When she once more landed on French soil, Sylvia, actuated by a classic
piety, desired to visit her mother's grave. She would have preferred to
go to Lille by herself, for she lacked the showman's instinct; but her
companions were so horrified at the notion of being left to themselves
in Paris until she rejoined them, that in the end she had to take them
with her.
The sight of the old house and the faces of some of the older women in
the _quartier_ conjured up the past so vividly for Sylvia that she could
not bring herself to make any inquiries about the rest of her family. It
seemed as if she must once more look at Lille from her mother's point of
view and maintain the sanctity of private life against the curiosity or
criticism of neighbors. She did not wish to hear the details of her
father's misdoing or perhaps be condoled with over Valentine. The
simplest procedure would have been to lay a wreath upon the grave and
depart again. This she might have done if Mrs. Gainsborough's genial
inquisitiveness about her relatives had not roused in herself a wish to
learn something about them. She decided to visit her eldest sister in
Brussels, leaving it to chance if she still lived where Sylvia had
visited her twelve years ago.
"Brussels," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "Well, that sounds familiar, anyway.
Though I suppose the sprout-gardens are all built over nowadays. Ah
dear!"
The building over of her father's nursery-garden and of many other green
spots she had known in London always drew a tear from Mrs. Gainsborough,
who was inclined to attribute most of human sorrow to the utilitarian
schemes of builders.
"Yes, they found the Belgian hares ate up all the sprouts," Sylvia said.
"And talking of hair," she went on, "what's the matter with yours?"
"Ah, well, there! Now I meant to say nothing about it. But I've left me
mahogany wash at home. There's a calamity!"
"You'd better come out with me and buy another bottle," Sylvia advised.
"You'll never get one here," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "This is a wash,
not a dye, you must remember. It doesn't tint the hair; it just brings
up the color and gives it a nice gloss."
"If that's all it does, I'll lend you my shoe-polish. Go along, you
wicked old fraud, and don't talk to me about washes. I can see the white
hairs coming out like stars."
Sylvia found Elène in Brussels, and was amazed to see how much she
resembled her mother nowadays. M. Durand, her husband, had prospered and
he now owned a large confectioner's shop in the heart of the city, above
which Madame Durand had started a pension for economical tourists. Mrs.
Gainsborough could not get over the fact that her hostess did not speak
English; it struck her as unnatural that Sylvia should have a sister who
could only speak French. The little Durands were a more difficult
problem. She did not so much mind feeling awkward with grown-up people
through having to sit dumb, but children stared at her so, if she said
nothing; and if she talked, they stared at her still more; she kept
feeling that she ought to stroke them or pat them, which might offend
their mother. She found ultimately that they were best amused by her
taking out two false teeth she had, one of which once was lost, because
the eldest boy would play dice with them.
Elène gave Sylvia news of the rest of the family, though, since all the
four married sisters were in different towns in France and she had seen
none of them for ten years, it was not very fresh news. Valentine, in
whose career Sylvia was most interested, was being very well
_entretenue_ by a _marseillais_ who had bought her an apartment that
included a porcelain-tiled bath-room; she might be considered lucky, for
the man with whom she had left Lille had been a rascal. It happened that
her news of Valentine was fresh and authentic, because a _lilleoise_ who
lived in Bruxelles had recently been obliged to go to Marseilles over
some legal dispute and, meeting Valentine, had been invited to see her
apartment. It was a pity that she was not married, but her position was
the next best thing to marriage. Of the Bassompierres Elène had heard
nothing for years, but what would interest Sylvia were some family
papers and photographs that Sylvia's father had sent to her as the
eldest daughter when their mother died, together with an old-fashioned
photograph of their grandmother. From these papers it seemed that an
English _milord_ and not Bassompierre had really been their grandfather.
Sylvia being half English already, it might not interest her so much,
but for herself to know she had English blood _l'avait beaucoup
impressioné_, so many English tourists came to her pension.
Sylvia looked at the daguerreotype of her grandmother, a glass faintly
bloomed, the likeness of a ghost indeed. She then had loved an
Englishman; her mother, too; herself.... Sylvia packed the daguerreotype
out of sight and turned to look at a golden shawl of a material rather
like crêpe de Chine, which had been used to wrap up their mother when
she was a baby. Would Sylvia like it? It was no use to Elène, too old
and frail and faded. Sylvia stayed in Brussels for a week and left with
many promises to return soon. She was glad she had paid the visit; for
it had given back to her the sense of continuity which in the shifting
panorama of her life she had lost, so that she had come to regard
herself as an unreal person, an exception in humanity, an emotional
freak; this separation from the rest of the world had been irksome to
Sylvia since she had discovered the possibility of her falling in love,
because it was seeming the cause of her not being loved. Henceforth she
would meet man otherwise than with defiance or accusation in her eyes;
she, too, perhaps would meet a lover thus.
