie's voice," said Mr. Cohen, blinking his eyes and running
his hands nervously through his sleek hair.
"Who's Jubie?"
Before he could explain there was a sound of impassioned footsteps on
the stairs. In a moment the door was flung open, and a handsome Jewess
with flashing eyes and ear-rings slammed it behind her.
"Where's Danny?" she demanded.
"Is that you, Jubie?" said Mr. Cohen. "Danny's gone over to see his dad.
He won't be here to-day."
"You liar, he's here this moment. I followed him into the shop and he
ran up-stairs. So you're the kid he's been trailing around with him,"
she said, eying Sylvia. "The dirty rotter!"
Sylvia resented the notion of being trailed by such a one as Danny
Lewis, but, feeling undecided how to appease this tropical creature, she
took the insult without reply.
"He thinks to double cross Jubie Myers! Wait till my brother Sam knows
where he is."
Mr. Cohen had retired to the window and was studying the traffic of
Euston Road; one of his large ears was twitching nervously toward the
threats of the outraged Miss Myers, who after much breathless abuse of
Sylvia at last retired to fetch her brother Sam. When she was gone, Mr.
Cohen said he thought he would go too, because he did not feel inclined
to meet Sam Myers, who was a pugilist with many victories to his credit
at Wonderland; just as he reached the door, Danny entered and with a
snarl accused him of trying to round on him.
"You know you fetched Jubie here on purpose, so as you could do me in
with the kid," said Danny. "I know you, Jay Cohen."
They wrangled for some time over this, until suddenly Danny landed his
friend a blow between the eyes. Sylvia, recognizing the Danny who had so
neatly knocked out Hubert Organ in Colonial Terrace, became pleasantly
enthusiastic on his behalf, and cried "Bravo!"
The encouragement put a fine spirit into Danny's blows; he hammered the
unfortunate Cohen round and round the room, upsetting tables and chairs
and wash-stand until with a stinging blow he knocked him backward into
the slop-pail, in which he sat so heavily that when he tried to rise the
slop-pail stuck and gave him the appearance of a large baboon crawling
with elevated rump on all-fours. Danny kicked off the slop-pail, and
invited Cohen to stand up to him; but when he did get on his feet he ran
to the door and reached the stairs just as Mrs. Gonner was wearily
ascending to find out what was happening. He tried to stop himself by
clutching the knob of the baluster, which broke; the result was that he
dragged Mrs. Gonner with him in a glissade which ended behind the
counter. The confusion in the shop became general: Mr. Gonner cut his
thumb, and the sight of the blood caused a woman who was eating a
sausage to choke; another customer took advantage of the row to snatch a
side of bacon and try to escape, but another customer with a finer moral
sense prevented him; a dog, who was sniffing in the entrance, saw the
bacon on the floor and tried to seize it, but, getting his tail trodden
upon by somebody, it took fright and bit a small boy who was waiting to
change a shilling into coppers. Meanwhile Sylvia, who expected every
moment that Jubie and her pugilistic brother would return and increase
the confusion with possibly unpleasant consequences for herself, took
advantage of Danny's being occupied in an argument with Cohen and the
two Gonners to put on her hat and coat and escape from the shop. She
jumped on the first omnibus and congratulated herself when she looked
round and saw a policeman entering the eating-house.
Presently the conductor came up for her fare; she found she had
fivepence in the world. She asked him where the omnibus went, and was
told to the Cedars Hotel, West Kensington.
"Past Lillie Road?"
He nodded, and she paid away her last penny. After all, even if Monkley
and her father did owe Mrs. Meares a good deal of money, Sylvia did not
believe she would have her arrested. She would surely be too much
interested to find that she was a girl and not a boy. Sylvia laughed
when she thought of Jay Cohen in the slop-pail, for she remembered the
baboon in Lillie Road, and she wondered if Clara was still there. What a
lot she would have to tell Mrs. Meares, and if the baron had not left
she would ask him why he had attacked her in that extraordinary way when
she went to the party in Redcliffe Gardens. That was more than two years
ago now. Sylvia wished she had gone to Lillie Road with Arthur Madden
when she had some money and could have paid Mrs. Meares what was owing
to her. Now she had not a penny in the world; she had not even any
clothes. The omnibus jogged on, and Sylvia's thoughts jogged with it.
"I wonder if I shall always have adventures," she said to herself, "but
I wish I could sometimes have adventures that have nothing to do with
love. It's such a nuisance to be always running away for the same
reason. It's such a stupid reason. But it's rather jolly to run away.
It's more fun than being like that girl in front." She contemplated a
girl of about her own age, to whom an elderly woman was pointing out the
St. James's Hall with a kind of suppressed excitement, a fever of
unsatisfied pleasure.
"You've never been to the Moore and Burgess minstrels, have you, dear?"
she was saying. "We _must_ get your father to take us some afternoon.
Look at the people coming out."
The girl looked dutifully, but Sylvia thought it was more amusing to
look at the people struggling to mount omnibuses already full. She
wondered what that girl would have done with somebody like Danny Lewis,
and she felt sorry for the prim and dutiful young creature who could
never see Jay Cohen sitting in a slop-pail. Sylvia burst into a loud
laugh, and a stout woman who was occupying three-quarters of her seat
edged away from her a little.
"We shall be late for tea," said the elderly woman in an ecstasy of
dissipation, when she saw the clock at Hyde Park Corner. "We sha'n't be
home till after six. We ought to have had tea at King's Cross."
