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SYLVIA & MICHAEL
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
SYLVIA & MICHAEL
PLASHERS MEAD
SYLVIA SCARLETT
Harper & Brothers
_Publishers_
AUTHOR'S NOTE
I need scarcely say that in 1915 there was no Passport Office in
Bucharest, and that so far as I am aware there are no portraits in
this book. If any of the characters achieve the effect of
portraits, it may be due to their wearing uniform, which makes
every one look alike. Further I should like to emphasise that this
volume is really Book Three of _Sylvia Scarlett_, and is only
published separately on account of the difficulties of production.
SYLVIA &
MICHAEL
THE LATER ADVENTURES OF SYLVIA SCARLETT
_By COMPTON MACKENZIE_
_Author of_ "SYLVIA SCARLETT" "PLASHERS MEAD" ETC.
[Illustration: colophon]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
SYLVIA & MICHAEL
Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published July, 1919
TO THE MEMORY OF MY
FATHER AND IN DEEP
AFFECTION TO MY MOTHER
SYLVIA &
MICHAEL
_Sylvia & Michael_
CHAPTER I
By the time that Sylvia reached Paris she no longer blamed anybody but
herself for what had happened. Everything had come about through her own
greed in trying simultaneously to snatch from life artistic success and
domestic bliss: she had never made a serious attempt to choose between
them, and now she had lost both; for she could not expect to run away
like this and succeed elsewhere to the same degree or even in the same
way as in London. No doubt all her friends would deplore the step she
had taken and think it madness to ruin her career; but after so much
advertisement of her marriage, after the way she had revealed her most
intimate thoughts to Olive, after the confidence she had shown in
Arthur's devotion, there was nothing else but to run away. Yet now that
the engagement had been definitely broken she felt no bitterness toward
Arthur: the surprising factor was that he should have waited so long.
Moreover, behind all her outraged pride, behind her regret for losing so
much, deep in her mind burned a flickering intuition that she had really
lost very little, and that out of this new adventure would spring a new
self worthier to demand success, and more finely tempered to withstand
life's onset. Even when she was sitting beneath the mulberry-tree in the
first turmoil of the shock, she had felt a faint gladness that she was
not going to live in Mulberry Cottage with Arthur. Already on this May
morning of Paris with the chestnuts in their flowery prime she could
fling behind her all the sneers and all the pity for her jilting; and
though she had scarcely any money she was almost glad of her poverty,
glad to be plunged once again into the vortex of existence with all the
strength and all the buoyancy that time had given her. She thought of
the months after she left Philip. This was a different Sylvia now, and
not even yet come to what Sylvia might be. It was splendid to hear
already the noise of waters round her, from which she should emerge
stronger and more buoyant than she had ever imagined herself before.
Immediately upon her arrival--for with the little money she had there
was not a day to be lost--Sylvia went in this mood to visit her old
agent; like all parasites, he seemed to know in advance that there was
little blood to suck. She told him briefly what she had been doing, let
him suppose that there was a man in the case, and asked what work he
could find for her.
The agent shook his head; without money it was difficult, nay,
impossible to attempt in Paris anything like she had been doing in
London. No doubt she had made a great success, but a success in London
was no guaranty of a success in Paris, indeed rather the contrary. It
was a pity she had not listened to him when she had the money to spend
on a proper _réclame_.
"_Bref, il n'y a rien à faire, chère madame._"
There was surely the chance of an engagement for cabaret work? The agent
looked at Sylvia; and she could have struck him for the way he was so
evidently pondering her age and measuring it against her looks. In the
end he decided that she was still attractive enough and he examined his
books. She still sang, of course, and no doubt still enjoyed dancing?
Well, they wanted French girls in Petersburg at the Trocadero cabaret.
It would work out at four hundred and fifty francs a month, to which, of
course, the commission on champagne would add considerably. She would
have to remain on duty till 3 A.M., and the management reserved the
right to dispense with her services if she was not a success.
"_Comme artiste ou comme grue?_" Sylvia demanded.
The agent laughed and shrugged his shoulders; he was afraid that there
was nothing else remotely suitable. Sylvia signed the contract, and so
little money was left in her purse that from Paris to Petersburg she
traveled third class, an unpleasant experience.
The change from the Pierian Hall to the place where she was now singing
could scarcely have been greater. For an audience individual, quiet,
attentive, was substituted a noisy gathering of people that was not an
audience at all. It had been difficult enough in old days to sing to
parties drinking round a number of tables; but here to the noise of
drinking was added the noise of eating, the clatter of plates, and the
shouting of waiters. In a way Sylvia was glad, because she did not want
anybody to listen to the song she was singing; she preferred to come on
the small stage as impersonally as an instrument in the music of the
restaurant orchestra, and retire to give way to another singer without
the least attention being paid either to her exit or her successor's
entrance.