Sylvia folded up the golden shawl to put it at the bottom of her trunk;
figuratively, she wrapped up in it her memories, tender, gay, sorrowful,
vile all together.
"Soon be in Paris, shall we?" said Mrs. Gainsborough, when the train
reached the eastern suburbs. "It makes one feel quite naughty, doesn't
it? The captain was always going to take me, but we never went,
somehow. What's that? There's the Eiffel Tower? So it is, upon my word,
and just what it looks like in pictures. Not a bit different. I hope it
won't fall down while we're still in Paris. Nice set-out that would be.
I've always been afraid of sky accidents since a friend of mine, a Mrs.
Ewings, got stuck in the Great Wheel at Earl's Court with a man who
started undressing himself. It was all right, as it happened, because he
only wanted to wave his shirt to his wife, who was waiting for him down
below, so as she shouldn't get anxious, but it gave Mrs. Ewings a nasty
turn. Two hours she was stuck with nothing in her bag but a box of
little liver pills, which made her mouth water, she said, she was that
hungry. She _thinks_ she'd have eaten them if she'd have been alone; but
the man, who was an undertaker from Wandsworth, told her a lot of
interesting stories about corpses, and that kept her mind occupied till
the wheel started going round again, and the Exhibition gave her soup
and ten shillings compensation, which made a lot of people go up in it
on the chance of being stuck."
It was strange, Sylvia thought, that she should be as ignorant of Paris
as Mrs. Gainsborough, but somehow the three of them would manage to
enjoy themselves. Lily was more nearly vivacious than she had ever known
her.
"Quite saucy," Mrs. Gainsborough vowed. "But there, we're all young, and
you soon get used to the funny people you see in France. After all,
they're foreigners. We ought to feel sorry for them."
"I say steady, Mrs. Gainsborough," Lily murmured, with a frown. "Some of
these people in the carriage may speak English."
"Speak English?" Mrs. Gainsborough repeated. "You don't mean to tell me
they'd go on jabbering to one another in French if they could speak
English! What an idea!"
A young man who had got into the compartment at Chantilly had been
casting glances of admiration at Lily ever since, and it was on account
of him that she had warned Mrs. Gainsborough. He was a slim, dark young
man dressed by an English tailor, very diffident for a Frenchman, but
when Sylvia began to speculate upon the choice of a hotel he could no
longer keep silence and asked in English if he could be of any help.
When Sylvia replied to him in French, he was much surprised:
_"Mais vous êtes française!"_
_"Je suis du pays de la lune,"_ Sylvia said.
"Now don't encourage the young fellow to gabble in French," Mrs.
Gainsborough protested. "It gives me the pins and needles to hear you.
You ought to encourage people to speak English, if they want to, I'm
sure."
The young Frenchman smiled at this and offered his card to Sylvia, whom
he evidently accepted as the head of the party. She read, "Hector
Ozanne," and smiled for the heroic first name; somehow he did not look
like Hector and because he was so modest she presented him to Lily to
make him happy.
"I am enchanted to meet a type of English beauty," he said. "You must
forgive my sincerity, which arises only from admiration. Madame," he
went on, turning to Mrs. Gainsborough, "I am honored to meet you."
Mrs. Gainsborough, who was not quite sure how to deal with such
politeness, became flustered and dropped her bag. Ozanne and she both
plunged for it simultaneously and bumped their heads; upon this painful
salute a general friendliness was established.
"I am a bachelor," said Ozanne. "I have nothing to occupy myself, and if
I might be permitted to assist you in a research for an apartment I
shall be very elated."
Sylvia decided in favor of rooms on the _rive gauche_. She felt it was a
conventional taste, but held to her opinion against Ozanne's objections.
"But I have an apartment in the Rue Montpensier, with a view of the
Palais Royal. I do not live there now myself. I beseech you to make me
the pleasure to occupy it. It is so very good, the view of the garden.
And if you like an ancient house, it is very ancient. Do you concur?"
"And where will you go?" Sylvia asked.
"I live always in my club. For me it would be a big advantage, I assure
you."
"We should have to pay rent," said Sylvia, quickly.
"The rent will be one thousand a year."
"God have mercy upon us!" Mrs. Gainsborough gasped. "A thousand a year?
Why, the man must think that we're the royal family broken out from
Windsor Castle on the randan."
"Shut up, you silly old thing," said Sylvia. "He's asking nothing at
all. Francs, not pounds. _Vous êtes trop gentil pour nous, Monsieur."_
_"Alors, c'est entendu?"_
_"Mais oui."_
_"Bon! Nous y irons ensemble tout de suite, n'est-ce pas?"_
The apartment was really charming. From the windows one could see the
priests with their breviaries muttering up and down the old garden of
the Palais Royal; and, as in all gardens in the heart of a great city,
many sorts of men and women were resting there in the sunlight. Ozanne
invited them to dine with him that night and left them to unpack.