The elderly woman was still talking about tea when they stopped at
Sloane Street, and Sylvia's counterpart was still returning polite
answers to her speculation; when they got down at South Kensington
Station the last thing Sylvia heard was a suggestion that perhaps it
might be possible to arrange for dinner to be a quarter of an hour
earlier.
It was dark when Sylvia reached the house in Lillie Road and she hoped
very much that Clara would open the door; but another servant came, and
when she asked for Mrs. Meares a sudden alarm caught her that Mrs.
Meares might no longer be here and that she would be left alone in the
night without a penny in the world. But Mrs. Meares was in.
"Have you come about the place?" whispered the new servant. "Because if
you have you'll take my advice and have nothing to do with it."
Sylvia asked why.
"Why, it's nothing but a common lodging-house in my opinion. The woman
who keeps it--lady _she_ calls herself--tries to kid you as they're all
paying guests. And the cats! You may like cats. I don't. Besides I've
been used to company where I've been in service, and the only company
you get here is beetles. If any one goes down into the kitchen at night
it's like walking on nutshells, they're so thick."
"I haven't come about the place," Sylvia explained. "I want to see Mrs.
Meares herself."
"Oh, a friend of hers. I'm sorry, I'm shaw," said the servant, "but I
haven't said nothing but what is gospel truth, and I told her the same.
You'd better come up to the droring-room--well, droring-room! You'll
have to excuse the laundry, which is all over the chairs because we had
the sweep in this morning. A nice hullabaloo there was yesterday!
Fire-engines and all. Mrs. Meares was very upset. She's up in her
bedroom, I expect."
The servant lit the gas in the drawing-room and, leaving Sylvia among
the outspread linen, went up-stairs to fetch Mrs. Meares, who shortly
afterward descended in a condition of dignified bewilderment and entered
the room with one arm arched like a note of interrogation in cautious
welcome.
"Miss Scarlett? The name is familiar, but--?"
Sylvia poured out her story, and at the end of it Mrs. Meares dreamily
smoothed her brow.
"I don't quite understand. Were you a girl dressed as a boy then or are
you a boy dressed as a girl now?"
Sylvia explained, and while she was giving the explanation she became
aware of a profound change in Mrs. Meares's attitude toward her, an
alteration of standpoint much more radical than could have been caused
by any resentment at the behavior of Monkley and her father. Suddenly
Sylvia regarded Mrs. Meares with the eyes of Clara, or of that new
servant who had whispered to her in the hall. She was no longer the
bland and futile Irishwoman of regal blood; the good-natured and
feckless creature with open placket and draperies trailing in the dust
of her ill-swept house; the soft-voiced, soft-hearted Hibernian with a
gentle smile for man's failings and foibles, and a tear ever welling
from that moist gray eye in memory of her husband's defection and the
death of her infant son. Sylvia felt that now she was being sized up by
some one who would never be indulgent again, who would exact from her
the uttermost her girlhood could give, who would never forget the
advantage she had gained in learning how desperate was the state of
Sylvia Scarlett, and who would profit by it accordingly.
"It seems so peculiar to resort to me," Mrs. Meares was saying, "after
the way your father treated me, but I'm not the woman to bear a grudge.
Thank God, I can meet the blows of fortune with nobility and forgive an
injury with any one in the world. It's lucky indeed that I can show my
true character and offer you assistance. The servant is leaving
to-morrow, and though I will not take advantage of your position to ask
you to do anything in the nature of menial labor, though to be sure it's
myself knows too well the word--to put it shortly, I can offer you board
and lodging in return for any little help you may give me until I will
get a new servant. And it's not easy to get servants these days. Such
grand ideas have they."
Sylvia felt that she ought to accept this offer; she was destitute and
she wished to avoid charity, having grasped that, though it was a great
thing to make oneself indispensable, it was equally important not to put
oneself under an obligation; finally it would be a satisfaction to pay
back what her father owed. Not that she fancied his ghost would be
disturbed by the recollection of any earthly debts; it would be purely a
personal satisfaction, and she told Mrs. Meares that she was willing to
help under the proposed terms.
Somewhere about nine o'clock Sylvia sat down with Mrs. Meares in the
breakfast-room to supper, which was served by Amelia as if she had been
unwillingly dragged into a game of cards and was showing her displeasure
in the way she dealt the hand. The incandescent gas jigged up and down,
and Mrs. Meares swept her plate every time she languorously flung
morsels to the numerous cats, some of which they did not like and left
to be trodden into the threadbare carpet by Amelia. Sylvia made
inquiries about Mr. Morgan and the baron, but they had both left; the
guests at present were a young actor who hoped to walk on in the new
production at the St. James's, a Nonconformist minister who had been
persecuted by his congregation into resigning, and an elderly clerk
threatened with locomotor ataxia, who had a theory, contrary to the
advice of his doctor, that it was beneficial to walk to the city every
morning. His symptoms were described with many details, but, owing to
Mrs. Meares's diving under the table to show the cats where a morsel of
meat had escaped their notice, it was difficult to distinguish between
the symptoms of the disease, the topography of the meat, and the names
of the cats.