Sylvia wished that the rest of the evening could have passed away as
impersonally; she found it terribly hard to endure again, after so long,
the sensation of being for sale, of being pulled into a seat beside
drunken officers, of being ogled by elderly German Jews, of being
treated as an equal by waiters, of feeling upon her the eyes of the
manager as he reckoned her net value in champagne. There were moments
when she despaired of her ability to hold out and when she was on the
verge of cabling to England for money to come home. But pride kept her
back and sustained her; luckily she had to do nothing at present except
talk in order to induce her patrons to buy champagne by the dozen. She
knew that it could not last, that sooner or later she should acquire the
general reputation of being no good for anything except to sit and
chatter at a table and make a man spend money on wine for nothing, and
that then she should have to go because nobody would invite her to his
table. She was grateful that it was Russia and not America or France or
England, where a quicker return for money spent would have been
expected.
When Sylvia first arrived at Petersburg, she had stayed in solitary
misery at a small German hotel that lacked even the merit of being
clean. After she had been performing a week, one of her fellow-artistes
recommended her to a _pension_ kept by an Englishwoman, the widow of a
_chancelier_ at the French Embassy; it was a long way from the cabaret,
beyond the racecourse, but there was the tram, and one would always find
somebody to pay for the droshky home.
Sylvia visited the _pension_, which was a tumble-down house in a very
large garden of the rankest vegetation, a queer embrangled place; but
the first impression of the guests appealed to her, and she moved into
it the same afternoon. Mère Gontran, the owner, was one of those
expatriated women that lose their own nationality and acquire instead a
new nationality compounded of their own, their husband's, and the
country they inhabit. She was about fifty-five years old, nearly six
feet in height, excessively lean, with a neck like a turkey's, a
weather-beaten veinous complexion, very square shoulders, and thin,
colorless hair done up in a kind of starfish at the back. Her eyes were
very bright, of an intense blue, and she had a habit of wearing odd
stockings, which, like her hair, were always coming down, chiefly
because she used her garters to keep her sleeves above her elbows. One
of the twin passions of her life was animals; but she also had three
sons, loutish young men who ate or smoked cigarettes all day and could
hardly speak a word of English or French. Their mother, on the contrary,
though she had come to Petersburg as a governess thirty-five years ago,
and had lived there ever since, could speak hardly any Russian and only
very bad French. Mère Gontran's animals were really more accomplished
linguists than she, if it was true, as she asserted, that a collie she
possessed could say "good-by," "adieu," and "proschai." Sylvia suggested
that the Russian salute had really been a sneeze, but Mère Gontran
defied her to explain away the English or the French, and was angry at
any doubts being cast on what she had heard with her own ears. In
addition to Samuel, the talking collie, there was a senile bulldog
called James, who on a pillow of his own slept beside Mère Gontran in
her bed, which was in a hut two hundred yards away from the house, at
the other end of the garden. High up round the walls were hung boxes for
nine cats; into these they ascended by ladders, and none of them ever
attempted to sleep anywhere but in his own box, an example to the rest
of the _pension_. There were numerous other animals about the place, the
most conspicuous of which were a pony and a goat that spent most of
their time in the kitchen with the only servant, a stunted Tartar who
went muttering about the house and slept in a cupboard under the stairs.
Mère Gontran's other great passion was spiritualism; but Sylvia did not
have much opportunity to test her truthfulness in this direction,
because at first she was more interested in the guests at the _pension_,
accepting Mère Gontran as one accepts a queer fact for future
investigation at the right moment.
The outstanding boarder in Sylvia's eyes was a French aviator called
Carrier, who had come to give lessons and exhibitions of his skill in
Petersburg. He was a great bluff creature with a loud voice and what at
first seemed a boastful manner, until one realized that his brag was a
kind of game which he was playing with fate. Underneath it all there lay
a deep melancholy and a sense of always being very near to death; but
since he would have considered the least hint of this a disgraceful play
of cowardice, he was careful to cover what he might do with what he had
done, which was, even allowing for brag, a great deal. It was only when
Sylvia took the trouble to make friends with him that he revealed to
her his fierce ambition to finish with flying as soon as possible, and
with the money he had made to buy a little farm in the country.
"_Tu sais, la terre vaut mieux que le ciel_," he told her.
He was superstitious, and boasted loudly of his materialism; venturing
upon what was still largely an unknown element, he relied upon mascots,
while preserving a profound contempt for God.
"I've not ever seen him yet," he used to say, "though I've flown higher
than anybody."
His chest of drawers was covered with small talismans, some the pledges
of fortune given him by ladies, others picked up in significant
surroundings or conditions of mind. He wore half a dozen rings, not one
of which was worth fifty francs, but all of which were endowed with
protective qualities. By the scapulars and medals he carried round his
neck he should have been the most pietistic of men, but however sacred
their inscriptions, they counted with him as merely more portable
guaranties than the hideous little monkeys and mandarins that littered
his room.
"When I've finished," he told Sylvia, "I shall throw all this away. When
I'm digging in the good earth, my mascot will be my spade, nothing else,
_je t'assure_."
Sylvia asked him why he had ever taken up flying.
"When I was small I adored my _bécane_; afterward I adored my
automobile. _On arrive comme ça._ Ah, if the fools hadn't invented
biplanes, how happy I should be."
Then perhaps a few moments later he would find himself in the presence
of an audience, and one heard him at his boasting:
"_Bigre!_ I am sorry for the man who cannot fly. One has not lived if
one has not flown. The clouds! One would say a feather-bed beneath.