"Well, I'm bound to say we seem to have fallen on our feet right off,"
Mrs. Gainsborough said. "I shall quite enjoy myself here; I can see that
already."
The acquaintance with Hector Ozanne ripened into friendship, and from
friendship his passion for Lily became obvious, not that really it had
ever been anything else, Sylvia thought; the question was whether it
should be allowed to continue. Sylvia asked Ozanne his intentions. He
declared his desperate affection, exclaimed against the iniquity of not
being able to marry on account of a mother from whom he derived his
entire income, stammered, and was silent.
"I suppose you'd like me and Mrs. Gainsborough to clear out of this?"
Sylvia suggested.
No, he would like nothing of the kind; he greatly preferred that they
should all stay where they were as they were, save only that of course
they must pay no rent in future and that he must be allowed to maintain
entirely the upkeep of the apartment. He wished it to be essentially
their own and he had no intention of intruding there except as a guest.
From time to time no doubt Lily would like to see something of the
French countryside and of the _plages_, and no doubt equally Sylvia
would not be lonely in Paris with Mrs. Gainsborough. He believed that
Lily loved him. She was, of course, like all English girls, cold, but
for his part he admired such coldness, in fact he admired everything
English. He knew that his happiness depended upon Sylvia, and he begged
her to be kind.
Hector Ozanne was the only son of a rich manufacturer who had died about
five years ago. The business had for some time been a limited company of
which Madame Ozanne held the greater number of shares. Hector himself
was now twenty-five and would within a year be found a wife by his
mother; until then he would be allowed to choose a mistress by himself.
He was kind-hearted, simple, and immensely devoted to Lily. She liked
lunching and dining with him, and would like still better dressing
herself at his expense; she certainly cared for him as much now as his
future wife would care for him on the wedding-day. There seemed no
reason to oppose the intimacy. If it should happen that Hector should
fail to treat Lily properly, Sylvia would know how to deal with him, or
rather with his mother. Amen.
July was burning fiercely and Hector was unwilling to lose delightful
days with Lily; they drove away together one morning in a big motor-car,
which Mrs. Gainsborough blessed with as much fervor as she would have
blessed a hired brougham at a suburban wedding. She and Sylvia were left
together either to visit some _plage_ or amuse themselves in Paris.
"Paris I think, you uncommendable mammoth, you phosphor-eyed
hippopotamus, Paris I _think_."
"Well, I should like to see a bit of life, I must say. We've led a very
quiet existence so far. I don't want to go back to England and tell my
friend Mrs. Marsham that I've seen nothing. She's a most enterprising
woman herself. I don't think you ever saw her, did you? Before she was
going to have her youngest she had a regular passion to ride on a camel.
She used to dream of camels all night long, and at last, being as I said
a very enterprising woman and being afraid when her youngest was born he
might be a humpback through her dreaming of camels all the time, she
couldn't stand it no longer and one Monday morning, which is a sixpenny
day, she went off to the Zoo by herself, being seven months gone at the
time, and took six rides on the camel right off the reel, as they say."
"That must have been the last straw," Sylvia said.
"Have I told you this story before, then?"
Sylvia shook her head.
"Well, that's a queer thing. I was just about to say that when she'd
finished her rides she went to look at the giraffes, and one of them got
hold of her straw hat in his mouth and nearly tore it off her head. She
hollered out, and the keeper asked her if she couldn't read the notice
that visitors was requested not to feed these animals. This annoyed Mrs.
Marsham very much, and she told the keeper he wasn't fit to manage
performing fleas, let alone giraffes, which annoyed _him_ very much.
It's a pity you never met her. I sent her a post-card the other day, as
vulgar a one as I could find, but you can buy them just as vulgar in
London."
Sylvia did so far gratify Mrs. Gainsborough's desire to impress Mrs.
Marsham as to take her to one or two Montmartre ballrooms; but she
declared they did not come up to her expectations, and decided that she
should have to fall back on her own imagination to thrill Mrs. Marsham.
"As most travelers do," Sylvia added.
They also went together to several plays, at which Sylvia laughed very
heartily, much to Mrs. Gainsborough's chagrin.
"I'm bothered if I know what you're laughing at," she said, finally. "I
can't understand a word of what they're saying."
"Just as well you can't," Sylvia told her.
"Now there's a tantalizing hussy for you. But I can guess, you great
tomboy."
Whereupon Mrs. Gainsborough laughed as heartily as anybody in the
audience at her own particular thoughts. She attracted a good deal of
attention by this, because she often laughed at them without reference
to what was happening on the stage. When Sylvia dug her in the ribs to
make her keep quiet, she protested that, if she could only tell the
audience what she was thinking, they would not bother any more about the
stage.
"A penny for your thoughts, they say. I reckon mine are worth the price
of a seat in the circle, anyway."