Next day Sylvia watched Amelia put on the plumage of departure and leave
with her yellow tin trunk; then she set to work to help Mrs. Meares make
the beds of Mr. Leslie Warburton, the actor; Mr. Croasdale, the
minister; and Mr. Witherwick, the clerk. Her companion's share was
entirely verbal and she disliked the task immensely. When the beds were
finished, she made an attempt with Mrs. Meares to put away the clean
linen, but Mrs. Meares went off in the middle to find the words of a
poem she could not remember, leaving behind her towels to mark her
passage as boys in paper-chases strew paper on Hampstead Heath. She did
not find the words of the poem, or, if she did, she had forgotten them
when Sylvia discovered her; but she had decided to alter the arrangement
of the drawing-room curtains, so that to the unassorted unburied linen
were added long strips of faded green silk which hung about the house
for some days. Mrs. Meares asked Sylvia if she would like to try her
hand at an omelette; the result was a failure, whether on account of the
butter or the eggs was not quite certain; the cat to which it was given
was sick.
The three lodgers made no impression on Sylvia. Each of them in turn
tried to kiss her when she first went into his room; each of them
afterward complained bitterly of the way the eggs were poached at
breakfast and asked Mrs. Meares why she had got rid of Amelia. Gradually
Sylvia found that she was working as hard as Clara used to work, that
slowly and gently she was being smothered by Mrs. Meares, and that the
process was regarded by Mrs. Meares as an act of holy charity, to which
she frequently alluded in a very superior way.
Early one afternoon at the end of April Sylvia went out shopping for
Mrs. Meares, which was not such a simple matter, because a good deal of
persuasiveness had to be used nowadays with the tradesmen on account of
unpaid books. As she passed the entrance to the Earl's Court Exhibition
she saw Mabel Bannerman coming out; though she had hated Mabel and had
always blamed her for her father's death, past enmity fled away in the
pleasure of seeing somebody who belonged to a life that only a month of
Mrs. Meares had wonderfully enchanted. She called after her; Mabel, only
slightly more flaccid nowadays, welcomed her without hesitation.
"Why, if it isn't Sylvia! Well, I declare! You are a stranger."
They talked for a while on the pavement, until Mabel, who disliked such
publicity except in a love-affair, and who was frankly eager for a full
account of what had happened after she left Swanage, invited Sylvia to
"have one" at the public house to which her father in the old days used
to invite Jimmy, and where once he had been surprised by Sylvia's
arrival with his friend.
Mabel was shocked to think that Henry had perhaps died on her account,
but she assured Sylvia that for any wrong she had done him she had paid
ten times over in the life she had led with the other man.
"Oh, he was a brute. Your dad was an angel beside him, dear. Oh, I was a
stupid girl! But there, it's no good crying over spilt milk. What's done
can't be undone, and I've paid. My voice is quite gone. I can't sing a
note. What do you think I'm doing now? Working at the Exhibition. It
opens next week, you know."
"Acting?" Sylvia asked.
"Acting? No! I'm in Open Sesame, the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels.
Well, I suppose it is acting in a way, because I'm supposed to be a
Turkish woman. You know, sequins and trousers and a what d'ye call
it--round my face. You know. Oh dear, whatever is it called? A hookah!"
"But a hookah's a pipe," Sylvia objected. "You mean a yashmak."
"That's it. Well, I sell Turkish Delight, but some of the girls sell
coffee, and for an extra threepence you can see the Sultan's harem. It
ought to go well. There's a couple of real Turks and a black eunuch who
gives me the creeps. The manager's very hopeful. Which reminds me. He's
looking out for some more girls. Why don't you apply? It isn't like you,
Sylvia, to be doing what's nothing better than a servant's job. I'm so
afraid I shall get a varicose vein through standing about so much, and
an elastic stocking makes one look so old. Oh dear, don't let's talk
about age. Drink up and have another."
Sylvia explained to Mabel about her lack of money and clothes, and it
was curious to discover how pleasant and sympathetic Mabel was
now--another instance of the degrading effect of love, for Sylvia could
hardly believe that this was the hysterical creature who used to keep
her awake in Fitzroy Street.
"I'd lend you the money," said Mabel, "but really, dear, until we open I
haven't got very much. In fact," she added, looking at the empty
glasses, "when I've paid for these two I shall be quite stony. Still, I
live quite close. Finborough Road. Why don't you come and stay with me?
I'll take you round to the manager to-morrow morning. He's sure to
engage you. Of course, the salary is small. I don't suppose he'll offer
more than fifteen shillings. Still, there's tips, and anything would be
better than slaving for that woman. I live at three hundred and twenty.
I've got a nice room with a view over Brompton Cemetery. One might be in
the country. It's beautifully quiet except for the cats, and you hardly
notice the trains."
Sylvia promised that she would think it over and let her know that
evening.
"That's right, dear. The landlady's name is Gowndry."
They parted with much cordiality and good wishes, and Sylvia went back
to Lillie Road. Mrs. Meares was deeply injured when she was informed
that her lady-help proposed to desert her.
"But surely you shall wait till I've got a servant," she said. "And what
will poor Mr. Witherwick do? He's so fond of you, Sylvia. I'm sure your
poor father would be most distressed to think of you at Earl's Court.
Such temptations for a young girl. I look upon myself as your guardian,
you know. I would feel a big responsibility if anything came to you."
Sylvia, however, declined to stay.
"And I wanted to give you a little kitten. Mavourneen will be having
kittens next month, and May cats are so lucky. When you told me about
your black cat, Maria, I said to myself that I would be giving you one.
And dear Parnell is the father, and if it's not Parnell, it's my darling
Brian Boru. You beauty! Was you the father of some sweet little kitties?
Clever man!"
When Mrs. Meares turned away to congratulate Brian Boru upon his
imminent if ambiguous paternity, Sylvia went up-stairs to get her only
possession--a coat with a fur-trimmed collar and cuffs, which she had
worn alternately with underclothing for a month; this week the
underclothing was, luckily, not at the wash. Sylvia shook off Mrs.