To-morrow I shall loop the loop at five thousand _mètres_. One might say
that all Petersburg will be regarding me."
There were two young acrobatic jugglers staying at the _pension_, who
performed some extremely dangerous acts, but who performed them with
such ease that they seemed like nothing, especially as the acrobats
themselves were ladylike to a ludicrous degree.
"Oh, Bobbie, say, wouldn't it be fine to fly? Would you be terribly
frightened? I should. Oh, I should be frightened."
"Don't you ever feel s-sick?" Bobbie asked the aviator.
For these two young men Carrier reserved his most hair-raising tales,
which always ended in Willie's saying to Bobbie:
"Oh, Bobbie, I s-s-imply can't listen to any more. So now! Oh, it does
make me feel so funny! Doesn't it you, Bobbie?"
Then arm in arm, giggling like two girls, they used to trip out of
hearing, and Carrier would spit in bewilderment. Once he invited Bobbie
to accompany him on a flight, at which Willie screamed, flung his arms
round Bobbie's neck and created a scene. Yet that same evening they both
balanced themselves with lamps on a high ladder, until the audience
actually stopped eating for a moment and held its breath.
Sylvia found the long hours of the cabaret very fatiguing; even in old
days she had never thought the life anything but the most cruel exaction
made by the rich man for his pleasure. She was determined to survive the
strain that was being put upon her, but she had moments of depression
during which she saw herself going under with the female slaves round
her. Her fatigue was increased by having to take the long tram-ride to
the cabaret, when the smell of her fellow-passengers was a torture; she
could not afford, however, to pay the fare of a droshky twice in one
day, and she did not always find somebody to pay for her drive home. The
contract with the management stipulated that she should be released from
her nightly task at three o'clock; but she was very often kept until
five o'clock when the champagne was flowing and when it would have been
criminal in the eyes of the management to break up a profitable party.
She found that the four hundred and fifty francs a month was not enough
to keep her in Petersburg; it had sounded a reasonably large salary in
Paris, but it barely paid the board at Mère Gontran's; she was,
therefore, dependent for everything above this on the commission of
about five francs she received on each bottle of champagne opened under
her patronage. Fortunately it seemed to give pleasure to the wild
frequenters of this cabaret when a bottle was knocked over on the floor;
yet with every device it was not always possible to escape drinking too
much.
One day at the beginning of July, Sylvia discussed the future with
Carrier, and he advised her to surrender and return to England; he even
offered to lend her the money for the fare. It was a hot day, and she
had a bad headache; she called it a headache, but it was less local than
that: her whole body ached beneath a weight of despair. Sylvia had taken
Carrier into her confidence about her broken marriage and explained why
it was impossible to return to England yet awhile; he contested all her
arguments, and in the mood that she was in she gave way to him. They
spoke in French, and arguments always seemed more incontestable in a
language that refused to allow anything in the nature of a vague
explanation; besides, her own body was responding against her will to
the logic of surrender.
"Pride is all very well," said Carrier. "I am proud of being the
greatest aviator of the moment, but if I fall and smash myself to pulp,
what becomes of my pride? It's impossible for you to lead the life you
are leading now without debasing yourself, and then where will your
pride be? Listen to me. You have been at the cabaret very little over a
month, and already it is telling upon you. It is very good that you are
able even for so long to keep men at a distance, but are you keeping
them at a distance? For me it is the same thing logically if you drink
with men or--" He shrugged his shoulders. "You sell your freedom in
either case. _N'est pas que j'ai raison, ma petite Sylvie?_ For me it
would be a greater pride to return to England and walk with my head in
the air and laugh at the world. Besides, you have a _je ne sais quoi_
that will prevent the world from laughing, but if you continue you will
have nothing. When I fall and smash myself to pulp, I sha'n't care about
the world's laughter. Nor will you."
Indeed he was right, Sylvia thought. That first impulse of defiance
seemed already like a piece of petulance, the gesture of a spoiled
child.
"And you will let me, as a good _copain_, lend you the money for your
fare back?"
"No," Sylvia said. "I think I can just manage to earn it by going once
more to-night to the cabaret. I've arranged to meet some count with an
unpronounceable name, who will probably open at least twenty-four
bottles. I get my week's salary to-night also. I shall have, with what I
have saved, enough to travel back as I came, third class. It has been a
thoroughly third-class adventure, _mon vieux_. A thousand thanks for
your kindness, but I must pay my pride the little solace of earning
enough to get me home again."
Carrier shrugged his shoulders.
"It must be as you feel. That I understand. But it gives me much
pleasure that you are going to be wise. I wish you _de la veine_
to-night."
He pressed upon her a mascot to charm fortune into attendance; it was a
little red devil with his tongue sticking out.