It was after this performance that Sylvia and Mrs. Gainsborough went to
the Café de la Chouette, which was frequented mostly by the performers,
poets, and composers of the music-hall world. The place was crowded, and
they were forced to sit at a table already occupied by one of those
figures that only in Paris seem to have the right to live on an equality
with the rest of mankind, merely on account of their eccentric
appearance. He was probably not more than forty years old, but his
gauntness made him look older. He wore blue-and-white checked trousers,
a tail coat from which he or somebody else had clipped off the tails, a
red velvet waistcoat, and a yachting-cap. His eyes were cavernous, his
cheeks were rouged rather than flushed with fever. He carried a leather
bag slung round his middle filled with waste paper, from which he
occasionally took out a piece and wrote upon it a few words. He was
drinking an unrecognizable liqueur.
Mrs. Gainsborough was rather nervous of sitting down beside so strange a
creature, but Sylvia insisted. The man made no gesture at their
approach, but turned his eyes upon them with the impassivity of a cat.
"Look here, Sylvia, in two twos he's going to give me an attack of the
horrors," Mrs. Gainsborough whispered. "He's staring at me and twitching
his nose like a hungry child at a jam roll. It's no good you telling me
to give over. I can't help it. Look at his eyes. More like coal-cellars
than eyes. I've never been able to abide being stared at since I sat
down beside a wax-work at Louis Tussaud's and asked it where the ladies'
cloak-room was."
"He amuses me," Sylvia said. "What are you going to have?"
"Well, I _was_ going to have a grenadier, but really if that skelington
opposite is going to look at me all night, I think I'll take something
stronger."
"Try a cuirassier," Sylvia suggested.
"Whatever's that?"
"It's the same relation to a curaçao that a grenadier is to a
grenadine."
"What I should really like is a nice little drop of whisky with a little
tiddley bit of lemon; but there, I've noticed if you ask for whisky in
Paris it causes a regular commotion. The waiter holds the bottle as if
it was going to bite him, and the proprietor winks at him he's pouring
out too much, and I can't abide those blue siphons. Sells they call
them, and sells they are."
"I shall order you a bock in a moment," Sylvia threatened.
"Now don't be unkind just because I made a slight complaint about being
stared at. Perhaps they won't make such a bother if I _do_ have a little
whisky. But there, I can't resist it. It's got a regular taste of
London, whisky has."
The man at the table leaned over suddenly and asked, in a tense voice:
"Scotch or Irish?"
"Oh, good land! what a turn you gave me! I couldn't have jumped more,"
Mrs. Gainsborough exclaimed, "not if one of the lions in Trafalgar
Square had said pip-ip as I passed!"
"You didn't think I was English, did you?" said the stranger. "I forget
it myself sometimes. I'm a terrible warning to the world. I'm a pose
that's become a reality."
"Pose?" Mrs. Gainsborough echoed. "Oh, I didn't understand you for the
moment. You mean you're an artist's model?"
The stranger turned his eyes upon Sylvia, and, whether from sympathy or
curiosity, she made friends with him, so that when they were ready to go
home the eccentric Englishman, whom every one called Milord and who did
not offer any alternative name to his new friends, said he would walk
with them a bit of the way, much to Mrs. Gainsborough's embarrassment.
"I'm the first of the English decadents," he proclaimed to Sylvia.
"Twenty years ago I came to Paris to study art. I hadn't a penny to
spend on drugs. I hadn't enough money to lead a life of sin. There's a
tragedy! For five years I starved myself instead. I thought I should
make myself interesting. I did. I became a figure. I learned the
raptures of hunger. Nothing surpasses them--opium, morphine, ether,
cocaine, hemp. What are they beside hunger? Have you got any coco with
you? Just a little pinch? No? Never mind. I don't really like it. Not
really. Some people like it, though. Who's the old woman with you? A
procuress? Last night I had a dream in which I proved the non-existence
of God by the least common multiple. I can't exactly remember how I did
it now. That's why I was so worried this evening; I can't remember if
the figures were two, four, sixteen, and thirty-eight. I worked it out
last night in my dream. I obtained a view of the universe as a
geometrical abstraction. It's perfectly simple, but I cannot get it
right now. There's a crack in my ceiling which indicates the way. Unless
I can walk along that crack I can't reach the center of the universe,
and of course it's hopeless to try to obtain a view of the universe as a
geometrical abstraction if one can't reach the center. I take it you
agree with me on that point. That point! Wait a minute. I'm almost
there. That point. Don't let me forget. That point. That is the point.
Ah!"
The abstraction eluded him and he groaned aloud.
"The more I listen to him," said Mrs. Gainsborough, "the more certain
sure I am he ought to see a doctor."