Meares's last remonstrances and departed into the balmy April afternoon.
The weather was so fine that she pawned her overcoat and bought a hat;
then she pawned her fur cap, bought a pair of stockings (the pair in the
wash belonged to Mrs. Meares), and went to Finborough Road.
Mrs. Gowndry asked if she was the young lady who was going to share Miss
Bannerman's room; when Sylvia said she was, Mrs. Gowndry argued that
the bed would not hold two and that she had not bargained for the sofa's
being used for anything but sitting on.
"That sofa's never been slept on in its life," she protested. "And if I
start in letting people sleep anywhere, I might as well turn my house
into a public convenience and have done with it; but, there, it's no
good grumbling. Such is life. It's the back room. Second floor up. The
last lodger burnt his name on the door with a poker, so you can't make
no mistake."
Mrs. Gowndry dived abruptly into the basement and left Sylvia to find
her way up to Mabel's room alone. Her hostess was in a kimono, Oriental
even away from the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels; she had tied pink
bows to every projection and there was a strong smell of cheap scent.
Sylvia welcomed the prettiness and sweetness after Lillie Road; her
former dislike of Mabel's domestic habits existed no longer; she told
her of the meeting with Mrs. Gowndry and was afraid that the plan of
living here might not be allowed.
"Oh, she's always like that," Mabel explained. "She's a silly old crow,
but she's very nice, really. Her husband's a lavatory attendant, and,
being shut up all day underground, he grumbles a lot when he comes home,
and of course his wife has to suffer for it. Where's your luggage?"
"I told you I hadn't got any."
"You really are a caution, Sylvia. Fancy! Never mind. I expect I'll be
able to fit you out."
"I sha'n't want much," Sylvia said, "with the warm weather coming."
"But you'll have to change when you go to the Exhibition, and you don't
want the other girls to stare."
They spent the evening in cutting down some of Mabel's underclothes, and
Sylvia wondered more than ever how she could have once found her so
objectionable. In an excess of affection she hugged Mabel and thanked
her warmly for her kindness.
"Go on," said Mabel. "There's nothing to thank me for. You'd do the same
for me."
"But I used to be so beastly to you."
"Oh, well, you were only a kid. You didn't understand about love.
Besides, I was very nervous in those days. I expect there were faults on
both sides. I spoke to the manager about you, and I'm sure it'll be all
right."
The following morning Sylvia accompanied Mabel to the Exhibition and,
after being presented to Mr. Woolfe, the manager, she was engaged to
sell cigarettes and serve coffee in the Hall of a Thousand and One
Marvels from eleven in the morning till eleven at night on a salary of
fourteen shillings a week, all extras to be shared with seven other
young ladies similarly engaged.
"You'll be Amethyst," said Mr. Woolfe. "You'd better go and try on your
dress. The idea is that there are eight beautiful odalisques dressed
like precious stones. Pretty fancy, isn't it? Now don't grumble and say
you'd rather be Diamond or Turquoys, because all the other jools are
taken."
Sylvia passed through an arched doorway hung with a heavy curtain into
the dressing-room of the eight odalisques, which lacked in Eastern
splendor, and was very draughty. Seven girls, mostly older than herself,
were wrestling with veils and brocades.
"He said we was to cover up our faces with this. It is chiffong or tool,
dear?"
"Oh, Daisy, you are silly to let him make you Rewby. Why don't you ask
him to let you be Saffer? You don't mind, do you, kiddie? You're dark.
You take Daisy's Rewby, and let her be Saffer."
"Aren't we going to wear anything over these drawers? Oh, girls, I shall
feel shy."
Sylvia did not think that any of them would feel half as shy as she felt
at the present moment in being plunged into the company of girls of
whose thoughts and habits and sensations and manners she was utterly
ignorant. She felt more at ease when she had put on her mauve dress and
had veiled her face. When they were all ready, they paraded before Mr.
Woolfe.
"Very good. Very good," he said. "Quite a lot of atmosphere. Here you,
my dear, Emruld, put your yashmak up a bit higher. You look as if you'd
got mumps like that. Now then, here's the henna to paint your
finger-nails, and the kohl for your eyes."
"Coal for our eyes," echoed all the girls. "Why can't we use liquid
black the same as we always do? Coal! What a liberty! Whatever next?"
"That shows you don't know anything about the East. K-O-H-L, not
C-O-A-L, you silly girls. And don't you get hennering your hair. It's
only to be used for the nails."
When the Exhibition opened on the 1st of May the Hall of a Thousand and
One Marvels was the only sideshow that was in full working order. The
negro eunuch stood outside and somewhat inappropriately bellowed his
invitation to the passing crowds to visit Sesame, where all the glamour
of the East was to be had for sixpence, including a cup of delicious
Turkish coffee specially made by the Sultan's own coffee-maker. Once
inside, visitors could for a further sum of threepence view an exact
reproduction of a Turkish harem, where real Turkish ladies in all the
abandonment of languorous poses offered a spectacle of luxury that could
only be surpassed by paying another threepence to see a faithless wife
tied up in a sack and flung into the Bosphorus once every hour. Other
threepennies secured admission to Aladdin's Cave, where the Genie of the
Lamp told fortunes, or to the Cave of the Forty Thieves, where a lucky
ticket entitled the owner to draw a souvenir from Ali Baba's sack of
treasure, and see Morgiana dance a voluptuous _pas seul_ once every
hour. Visitors to the Hall could also buy attar of roses, cigarettes,
seraglio pastilles, and Turkish Delight. It was very Oriental--even Mr.