Sylvia went down to the cabaret that evening with the firm intention of
its being the last occasion; her headache had grown worse all the
afternoon and the gloom upon her spirit was deepening. What a fool she
had been to run away with so much assurance of having the courage to
endure this life, what a fool she had been! For the first time the
thought of suicide presented itself to her as a practical solution of
everything. In her present state she could perceive not one valid
argument against it. Who had attacked existence with less caution than
she, and who had deserved more from it in consequence? Had she once
flinched? Had she once taken the easier path? Yes, there had been
Arthur; that was the first time she had given way to indecision, and how
swiftly the punishment had followed. Was it really worth while to seek
now to repair that mistake? Was anything worth while? Except to go
suddenly out of it all, passing as abruptly from life to death as she
had passed from one society to another, one tour to another, one country
to another. She would abide by to-night's decision; if fortune put it
into the head of the count with the unpronounceable name to buy enough
bottles of champagne to make up what was still wanting to her fare, she
would return to England, devote herself to her work, turn again to
books, watch over her godchildren, and live at Mulberry Cottage. If, on
the other hand, the fare should not be made up on this night, why, then
she should kill herself. To-night should be a night of hell. How her
body was burning; how vile the people smelled in this tram; how
wearisome was this garish sunset. She took from her velvet bag the red
devil that Carrier had given her; in this feverish atmosphere it had a
certain fitness, a portentousness even; one could almost believe it
really was a tribute to fate.
The cabaret was crowded that evening; never before had there been such a
hurly-burly of greed and thirst. Sylvia, by good luck, was feeling
thirsty; for the dust from the tram had parched her mouth, and her
tongue was like cork; so much the better, because if she was going to
win that champagne she must be able herself to drink. The tintamarre of
plates, knives, and forks; the chickerchack as of multitudinous apes;
the blare and glare would have prevented the loudest soprano in the
world from sounding more than the squeak of a slate-pencil; and Sylvia
sang with gestures alone, forming with her lips mute words. "I'm paid
for my body, not for my voice; so let my body play the antic," she
muttered, angrily.
When her turn was over, Sylvia came down and joined the two young
Russians, who were waiting for her with another girl at a table on which
already the bottles of champagne were standing like giant pawns.
"_Ils ont la cuite_," the girl whispered to Sylvia. "_Alors, il faut
briffer, chérie; autrement ils seront trop soûlés._"
This seemed good advice, because if their hosts were too drunk too soon
they might get tired of the entertainment; and Sylvia proposed an
adjournment to eat, though she had little enough appetite. As a matter
of fact, the men wanted to drink vodka when supper was proposed, and not
merely to drink it themselves, but to make Sylvia and the other girl
keep them company glass by glass. In Sylvia's condition to drink vodka
would have been to drink liquid fire, and she managed to plead thirst
with such effect that the count benevolently ordered twenty-four bottles
of champagne to be brought immediately for her to quench it. The other
girl was full of admiration for Sylvia's strategy; if the worst came to
the worst, they would have earned seventy-five francs each and could
boast of a successful evening. Sylvia, however, wanted a hundred and
fifty francs for herself, and invoking the little red devil she showed a
way of breaking a bottle in half by filling it with hot water,
saturating a string in methylated spirits, tying the string round the
bottle, setting light to it, and afterward tapping the bottle gently
with a knife until it broke. The count was delighted with this trick,
but thought, as Sylvia hoped he would think, that the trick would be
much better if practised on an unopened bottle of champagne. In this way
twenty-six bottles were broken in childish rage by the count, because
the trick only worked with the help of hot water. He was by now in a
state of drunken obstinacy, and, being determined to show the
superiority of the human mind over matter, he ordered twenty-four more
bottles of champagne, as a Roman emperor might have ordered two dozen
slaves to test an empirical method of execution. By a fluke he managed
to succeed with the twenty-fourth bottle, and having by now gathered
round him an audience, he challenged the onlookers to repeat the trick.
Other women were anxious for their hosts to excel, particularly with
such profit to themselves; soon at every table in the cabaret
champagne-bottles were being cracked like eggs. The count was afraid
that there might not be enough wine left to carry them through the
evening, and ordered another two dozen bottles to be held in reserve for
his table.
Sylvia, though she was feeling horribly ill by now, was nevertheless at
peace, for she had earned her fare back to England. Unluckily, she could
not quit the table and go home, because, unless she waited until three,
she would not be paid her commission on the champagne. She felt herself
receding from the noise of breaking glass all round her, and thought she
was going to faint, but with an effort she gathered the noise round her
again and tried to believe that the room still existed. She seemed to be
catching hold of the great chandelier that hung from the middle of the
ceiling, and fancied that it was only her will and courage to maintain
her hold that was keeping the cabaret and everybody in it from
destruction.
"_Tu es malade, chérie?_" the other girl was asking.
"_Rien, rien_," she was whispering. "_Le chaleur._"
"_Oui, il fait très-chaud._"
The laughter and shouts of triumph rose higher; the noise of breaking
glass was like the waves upon a beach of shingle.
"_Pourquoi il te regarde?_" she found herself asking.
"_Personne ne me regarde, chérie_," the other girl replied.
But somebody was looking at her, somebody seated in one of the boxes for
private supper-parties that were fixed all round the hall, somebody tall
with short fair hair sticking up like a brush, somebody in uniform. He
was beckoning to her now and inviting her to join him in the box. He had
slanting eyes, cruel eyes that glittered and glittered.
"_Il te regarde. Il te regarde_," said Sylvia, hopelessly. "_Il te veut.
Oh, mon Dieu, il te veut! Quoi faire? Il n'y a rien à faire. Il n'y a
rien à faire. Il t'aura. Tu seras perdue. Perdue!_" she moaned.