"I must say good night," the stranger murmured, sadly. "I see that I
must start again at the beginning of that crack in my ceiling. I was
lucky to find the room that had such a crack, though in a way it's
rather a nuisance. It branches off so, and I very often lose the
direction. There's one particular branch that always leads away from the
point. I'm afraid to do anything about it in the morning. Of course, I
might put up a notice to say, _this is the wrong way_; but supposing it
were really the right way? It's a great responsibility to own such a
crack. Sometimes I almost go mad with the burden of responsibility. Why,
by playing about with that ceiling when my brain isn't perfectly clear I
might upset the whole universe! We'll meet again one night at the
Chouette. I think I'll cross the boulevard now. There's no traffic, and
I have to take a certain course not to confuse my line of thought."
The eccentric stranger left them and, crossing the road in a series of
diagonal tacks, disappeared.
"Coco," said Sylvia.
"Cocoa?" echoed Mrs. Gainsborough. "Brandy, more like."
"Or hashish."
"Ashes? Well, I had a fox-terrier once that died in convulsions from
eating coke, so perhaps it is ashes."
"We must meet him again," said Sylvia. "These queer people outside
ordinary life interest me."
"Well, it's interesting to visit a hospital," Mrs. Gainsborough agreed.
"But that doesn't say you want to go twice. Once is enough for that
fellow, to my thinking. He's interesting, but uncomfortable, like the
top of a 'bus."
Sylvia, however, was determined to pursue her acquaintance with the
outcast Englishman. She soon discovered that for years he had been
taking drugs and that nothing but drugs had brought him to his present
state of abject buffoonery. Shortly before he became friends with Sylvia
he had been taken up as a week's amusement by some young men who were
under the impression that they were seeing Parisian life in his company.
They had been generous to him, and latterly he had been able to drug
himself as much as he wanted. The result had been to hasten his supreme
collapse. Even in his last illness he would not talk to Sylvia about his
youth before he came to Paris, and in the end she was inclined to accept
him at his own estimate, a pose that was become a reality.
One evening he seemed more haggard than usual and talked much less; by
the twitching of his nostrils, he had been dosing himself hard with
cocaine. Suddenly, he stretched his thin hand across the marble table
and seized hers feverishly:
"Tell me," he asked. "Are you sorry for me?"
"I think it's an impertinence to be sorry for anybody," she answered.
"But if you mean do I wish you well, why, yes, old son, I wish you very
well."
"What I told you once about my coming to Paris to work at art was all
lies. I came here because I had to leave nothing else behind, not even a
name. You said, one evening when we were arguing about ambition, that if
you could only find your line you might do something on the stage. Why
don't you recite my poems? Read them through. One or two are in English,
but most of them are in French. They are really more sighs than poems.
They require no acting. They want just a voice."
He undid the leather strap that supported his satchel and handed it to
Sylvia.
"To-morrow," he said, "if I'm still alive, I'll come here and find out
what you think of them. But you've no idea how threatening that 'if' is.
It gets longer and longer. I can't see the end if it anywhere. It was
very long last night. The dot of the 'i' was already out of sight. It's
the longest 'if' that was ever imagined."
He rose hurriedly and left the café; Sylvia never saw him again.
The poems of this strange and unhappy creature formed a record of many
years' slow debasement. Many of them seemed to her too personal and too
poignant to be repeated aloud, almost even to be read to oneself. There
was nothing, indeed, to do but burn them, that no one else might
comprehend a man's degradation. Some of the poems, however, were
objective, and in their complete absence of any effort to impress or
rend or horrify they seemed not so much poems as actual glimpses into
human hearts. Nor was that a satisfactory definition, for there was no
attempt to explain any of the people described in these poems; they were
ordinary people of the streets that lived in a few lines. This could
only be said of the poems written in French; those in English seemed to
her not very remarkable. She wondered if perhaps the less familiar
tongue had exacted from him an achievement that was largely fortuitous.
"I've got an idea for a show," Sylvia said to Mrs. Gainsborough. "One or
two old folk-songs, and then one of these poems half sung, half recited
to an improvised accompaniment. Not more than one each evening."
Sylvia was convinced of her ability to make a success, and spent a
couple of weeks in searching for the folk-songs she required.
Lily and Hector came back in the middle of this new idea, and Hector was
sure that Sylvia would be successful. She felt that he was too well
pleased with himself at the moment not to be uncritically content with
the rest of the world, but he was useful to Sylvia in securing an
_audition_ for her. The agent was convinced of the inevitable failure of
Sylvia's performance with the public, and said he thought it was a pity
to waste such real talent on antique rubbish like the songs she had
chosen. As for the poems, they were no doubt all very well in their way;
he was not going to say he had not been able to listen to them, but the
public did not expect that kind of thing. He did not wish to discourage
a friend of M. Ozanne; he had by him the rights for what would be three
of the most popular songs in Europe, if they were well sung. Sylvia read
them through and then sang them. The agent was delighted. She knew he
was really pleased because he gave up referring to her as a friend of M.