Woolfe wore a fez.
Either because Sylvia moved in a way that seemed to Mr. Woolfe more
Oriental than the others or because she got on very well with him
personally, she was soon promoted to a small inner room more richly
draped and lighted by a jeweled lamp hanging from the ceiling of gilded
arabesques. Here Mr. Woolfe as a mark of his esteem introduced regular
customers who could appreciate the softer carpet and deeper divans. At
one end was a lattice, beyond which might be seen two favorites of the
harem, who, slowly fanning themselves, reclined eternally amid perfumed
airs--that is, except during the intervals for dinner and tea, which
lasted half an hour and exposed them to the unrest of European
civilization. One of these favorites was Mabel, whom Mr. Woolfe had been
heard to describe as his beau ideel of a sultana, and whom he had taken
from the sale of Turkish Delight to illustrate his conception. Mabel was
paid a higher salary in consequence, because, inclosed in the harem, she
was no longer able to profit by the male admirers who had bought Turkish
Delight at her plump hands. The life was well suited to her natural
laziness; though she dreaded getting fat, she was glad to be relieved of
the menace from her varicose vein. Sylvia was the only odalisque that
waited in this inner room, but her salary was not raised, since she now
had the sole right to all the extras; she certainly preferred this
darkened chamber to the other, and when there were no intruders from the
world outside she could gossip through the lattice with the two
favorites.
Mrs. Gowndry had let Sylvia a small room at the very top of the house;
notwithstanding Mabel's good nature, she might have grown tired of being
always at close quarters with her. Sylvia's imagination was captured by
the life she led at Earl's Court; she made up her mind that one day she
would somehow visit the real East. When Mr. Woolfe found out her deep
interest in the part she was playing and her fondness for reading, he
lent her various books that had inspired his creation at Earl's Court;
she had long ago read the _Arabian Nights_, but there were several
volumes of travels which fed her ambition to leave this dull Western
world. On Sunday mornings she used to lean out of her window and fancy
the innumerable tombs of Brompton Cemetery were the minarets of an
Eastern town; and later on, when June made every hour in the open air
desirable after being shut up so long at Earl's Court, Sylvia used to
spend her Sunday afternoons in wandering about the cemetery, in reading
upon the tombs the exalted claims they put forward for poor mortality,
and in puzzling over the broken columns, the urns and anchors and
weeping angels that commemorated the wealthy dead. Every one buried here
had lived on earth a life of perfect virtue, it seemed; every one buried
here had been confident of another life after the grave. Long ago at
Lille she had been taught something about the future these dead people
seemed to have counted upon; but there had been so much to do on Sunday
mornings, and she could not remember that she had ever gone to church
after she was nine. Perhaps she had made a mistake in abandoning so
early the chance of finding out more about religion; it was difficult
not to be impressed by the universal testimony of these countless tombs.
Religion had evidently a great influence upon humanity, though in her
reading she had never been struck by the importance of it. People in
books attended church just as they wore fine clothes, or fought duels,
or went to dinner-parties; the habit belonged to the observances of
polite society and if she ever found herself in such society she would
doubtless behave like her peers. She had not belonged to a society with
leisure for church-going. Yet in none of the books that she had read had
religion seemed anything like so important as love or money. She herself
thought that the pleasures of both these were much exaggerated, though
in her own actual experience their power of seriously disturbing some
people was undeniable. But who was ever disturbed by religion? Probably
all these tombs were a luxury of the rich, rather like visiting-cards,
which, as every one knew, must be properly inscribed and follow a
certain pattern. She remembered that old Mr. Gustard, who was not rich,
had been very doubtful of another life, and she was consoled by this
reflection, for she had been rendered faintly anxious by the pious
repetitions of faith in a future life, practical comfort in which could
apparently only be secured by the strictest behavior on earth. She had
the fancy to invent her own epitaph: "Here lies Sylvia Scarlett, who was
always running away. If she has to live all over again and be the same
girl, she accepts no responsibility for anything that may occur." She
printed this on a piece of paper, fastened it to a twig, and stuck it
into the earth to judge the effect. Sylvia was so deeply engrossed in
her task that she did not see that somebody was watching her until she
had stepped back to admire her handiwork.
"You extraordinary girl!" said a pleasant voice.
Looking round, Sylvia saw a thin clean-shaven man of about thirty, who
was leaning on a cane with an ivory crook and looking at her epitaph
through gold-rimmed glasses. She blushed, to her annoyance, and snatched
up the twig.
"What are you always running away from?" the stranger asked. "Or is that
an indiscreet question?"
Sylvia could have shaken herself for not giving a ready answer, but this
new-comer seemed entitled to something better than rudeness, and her
ready answers were usually rude.
"Now don't go away," the stranger begged. "It's so refreshing to meet
something alive in this wilderness of death. I've been inspecting a
grave for a friend who is abroad, and I'm feeling thoroughly depressed.
One can't avoid reading epitaphs in a cemetery, can one? Or writing
them?" he added, with a pleasant laugh. "I like yours much the best of
any I've read so far. What a charming name. Sylvia Scarlett. Balzac said
the best epitaphs were single names. If I saw Sylvia Scarlett on a tomb
with nothing else, my appetite for romance would be perfectly
satisfied."
"Have you read many books of Balzac?" Sylvia asked.
The stranger's conversation had detained her; she could ask the question
quite simply.
"I've read most of them, I think."
"I've read some," Sylvia said. "But he's not my favorite writer. I like
Scott better. But now I only read books about the Orient."