"_Dis, Sylvie, dis, qu'est-ce que tu as? Tu me fais peur. Tes yeux sont
comme les yeux d'une folle. Est-ce que tu as pris de l'ethère ce soir?_"
It seemed to Sylvia that her companion was being dragged to damnation
before her eyes, and she implored her to flee while there was still
time.
Somebody stood up on a table and shouted at the top of his voice:
"_Il n'y a plus de champagne!_"
The count was much excited by this and demanded immediately how they
were going to spend the money they had brought with them. If there was
no more champagne, they should have to drink vodka, but first they must
play skittles with the empty bottles that were not already broken to
pieces. He picked a circular cheese from the table and bowled it across
the room.
"_Encore du fromage! Encore du fromage!_" everybody was shouting, and
soon everywhere crimson cheeses were rolling along the floor.
"The cheeses belong to me," the count cried. "Nobody else is to order
cheeses. _Garçon! garçon!_ bring me all the cheeses you have. The
cheeses are mine. Mine! Mine!"
His voice rose to a scream.
"_Mon Dieu! ils vont se battre à cause du fromage_" cried the other
girl, holding her hand to her eyes and cowering in her chair.
By this time the management thought it would soon lose what it had made
that evening and ordered the cabaret to be closed. The girls, who were
anxious to escape, ran to be paid for their champagne. Sylvia swayed
and nearly fell in the rush; her companion kept her head and exacted
from the management every copeck. Then she dragged Sylvia with her to a
droshky, put her in, and said good night.
"_Tu ne viens pas avec moi?_" Sylvia cried.
"_Non, non, il faut que j'aille avec lui._"
"_Avec l'homme qui te regardait du loge?_"
"_Non, non, avec mon ami._"
She gave the address of the _pension_ to the driver and vanished in the
confusion. Sylvia fancied that this girl was lost forever, and wept to
herself all the way home, but without shedding a single tear; her body
was like fire. There was nobody about in the _pension_ when she arrived
back; she dragged herself up to her room and lay down on the bed fully
dressed. It seemed that all reality was collapsing fast, and she
clutched the notes stuffed into her corsage as the only solid fact left
to her, the only link between herself and home. Once or twice she
vaguely wondered if she were really ill, but her mental state was so
much worse than the physical pain that she struggled feebly to quieten
her nerves and kept on trying to assure herself that her own unnatural
excitement was nothing except the result of the unnatural excitement at
the cabaret. She found herself wondering if she were going mad, and
trying to piece together the links of the chain that would lead her to
the explanation of this madness.
"What could have made me go mad suddenly like this?" she kept moaning.
It seemed that if she could only discover the cause of her madness she
should be able to cure it. All her attention was soon taken up in
watching little round red devils that kept rising out of the floor
beside the bed, little round red devils that swelled and ripened like
tomatoes, burst, and vanished. Her faculties concentrated upon
discovering a reasonable explanation for such a queer occurrence; many
explanations presented themselves, hovered upon the outskirts of her
brain, and escaped before they could be stated. There was no doubt in
Sylvia's mind that a reasonable explanation existed, and it was
tantalizing never to be able to catch it, because it was quite certain
that such an explanation would have been very interesting; at any rate,
it was a relief to know that there was an explanation and that these
devils were not figments of the imagination. As soon as she had settled
that they had an objective existence, it became rather amusing to watch
them; there was a new variety now that floated about the floor like
bubbles before they burst.
Suddenly Sylvia sat up on the bed and listened; the stairs were creaking
under the footsteps of some heavy person who was ascending. It must be
Carrier. She should go out and call to him; she should like him to see
those devils. She went out into the passage dove-gray with the dawn, and
called. Ah, it was not Carrier; it was that man who had stared from the
box at her friend! She closed the door hurriedly and bolted it; every
sensation of being ill had departed from her; she could feel nothing but
an unspeakable fear. She put her hand to her forehead; it was dripping
wet, and she shivered. The devils were nowhere to be seen; dawn was
creeping about the room in a gray mist. The door opened, and the bolt
fell with a clatter upon the floor; she shrank back upon the bed,
burying her face in the pillow. The intruder clanked up and down the
room with his sword, but never spoke a word; at last, Sylvia, finding
that it was impossible to shut him out by closing her eyes and ears to
his presence, sat up and asked him in French what he wanted and why he
had broken into her room like this. All her unnatural mental excitement
had died away before this drunken giant who was staring at her from
glazed eyes and leaning unsteadily with both hands upon his sword; she
felt nothing but an intense physical weariness and a savage desire to
sleep.
"Why didn't you wait for me at the cabaret?" the giant demanded, in a
thick voice.
Sylvia estimated the distance between herself and the door, and wondered
if her aching legs would carry her there quickly enough to escape those
huge freckled hands that were silky with golden hairs. Her heart was
beating so loudly that she was afraid he would hear it and be angry.
"You didn't ask me to wait," she said. "It was my friend whom you
wanted. She's still there. You've made a mistake. Why don't you go back
and look for her?"
He banged his sword upon the floor angrily.