Ozanne and addressed her directly. Hector advised her to begin with the
ordinary stuff, and when she was well known enough to experiment upon
the public with her own ideas. Sylvia, who was feeling the need to do
something at once, decided to risk an audition at one of the outlying
music-halls. She herself declared that the songs were so good in their
own way that she could not help making a hit, but the others insisted
that the triumph belonged to her.
_"Vous avez vraiment de l'espièglerie,"_ said Hector.
"You really were awfully jolly," said Lily.
"I didn't understand a word, of course," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "But
you looked that wicked--well, really--I thoroughly enjoyed myself."
During the autumn Sylvia had secured engagements in music-halls of the
_quartier_, but the agent advised her to take a tour before she ventured
to attack the real Paris. It seemed to her a good way of passing the
winter. Lily and Hector were very much together, and though Hector was
always anxious for Sylvia to make a third, she found that the kind of
amusement that appealed to him was much the same as that which had
appealed to the young men who frequented Half Moon Street. It was a life
of going to races, at which Hector would pass ladies without saluting or
being saluted, who, he informed Sylvia and Lily afterward, were his
aunts or his cousins, and actually on one occasion his mother. Sylvia
began to feel the strain of being in the demi-monde but not of it; it
was an existence that suited Lily perfectly, who could not understand
why Sylvia should rail at their seclusion from the world. Mrs.
Gainsborough began to grow restless for the peace of Mulberry Cottage
and the safety of her furniture.
"You never know what will happen. I had a friend once--a Mrs. Beardmore.
She was housekeeper to two maiden ladies in Portman Square--well,
housekeeper, she was more of a companion because one of them was stone
deaf. One summer they went away to Scarborough, and when they came back
some burglars had brought a furniture-van three days running and emptied
the whole house, all but the bell-pulls. Drove back, they did, from
King's Cross in a four-wheeler, and the first thing they saw was a large
board up--TO BE LET OR SOLD. A fine how-de-do there was in Portman
Square, I can tell you; and the sister that was deaf had left her
ear-trumpet in the train and nobody couldn't explain to her what had
happened."
So Mrs. Gainsborough, whose fears had been heightened by the repetition
of this tale, went back to London with what she described as a
collection of vulgarities for Mrs. Marsham. Sylvia went away on tour.
Sylvia found the life of a music-hall singer on tour very solitary. Her
fellow-vagabonds were so much more essentially mountebanks than in
England, and so far away from normal existence, that even when she
traveled in company because her next town coincided with the next town
of other players, she was never able to identify herself with them, as
in England she had managed to identify herself with the other members of
the chorus. She found that it paid her best to be English, and to affect
in her songs an almost excessive English accent. She rather resented the
exploitation of her nationality, because it seemed to her the same kind
of appeal that would have been made by a double-headed woman or a
performing seal. Nobody wanted her songs to be well rendered so much as
unusually rendered; everybody wanted to be surprised by her ability to
sing at all in French. But if the audiences wished her to be English,
she found that being English off the stage was a disadvantage among
these continental mountebanks. Sylvia discovered the existence of a
universal prejudice against English actresses, partly on account of
their alleged personal uncleanliness, partly on account of their
alleged insincerity. On several occasions astonishment was expressed at
the trouble she took with her hair and at her capacity for being a good
_copaine_; when, later on, it would transpire that she was half French,
everybody would find almost with relief an explanation of her apparent
unconformity to rule.
Sylvia grew very weary of the monotonous life in which everybody's
interest was bounded by the psychology of an audience. Interest in the
individual never extended beyond the question of whether she would or
would not, if she were a woman; of whether he desired or did not desire,
if he were a man. When either of these questions was answered the
interest reverted to the audience. It seemed maddeningly unimportant to
Sylvia that the audience on Monday night should have failed to
appreciate a point which the audience of Tuesday night would probably
hail with enthusiasm; yet often she had to admit to herself that it was
just her own inability or unwillingness to treat an audience as an
individual that prevented her from gaining real success. She decided
that every interpretative artist must pander his emotion, his humor, his
wit, his movements nightly, and that somehow he must charm each audience
into the complacency with which a sophisticated libertine seeks an
admission of enduring love from the woman he has paid to satisfy a
momentary desire. Assuredly the most successful performers in the grand
style were those who could conceal even from the most intelligent
audiences their professional relation to them. A performer of
acknowledged reputation would not play to the gallery with battered
wiles and manifest allurements, but it was unquestionable that the
foundation of success was playing to the gallery, and that the
third-rate performer who flattered these provincial audiences with the
personal relation could gain louder applause than Sylvia, who wanted no
audience but herself. It was significant how a word of _argot_ that
meant a fraud of apparent brilliancy executed by an artist upon the
public had extended itself into daily use. Everything was _chic_. It was
_chic_ to wear a hat of the latest fashion; it was _chic_ to impress
one's lover by a jealous outburst; it was _chic_ to refuse a man one's
favors. Everything was chic: it was impossible to think or act or speak
in this world of vagabonds without _chic_.