She was rather proud of the last word and hoped the stranger would
notice it.
"What part attracts you most?"
"I think Japan," Sylvia said. "But I like Turkey rather. Only I wouldn't
ever let myself be shut up in a harem."
"I suppose you'd run away?" said the stranger, with a smile. "Which
reminds me that you haven't answered my first question. Please do, if
it's not impertinent."
They wandered along the paths shaded by yews and willows, and Sylvia
told him many things about her life; he was the easiest person to talk
to that she had ever met.
"And so this passion for the East has been inspired by the Hall of a
Thousand and One Marvels. Dear me, what an unexpected consequence. And
this Hall of a Thousand and One Marbles," he indicated the cemetery with
a sweep of his cane, "this inspires you to write an epitaph? Well, my
dear, such an early essay in mortuary literature may end in a famous
elegy. You evidently possess the poetic temperament."
"I don't like poetry," Sylvia interrupted. "I don't believe it ever.
Nobody really talks like that when they're in love."
"Quite true," said the stranger. "Poets have often ere this been charged
with exaggeration. Perhaps I wrong you in attributing to you the poetic
temperament. Yes, on second thoughts, I'm sure I do. You are an
eminently practical young lady. I won't say prosaic, because the word
has been debased. I suspect by the poets who are always uttering base
currency of thoughts and words and emotions. Dear me, this is a most
delightful adventure."
"Adventure?" repeated Sylvia.
"Our meeting," the stranger explained.
"Do you call that an adventure?" said Sylvia, contemptuously. "Why, I've
had adventures much more exciting than this."
"I told you that your temperament was anti-poetic," said the stranger.
"How severe you are with my poor gossamers. You are like the Red Queen.
You've seen adventures compared with which this is really an ordinary
afternoon walk."
"I don't understand half you're saying," said Sylvia. "Who's the Red
Queen? Why was she red?"
"Why was Sylvia Scarlett?" the stranger laughed.
"I don't think that's a very good joke," said Sylvia, solemnly.
"It wasn't, and to make my penitence, if you'll let me, I'll visit you
at Earl's Court and present you with copies of _Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland and through The Looking-glass_."
"Books," said Sylvia, in a satisfied tone. "All right. When will you
come? To-morrow?"
The stranger nodded.
"What are you?" Sylvia asked, abruptly.
"My name is Iredale--Philip Iredale. No profession."
"Are you what's called a gentleman?" Sylvia went on.
"I hope most people would so describe me," said Mr. Iredale.
"I asked you that," Sylvia said, "because I never met a gentleman
before. I don't think Jimmy Monkley was a gentleman, and Arthur Madden
was too young. Perhaps the Emperor of Byzantium was a gentleman."
"I hope so indeed," said Mr. Iredale. "The Palaeologos family is an old
one. Did you meet the Emperor in the course of your Oriental studies?
Shall I meet him in the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels?"
Sylvia told him the story of the Emperor's reception, which seemed to
amuse him very much.
"Where do you live?" Sylvia asked.
"Well, I live in Hampshire generally, but I have rooms in the Temple."
"The Temple of who?" Sylvia asked, grandly.
"Mammon is probably the dedication, but by a legal fiction the titular
god is suppressed."
"Do you believe in God?" Sylvia asked.
"My dear Miss Scarlett, I protest that such a question so abruptly put
in a cemetery is most unfair."
"Don't call me Miss Scarlett. It makes me feel like a girl in a shop.
Call me Sylvia. That's my name."
"Dear me, how very refreshing you are," said Mr. Iredale. "Do you know
I'm positively longing for to-morrow. But meanwhile, dear child, dear
girl, we have to-day. What shall we do with the rest of it? Let's get on
top of a 'bus and ride to Kensington Gardens. Hallowed as this spot is
both by the mighty dead and the dear living, I'm tired of tombs."
"I can't go on the top of a 'bus," Sylvia said. "Because I've not got
any petticoats underneath my frock. I haven't saved up enough money to
buy petticoats yet. I had to begin with chemises."
"Then we must find a hansom," said Mr. Iredale, gravely.
They drove to Kensington Gardens and walked under the trees to Hyde Park
Corner; there they took another hansom and drove to a restaurant with
very comfortable chairs and delicious things to eat. Mr. Iredale and
Sylvia talked hard all the time; after dinner he drove her back to
Finborough Road and lifted his hat when she waved good-by to him from
the steps.
Mabel was furiously interested by Sylvia's account of her day, and gave
her much advice.
"Now don't let everything be too easy," she said. "Remember he's rich
and can afford to spend a little money. Don't encourage him to make love
to you at the very commencement, or he'll get tired and then you'll be
sorry."
"Oh, who's thinking about making love?" Sylvia exclaimed. "That's just
why I've enjoyed myself to-day. There wasn't a sign of love-making. He
told me I was the most interesting person he'd ever met."
"There you are," Mabel said. "There's only one way a girl can interest a
man, is there?"
Sylvia burst into tears and stamped her foot on the floor.
"I won't believe you," she cried. "I don't want to believe you."
"Well, there's no need to cry about it," Mabel said. "Only he'd be a
funny sort of man if he didn't want to make love to you."
"Well, he is a funny sort of man," Sylvia declared. "And I hope he's
going on being funny. He's coming to the Exhibition to-morrow and you'll
see for yourself how funny he is."
Mabel was so deeply stirred by the prospect of Mr. Iredale's visit that
she practised a more than usually voluptuous pose, which was frustrated
by her fellow-favorite, who accused her of pushing her great legs all
over the place and invited her to keep to her own cushions. Mabel got
very angry and managed to drop a burning pastille on her companion's
trousers, which caused a scene in the harem and necessitated the
intervention of Mr. Woolfe.