"A trick! A trick to get rid of me," he muttered. Then he unbuckled his
sword, flung it against a chair, and began to unbutton his tunic.
"But you can't stay here," Sylvia cried. "Don't you understand that
you've made a mistake? You don't want _me_. Go away from here."
"Money?" the giant muttered. "Take it."
He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a bundle of notes, and threw
them on the bed, after which he took off his tunic.
"You're drunk or mad," Sylvia cried, now more exasperated than
frightened. "Go out of my room before I wake up the house."
The giant paid not the least attention, and, seating himself on a chair,
bent over to unlace his boots. Sylvia again tried to muster enough
strength to rise, but her limbs were growing weaker every moment.
"And if you're not the girl I wanted," said the giant, looking up from
his boots, "you're a _girl_, aren't you? I've paid you, haven't I? A
splendid state the world's coming to when a cocotte takes it into her
head to argue with a Russian officer who pays her the honor of his
attentions. The world's turning upside down. The people must have a
lesson. Come, get off that bed and help me undo these boots."
"Do you know that I'm English?" Sylvia said. "You'll find that even
Russian officers cannot insult Englishwomen."
"A cocotte has no nationality," the giant contradicted, solemnly. "She
is common property. Come, if you had wished to talk, you should have
joined my table earlier in the evening. One does not wish to talk when
one is sleepy."
The English acrobats slept next door to Sylvia, and she hammered on the
partition.
"Are you killing bugs?" the giant asked. "You need not bother. They
never disturb me."
Sylvia went on hammering; her arms were getting weaker, and unless help
came soon she should faint. There was a tap on the door.
"Come in," she cried. "Come in at once--at once!"
Willie entered in purple silk pajamas, rubbing his eyes.
"Whatever is it, Sylvia?"
"Take this drunken brute out of my room."
"Bobbie! Bobbie!" he called. "Come here, Bobbie! Bobbie! Will you come?
You are mean. Oh, there's such a nasty man in Sylvia's room! Oh, he's
something dreadful to look at!"
The drunken officer stared at Willie in amazement, trying to make up his
mind if he were an alcoholic vision; his judgment was still further
shaken by the appearance of Bobbie in pajamas of emerald-green silk.
"Oh, Willie, he's got a sword!" said Bobbie. "Oh, doesn't he look
fierce? Oh, he does look fierce! Most alarming I'm sure."
The intruder staggered to his feet.
"_Foutez-moi le camp_," he bellowed, making a grab for his sword.
"For Heaven's sake get rid of the brute," Sylvia moaned. "I'm too weak
to move."
The two young men pirouetted into the middle of the room, as they were
wont to pirouette upon the stage, with arms stretched out in a curve
from the shoulder and fingers raised mincingly above an imaginary teacup
held between the first finger and thumb. When they reached the giant
they stopped short to sustain the preliminary pose of a female acrobat;
then turning round, they ran back a few steps, turned round again, and
with a scream flung themselves upon their adversary; he went down with a
crash, and they danced upon his prostrate form like two butterflies over
a cabbage.
The noise had wakened the other inhabitants of the _pension_, who came
crowding into Sylvia's room; with the rest was Carrier and they managed
to extract from her a vague account of what had happened. The aviator,
in a rage, demanded an explanation of his conduct from the officer, who
called him a _maquereau_. Carrier was strong; with help from the
acrobats he had pushed the officer half-way through the window when Mère
Gontran, who, notwithstanding her bedroom being two hundred yards away
from the _pension_, had an uncanny faculty for divining when anything
had gone wrong, appeared on the scene. Thirty-five years in Russia had
made her very fearful of offending the military, and she implored
Carrier and the acrobats to think what they were doing: in her red
dressing-gown she looked like an insane cardinal.
"They'll confiscate my property. They'll send me to Siberia. Treat his
Excellency more gently, I beg. Sylvia, tell them to stop. Sylvia, he's
going--he's going--he's gone!"
He was gone indeed, head first into a clump of lilacs underneath the
window, whither his tunic and sword followed him.
The adventure with the drunken officer had exhausted the last forces of
Sylvia; she lay back on the bed in a semi-trance, soothed by the
unending bibble-babble all round. She was faintly aware of somebody's
taking her hand and feeling her pulse, of somebody's saying that her
eyes were like a dead woman's, of somebody's throwing a coverlet over
her. Then the bibble-babble became much louder; there was a sound of
crackling and a smell of smoke, and she heard shouts of "Fire!" "Fire!"