The individualistic life that Sylvia had always led both in private and
in public seemed to her, notwithstanding the various disasters of her
career, infinitely worthier than this dependency upon the herd that
found its most obvious expression in the theater. It was revolting to
witness human nature's lust for the unexceptionable or its cruel
pleasure in the exception. Yet now, looking back at her past, she could
see that it had always been her unwillingness to conform that had kept
her apart from so much human enjoyment and human gain, though equally
she might claim apart from human sorrow and human loss.
"The struggle, of course, would be terrible for a long while," Sylvia
said to herself, "if everybody renounced entirely any kind of
co-operation or interference with or imitation of or help from anybody
else, but out of that struggle might arise the true immortals. A cat
with a complete personality is surely higher than a man with an
incomplete personality. Anyway, it's quite certain that this
_cabotinage_ is for me impossible. I believe that if I pricked a vein
sawdust would trickle out of me now."
In such a mood of cheated hope did Sylvia return to Paris in the early
spring; she was about to comment on Lily's usual state of molluscry, by
yielding to which in abandoning the will she had lost the power to
develop, when Lily herself proceeded to surprise her.
The affection between Hector and Lily had apparently made a steady
growth and had floated in an undisturbed and equable depth of water for
so long that Lily, like an ambitious water-lily, began to be ambitious
of becoming a terrestrial plant. While for nearly a year she had been
blossoming apparently without regard for anything but the beauty of the
moment, she had all the time been sending out long roots beneath the
water, long roots that were growing more and more deeply into the warm
and respectable mud.
"You mean you'd like to marry Hector?" Sylvia asked.
"Why, yes, I think I should, rather. I'm getting tired of never being
settled."
"But does he want to marry you?"
"We've talked about it often. He hates the idea of not marrying me."
"He'd like to go away with you and live on the top of a mountain remote
from mankind, or upon a coral island in the Pacific with nothing but the
sound of the surf and the cocoanuts dropping idly one by one, wouldn't
he?"
"Well, he did say he wished we could go away somewhere all alone. How
did you guess? How clever you are, Sylvia!" Lily exclaimed, opening wide
her deep-blue eyes.
"My dear girl, when a man knows that it's impossible to be married
either because he's married already or for any other reason, he always
hymns a solitude for two. You never heard any man with serious
intentions propose to live with his bride-elect in an Alpine hut or
under a lonely palm. The man with serious intentions tries to reconcile
his purse, not his person, with poetic aspirations. He's in a quandary
between Hampstead and Kensington, not between mountain-tops and lagoons.
I suppose he has also talked of a dream-child--a fairy miniature of his
Lily?" Sylvia went on.
"We have talked about a baby," Lily admitted.
"The man with serious intentions talks about the aspect of the nursery
and makes reluctant plans to yield, if compelled to, the room he had
chosen for his study."
"You make fun of everything," Lily murmured, rather sulkily.
"But, my dear," Sylvia argued, "for me to be able to reproduce Hector's
dream so accurately proves that I'm building to the type. I'll speculate
further. I'm sure he has regretted the irregular union and vowed that,
had he but known at first what an angel of purity you were, he would
have died rather than propose it."
Lily sat silent, frowning. Presently she jumped up, and the sudden
activity of movement brought home to Sylvia more than anything else the
change in her.
"If you promise not to laugh, here are his letters," Lily said, flinging
into Sylvia's lap a bundle tied up with ribbon.
"Letters!" Sylvia snapped. "Who cares about letters? The love-letters of
a successful lover have no value. When he has something to write that he
cannot say to your face, then I'll read his letter. All public
blandishments shock me."
Hector was called away from Paris to go and stay with his mother at
Aix-les-Bains; for a fortnight two letters arrived every day.
"The snow in Savoy will melt early this year," Sylvia mocked. "It's
lucky he's not staying at St.-Moritz. Winter sports could never survive
such a furnace."
Then followed a week's silence.
"The Alpine Club must have protested," Sylvia mocked. "Avalanches are
not expected in March."
"He's probably motoring with his mother," Lily explained.
The next day a letter arrived from Hector.
HOTEL SUPERBE, AIX-LES-BAINS.
MY DEAR LILY,--I do not know how to express myself. You have known
always the great difficulties of my position opposite to my mother.
She has found that I owe to marry myself, and I have demanded the
hand of Mademoiselle Arpenteur-Legage. I dare not ask your pardon,
but I have written to make an arrangement for you, and from now
please use the apartment which has for me memories the most sacred.
It is useless to fight against circumstances.
HECTOR.
"I think he might have used mourning paper," Sylvia said. "They always
have plenty at health resorts."