"She did it for the purpose, the spiteful thing," the outraged favorite
declared. "Behaves more like a performing seal than a Turkish lady, and
then burns my costume. No, it's no good trying to 'my dear' me. I've
stood it long enough and I'm not going to stand it no longer."
Mabel expressed an opinion that the rival favorite was a vulgar person;
luckily, before Mr. Iredale arrived the quarrel had been adjusted, and
when he sat down on the divan and received a cup of coffee from Sylvia,
whose brown eyes twinkled merry recognition above her yashmak, the two
favorites were languorously fanning the perfumed airs of their
seclusion, once again in drowsy accord.
Mr. Iredale came often to the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels; he
never failed to bring with him books for Sylvia and he was always eager
to discuss with her what she had last read. On Sundays he used to take
her out to Richmond or Kew, but he never invited her to visit him at his
rooms.
"He's awfully gone on you," said Mabel. "Well, I wish you the best of
luck, I'm sure, for he's a very nice fellow."
Mr. Iredale was not quite so enthusiastic over Mabel; he often
questioned Sylvia about her friend's conduct and seemed much disturbed
by the materialism and looseness of her attitude toward life.
"It seems dreadful," he used to say to her, "that you can't find a
worthier friend than that blond enormity. I hope she never introduces
you to any of her men."
Sylvia assured him that Mabel was much too jealous to do anything of the
sort.
"Jealous!" he ejaculated. "How monstrous that a child like you should
already be established in competition with that. Ugh!"
June passed away to July. Mr. Iredale told Sylvia that he ought to be in
the country by now and that he could not understand himself. One day he
asked her if she would like to live in the country, and became lost in
meditation when she said she might. Sylvia delighted in his company and
had a deep affection for this man who had so wonderfully entered into
her life without once shocking her sensibility or her pride. She
understood, however, that it was easy for him to behave himself, because
he had all he wanted; nevertheless the companionship of a man of leisure
had for herself such charm that she did not feel attracted to any deeper
reflection upon moral causes; he was lucky to be what he was, but she
was equally lucky to have found him for a friend.
Sometimes when he inveighed against her past associates and what he
called her unhappy bringing up, she felt impelled to defend them.
"You see, you have all you want, Philip."
Sylvia had learned with considerable difficulty to call him Philip; she
could never get rid of the idea that he was much older than herself and
that people who heard her call him by his Christian name would laugh.
Even now she could only call him Philip when the importance of the
remark was enough to hide what still seemed an unpardonable kind of
pertness.
"You think I have all I want, do you?" he answered, a little bitterly.
"My dear child, I'm in the most humiliating position in which a man can
find himself. There is only one thing I want, but I'm afraid to make the
effort to secure it: I'm afraid of being laughed at. Sylvia dear, you
were wiser than you knew when you objected to calling me Philip for that
very reason. I wish I could spread my canvas to a soldier's wind like
you and sail into life, but I can't. I've been taught to tack, and I've
never learned how to reach harbor. I suppose some people, in spite of
our system of education, succeed in learning," he sighed.
"I don't understand a bit what you're talking about," she said.
"Don't you? It doesn't matter. I was really talking to myself, which is
very rude. Impose a penalty."
"Admit you have everything you want," Sylvia insisted. "And don't be
always running down poor Jimmy and my father and every one I've ever
known."
"From their point of view I confess I have everything I want," he
agreed.
On another occasion Sylvia asked him if he did not think she ought to
consider religion more than she had done. Being so much in Philip's
company was giving her a desire to experiment with the habits of
well-regulated people, and she was perplexed to find that he paid no
attention to church-going.
"Ah, there you can congratulate yourself," he said, emphatically.
"Whatever was deplorable in your bringing up, at least you escaped that
damnable imposition, that fraudulent attempt to flatter man beyond his
deserts."
"Oh, don't use so many long words all at once," Sylvia begged. "I like
a long word now and then, because I'm collecting long words, but I can't
collect them and understand what you're talking about at the same time.
Do you think I ought to go to church?"
"No, no, a thousand times no," Philip replied. "You've luckily escaped
from religion as a social observance. Do you feel the need for it? Have
you ineffable longings?"
"I know that word," Sylvia said. "It means something that can't be said
in words, doesn't it? Well, I've often had longings like that,
especially in Hampstead, but no longings that had anything to do with
going to church. How could they have, if they were ineffable?"
"Quite true," Philip agreed. "And therefore be grateful that you're a
pagan. If ever a confounded priest gets hold of you and tries to bewitch
you with his mumbo-jumbo, send for me and I'll settle him. No, no, going
to church of one's own free will is either a drug (sometimes a
stimulant, sometimes a narcotic) or it's mere snobbery. In either case
it is a futile waste of time, because there are so many problems in this
world--you're one of the most urgent--that it's criminal to avoid their
solution by speculating upon the problem of the next world, which is
insoluble."
"But is there another world?" she asked.
"I don't think so."
"And all those announcements in the cemetery meant nothing?"
"Nothing but human vanity--the vanity of the dead and the vanity of the
living."
"Thanks," Sylvia said. "I thought that was probably the explanation."
Mabel, who had long ago admitted that Philip was just as funny as Sylvia
had described him, often used to ask her what they found to talk about.
"He can't be interested in Earl's Court, and you're such a kid. I can't
understand it."
"Well, we talked about religion to-day," Sylvia told her.