"He has set fire to the outhouse!" There was a noise of splashing water,
a rushing sound of water, a roar as of a thousand torrents in her head;
the people in the room became animated surfaces, cardboard figures
without substance and without reality; the devils began once more to
sprout from the floor; she felt that she was dying, and in the throes of
dissolution she struggled to explain that she must travel back to
England, that she must not be buried in Russia. It seemed to her in a
new access of semi-consciousness that Carrier and the two acrobats were
kneeling by her bed and trying to comfort her, that they were patting
her hands kindly and gently. She tried to warn them that they would
blister themselves if they touched her, but her tongue seemed to have
separated itself from her body. She tried to tell them that her tongue
was already dead, and the effort to explain racked her whole body. Then,
suddenly, dark and gigantic figures came marching into the room: they
must be demons, and it was true about hell. She tried to scream her
belief in immortality and to beg a merciful God to show mercy and save
her from the Fiend. The somber forms drew near her bed. From an
unimaginably distant past she saw framed in fire the picture of The
Impenitent Sinner's Deathbed that used to hang in the kitchen at Lille;
and again from the past came suddenly back the text of a sermon preached
by Dorward at Green Lanes--_Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall
be as white as snow_. It seemed to her that if only she could explain to
God that her name was really Snow and that Scarlett was only the name
assumed for her by her father, all might even now be well. The somber
forms had seized her, and she beat against them with unavailing hands;
they snatched her from the bed and wrapped her round and round with
something that stifled her cries; with her last breath she tried to
shriek a warning to Carrier of the existence of hell, to beg him to put
away his little red devils lest he, when he should ultimately fall from
the sky, should fall as deep as hell.
Sylvia came out of her delirium to find herself in the ward of a
hospital kept by French nuns; she asked what had been the matter with
her, and, smiling compassionately, they said it was a bad fever. She lay
for a fortnight in a state of utter lassitude, watching the nuns going
about their work as she would have watched birds in the cool deeps of a
forest. The lassitude was not unpleasant; it was a fatigue so intense
that her spirit seemed able to leave her tired body and float about
among the shadows of this long room. She knew that there were other
patients in the ward, but she had no inclination to know who they were
or what they looked like; she had no desire to communicate with the
outside world, nor any anxiety about the future. She could not imagine
that she should ever wish to do anything except lie here watching the
nuns at their work like birds in the cool deeps of a forest. When the
doctor visited her and spoke cheerfully, she wondered vaguely how he
managed to keep his very long black beard so frizzy, but she was not
sufficiently interested to ask him. To his questions about her bodily
welfare she let her tired body answer automatically, and often, when the
doctor was bending over to listen to her heart or lungs, her spirit
would have mounted up to float upon the shadows of sunlight rippling
over the ceiling, that he and her body might commune without disturbing
herself. At last there came a morning when the body grew impatient at
being left behind and when it trembled with a faint desire to follow the
spirit. Sylvia raised herself up on her elbow and asked a nun to bring
her a looking-glass.
"But all my hair has been cut!" she exclaimed. She looked at her eyes:
there was not much life in them, yet they were larger than she had ever
seen them, and she liked them better than before, because they were now
very kind eyes: this new Sylvia appealed to her.
She put the glass down and asked if she had been very ill.
"Very ill indeed," said the nun.
Sylvia longed to tell the nun that she must not believe all she had said
when she was delirious: and then she wondered what she had said.
"Was I very violent in my delirium?" she asked.
The nun smiled.
"I thought I was in hell," said Sylvia, seriously. "When are my friends
coming to see me?"
The nun looked grave.
"Your friends have all gone away," she said at last. "They used to come
every day to inquire after you, but they went away when war was
declared."
"War?" Sylvia repeated. "Did you say war?"
The nun nodded.
"War?" she went on. "This isn't part of my delirium? You're not teasing
me? War between whom?"
"Russia, France, and England are at war with Germany and Austria."
"Then Carrier has left Petersburg?"
"Hush," said the nun. "It's no longer Petersburg. It's Petrograd now."
"But I don't understand. Do you mean to tell me that everybody has
changed his name? I've changed my name back to my real name. My name is
Sylvia Snow now. I changed it when I was delirious, but I shall always
be Sylvia Snow. I've been thinking about it all these days while I've
been lying so quiet. Did Carrier leave any message for me? He was the
aviator, you know."
"He has gone back to fight for France," the nun said, crossing herself.
"He was very sorry about your being so ill. You must pray for him."
"Yes, I will pray for him," Sylvia said. "And there is nobody left?
Those two funny little English acrobats with fair curly hair. Have they
gone?"
"They've gone, too," said the nun. "They came every day to inquire for
you, and they brought you flowers, which were put beside your bed, but
you were unconscious."
"I think I smelled a sweetness in the air sometimes," Sylvia said.
"They were always put outside the window at night," the nun explained.
The faintest flicker of an inclination to be amused at the nun's point
of view about flowers came over Sylvia; but it scarcely endured for an
instant, because it was so obviously the right point of view in this
hospital, where even flowers, not to seem out of place, must acquire
orderly habits. The nun asked her if she wanted anything and passed on
down the ward when she shook her head.
Sylvia lay back to consider her situation and to pick up the threads of
normal existence, which seemed so inextricably tangled at present that
she felt like a princess in a fairy tale who had been set an impossible
task by an envious witch.
In the first place, putting on one side all the extravagance of
delirium, Sylvia was conscious of a change in her personality so
profound and so violent, that now with the return of reason and with the
impulse to renewed activity, she was convinced of her rightness in
deciding to go back to her real name of Sylvia Snow. The anxiety that
she had experienced during her delirium to make the change positively
remained from that condition as something of value that bore no relation
to the grosser terrors of hell she had experienced. The sense of
regeneration that she was feeling at this moment could not entirely be
explained by her mind's reaction to the peace of the hospital, in the
absence of pain, and to her bodily well-being. She was able to set in
its proportion each of these factors, and when she had done so there
still remained this emotion that was indefinable unless she accepted
for it the definition of regeneration.