"Don't be so unkind, Sylvia," Lily cried. "How can you be so unkind,
when you see that my heart is broken?" She burst into tears.
In a moment Sylvia was on her knees beside her.
"Lily, my dearest Lily, you did not really love him? Oh no, my dear, not
really. If you really loved him, I'll go now to Aix myself and arrange
matters over the head of his stuffy old mother. But you didn't really
love him. You're simply upset at the breaking of a habit. Oh, my dear,
you couldn't really have loved him!"
"He sha'n't marry this girl," Lily declared, standing up in a rage.
"I'll go to Aix-les-Bains myself and I'll see this Mademoiselle." She
snatched the letter from the floor to read the odious name of her rival.
"I'll send her all his letters. You mightn't want to read them, but
she'll want to read them. She'll read every word. She'll read how, when
he was thinking of proposing to her, he was calling me his angel, his
life, his soul, how he was--Oh, she'll read every word, and I'll send
them to her by registered post, and then I'll know she gets them. How
dare a Frenchman treat an English girl like that? How dare he? How dare
he? French people think English girls have no passion. They think we're
cold. Are we cold? We may not like being kissed all the time like French
girls, but we're not cold. Oh, I feel I could kill him!"
Sylvia interrupted her rage.
"My dear, if all this fire and fury is because you're disappointed at
not being married, twist him for fifty thousand francs, buy a silver
casket, put his letters inside, and send them to him for a
wedding-present with your good wishes. But if you love him, darling
Lily, let me go and tell him the truth; if I think he's not worth it,
then come away with me and be lonely with me somewhere. My beautiful
thing, I can't promise you a coral island, but you shall have all my
heart if you will."
"Love him?" echoed Lily. "I hate him. I despise him after this, but why
should he marry her?"
"If you feel like that about him, I should have thought the best way to
punish him would be to let the marriage proceed; to punish him further
you've only to refuse yourself to him when he's married, for I'm quite
sure that within six months he'll be writing to say what a mistake he
made, how cold his wife is, and how much he longs to come back to you,
_la jolie maîtresse de sa jeunesse, le souvenir du bon temps jadis_, and
so on with the sentimental eternities of reconstructed passion."
"Live with him after he's married?" Lily exclaimed. "Why, I've never
even kissed a married man! I should never forgive myself."
"You don't love him at all, do you?" Sylvia asked, pressing her hands
down on Lily's shoulders and forcing her to look straight at her.
"Laugh, my dear, laugh! Hurrah! you can't pretend you care a bit about
him. Fifty thousand francs and freedom! And just when I was getting
bored with Paris."
"It's all very well for you, Sylvia," Lily said, resentfully, as she
tried to shake off Sylvia's exuberance. "You don't want to be married. I
do. I really looked forward to marrying Michael."
Sylvia's face hardened.
"Oh, I know you blame me entirely for that," she continued. "But it
wasn't my fault, really. It was bad luck. It's no good pretending I
wasn't fond of Claude. I was, and when I met him--"
"Look here, don't let's live that episode over again in discussion,"
Sylvia said. "It belongs to the past, and I've always had a great
objection to body-snatching."
"What I was going to explain," Lily went on, "was that Michael put the
idea of marriage into my head. Then being always with Hector, I got used
to being with somebody. I was always treated like a married woman when
we went to the seaside or on motoring tours. You always think that
because I sit still and say nothing my mind's an absolute blank, but it
isn't. I've been thinking for a long time about marriage. After all,
there must be something in marriage, or so many people wouldn't get
married. You married the wrong man, but I don't believe you'll ever find
the right man. You're much, much, much too critical. I _will_ get
married."
"And now," Sylvia said, with a laugh, "to all the other riddles that
torment my poor brain I must add you."
Hector Ozanne tried to stanch Lily's wounded ideals with a generous
compress of notes; he succeeded.
"After all," she admitted, twanging the elastic round the bundle. "I'm
not so badly off."
"We must buy that silver casket for the letters," Sylvia said. "His
wedding-day draws near. I think I shall dress up like the Ancient
Mariner and give them to him myself."
"How much will a silver casket cost?" Lily asked.
Sylvia roughly estimated.
"It seems a good deal," said Lily, thoughtfully. "I think I shall just
send them to him in a cardboard box. I finished those chocolates after
dinner. Yes, that will do quite well. After all, he treated me very
badly and to get his letters back safely will be quite a good-enough
present. What could he do with a silver casket? He'd probably use it for
visiting-cards."
That evening Sylvia, greatly content to have Lily to herself, again took
her to the Café de la Chouette.
Her agent, who was drinking in a corner, came across to speak to her.
"Brazil?" she repeated, doubtfully.
"Thirty francs for three songs and you can go home at twelve. It isn't
as if you had to sit drinking champagne and dancing all night."
Sylvia looked at Lily.
"Would you like a voyage?"
"We might as well go."
The contract was arranged.