"Oh, that's it, is it?" Mabel said, very knowingly. "He's one of those
fellows who ought to have been a clergyman, is he? I knew he reminded me
of some one. He's the walking image of the clergyman where we used to
live in Clapham. But you be careful, Sylvia. It's an old trick, that."
"You're quite wrong. He hates clergymen."
"Oh," Mabel exclaimed, taken aback for a moment, but quickly recovering
herself. "Oh, well, people always pretend to hate what they can't get.
And I dare say he wanted to be a clergyman. But don't let him try to
convert you. It's an old trick to get something for nothing. And I know,
my dear."
July passed away into August, and Sylvia, buried for so many hours in
the airless Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels, was flagging visibly.
Philip used to spend nearly every afternoon and evening in the inner
room where she worked--so many, indeed, that Mr. Woolfe protested and
told her he would really have to put her back into the outer hall,
because good customers were being annoyed by her admirer's glaring at
them through his glasses.
Philip was very much worried by Sylvia's wan looks, and urged her more
insistently to leave her job, and let him provide for her. But having
vowed to herself that never again would she put herself under an
obligation to anybody, she would not hear of leaving the Exhibition.
One Sunday in the middle of August Philip took Sylvia to Oxford, of
which he had often talked to her. She enjoyed the day very much and
delighted him by the interest she took in all the colleges they visited;
but he was very much worried, so he said, by the approach of age.
"You aren't so very old," Sylvia reassured him. "Old, but not very old."
"Fifteen years older than you," he sighed.
"Still, you're not old enough to be my father," she added,
encouragingly.
In the afternoon they went to St. Mary's Walks and sat upon a bench by
the Cherwell. Close at hand a Sabbath bell chimed a golden monotone;
Philip took Sylvia's hand and looked right into her face, as he always
did when he was not wearing his glasses:
"Little delightful thing, if you won't let me take you away from that
inferno of Earl's Court, will you marry me? Not at once, because it
wouldn't be fair to you and it wouldn't be fair to myself. I'm going to
make a suggestion that will make you laugh, but it is quite a serious
suggestion. I want you to go to school."
Sylvia drew back and stared at him over her shoulder.
"To school?" she echoed. "But I'm sixteen."
"Lots of girls--most girls in the position I want you to take--are still
at school then. Only a year, dear child, and then if you will have me,
we'll get married. I don't think you'd be bored down in Hampshire. I
have thousands of books and you shall read them all. Don't get into your
head that I'm asking you to marry me because I'm sorry for you--"
"There's nothing to be sorry for," Sylvia interrupted, sharply.
"I know there's not, and I want you terribly. You fascinate me to an
extent I never could have thought possible for any woman. I really
haven't cared much about women; they always seemed in the way. I do
believe you would be happy with me. We'll travel to the East together.
You shall visit Japan and Turkey. I love you so much, Sylvia. Tell me,
don't you love me a little?"
"I like you very much indeed," she answered, gently. "Oh, very, very,
very much. Perhaps I love you. I don't think I love you, because if I
loved you I think my heart would beat much faster when you asked me to
marry you, and it isn't beating at all. Feel."
She put his hand upon her heart.
"It certainly doesn't seem to be unusually rapid," he agreed.
Sylvia looked at him in perplexity. His thin face was flushed, and the
golden light of the afternoon gave it a warmer glow; his very blue eyes
without their glasses had such a wide-open pleading expression; she was
touched by his kindness.
"If you think I ought to go to school," she offered, "I will go to
school."
He looked at her with a question in his eyes. She saw that he wanted to
kiss her, and she pretended she thought he was dissatisfied with her
answer about school.
"I won't promise to marry you," she said. "Because I like to keep
promises and I can't say now what I shall be like in a year, can I? I'm
changing all the time. Only I do like you very, very, very much. Don't
forget that."
He took her hand and kissed it with the courtesy that for her was almost
his greatest charm; manners seemed to Sylvia the chief difference
between Philip and all the other people she had known. Once he had told
her she had very bad manners, and she had lain awake half the night in
her chagrin. She divined that the real reason of his wanting her to go
to school was his wish to correct her manners. How little she knew about
him, and yet she had been asked to marry him. His father and mother were
dead, but he had a sister whom she would have to meet.
"Have you told your sister about me?" Sylvia asked.
"Not yet," he confessed. "I think I won't tell anybody about you except
the lady to whose care I am going to intrust you."
Sylvia asked him how long he had made up his mind to ask her to marry
him, and he told her he had been thinking about it for a long time, but
that he had always been afraid at the last moment.
"Afraid I should disgrace you, I suppose?" Sylvia said.
He put on his glasses and coughed, a sure sign he was embarrassed. She
laughed.
"And of course there's no doubt that I _should_ disgrace you. I probably
shall now as a matter of fact. Mabel will be rather sorry," she went on,
pensively. "She likes me to be there at night in case she gets
frightened. She told me once that the only reason she ever went wrong
was because she was frightened to sleep alone. She was married to a
commercial traveler, who, of course, was just the worst person she could
have married, because he was always leaving her alone. Poor Mabel!"
Philip took her hand again and said in a tone of voice which she
resented as adumbrating already, however faintly, a hint of ownership:
"Sylvia dear, you won't talk so freely as that in the school, will you?
Promise me you won't."
"But it used to amuse you when I talked like that," she said. "You
mustn't think now that you've got the right to lecture me."
"My dear child, it doesn't matter what you say to me; I understand. But
some people might not."
"Well, don't say I didn't warn you," she almost sighed.