"The fact is I've eaten rose leaves and I'm no longer a golden ass," she
murmured. "But what I want to arrive at is when exactly I was turned
into an ass and when I ate the rose leaves."
For a time her mind, unused since her fever to concentrated thinking,
wandered off into the tale of Apuleius. She wished vaguely that she had
the volume so inscribed by Michael Fane with her in Petersburg, but she
had left it behind at Mulberry Cottage. It was some time before she
brought herself back to the realization that the details of the Roman
story had not the least bearing upon her meditation, and that the
symbolism of the enchanted transformation and the recovery of human
shape by eating rose leaves had been an essentially modern and romantic
gloss upon the old author. This gloss, however, had served
extraordinarily well to symbolize her state of mind before she had been
ill, and she was not going to abandon it now.
"I must have had an experience once that fitted in with the idea, or it
would not recur to me like this with such an imputation of
significance."
Sylvia thought hard for a while; the nun on day duty was pecking away at
a medicine-bottle, and the busy little noise competed with her thoughts,
so that she was determined before the nun could achieve her purpose with
the medicine-bottle to discover when she became a golden ass. Suddenly
the answer flashed across her mind; at the same moment the nun triumphed
over her bottle and the ward was absolutely still again.
"I became a golden ass when I married Philip and I ate the rose leaves
when Arthur refused to marry me."
This solution of the problem, though she knew that it was not radically
more satisfying than the defeat of a toy puzzle, was nevertheless
wonderfully comforting, so comforting that she fell asleep and woke up
late in the afternoon, refreshingly alert and eager to resume her
unraveling of the tangled skein.
"I became a golden ass when I married Philip," she repeated to herself.
For a while she tried to reconstruct the motives that fourteen years ago
had induced her toward that step. If she had really begun her life all
over again, it should be easy to do this. But the more she pondered
herself at the age of seventeen the more impossibly remote that Sylvia
seemed. Certain results, however, could even at this distance of time be
ascribed to that unfortunate marriage: among others the three months
after she left Philip. When Sylvia came to survey all her life since,
she saw how those three months had lurked at the back of everything, how
really they had spoiled everything.
"Have I fallen a prey to remorse?" she asked herself. "Must I forever be
haunted by the memory of what was, after all, a necessary incident to my
assumption of assishness? Did I not pay for them that day at Mulberry
Cottage when I could not be myself to Michael, but could only bray at
him the unrealities of my outward shape?"
Lying here in the cool hospital, Sylvia began to conjure against her
will the incidents of those three fatal months, and so weak was she
still from the typhus that she could not shake off their obsession. Her
mind clutched at other memories; but no sooner did she think that she
was safely wrapped up in their protecting fragrance than like Furies
those three months drove her mind forth from its sanctuary and scourged
it with cruel images.
"This is the sort of madness that makes a woman kill her seducer," said
Sylvia, "this insurgent rage at feeling that the men who crossed my path
during those three months still live without remorse for what they did."
Gradually, however, her rage died down before the pleadings of
reasonableness; she recalled that somewhere she had read how the human
body changes entirely every seven years: this reflection consoled her,
and though she admitted that it was a trivial and superficial
consolation, since remorse was conceived with the spirit rather than
with the body, nevertheless the thought that not one corpuscle of her
present blood existed fourteen years ago restored her sense of
proportion and enabled her to shake off the obsession of those three
months, at any rate so far as to allow her to proceed with her
contemplation of the new Sylvia lying here in this hospital.
"Then of course there was Lily," she said to herself. "How can I
possibly excuse my treatment of Lily, or not so much my treatment of her
as my attitude toward her? I suppose all this introspection is morbid,
but having been brought up sharp like this and having been planked down
on this bed of interminable sickness, who wouldn't be morbid? It's
better to have it out with myself now, lest when I emerge from here--for
incredible as it seems just at present I certainly shall emerge one fine
morning--I start being introspective instead of getting down to the hard
facts of earning a living and finding my way back to England. Lily!" she
went on. "I believe really when I look back at it that I took a cruel
delight in watching Lily's fading. It seemed jolly and cynical to
predestine her to maculation, to regard her as a flower, an almost
inanimate thing that could only be displayed by somebody else and was
incapable of developing herself. Yet in the end she did develop herself.
I was very ill then; but when I was in the clinic at Rio I had none of
the sensations that I have now. What sensations did I have, then?
Mostly, I believe, they were worries about Lily because she did not come
to see me. Strange that something so essentially insignificant as Lily
could have created such a catastrophe for Michael, and that I, when she
went her own way, let her drop as easily as a piece of paper from a
carriage. The fact was that, having smirched myself and survived the
smirching, I was unable to fret myself very much over Lily's smirching.
And yet I did fret myself in a queer, irrational way. But what use to
continue? I behaved badly to Lily, and I can't excuse my attitude
toward her by saying that I behaved badly to myself also."
The longer Sylvia went on with the reconstruction of the past the more
deeply did she feel that she was to blame for everything in it.
"I'm so sorry, Sister; I was talking to myself. I think I must really be
very much better to-day."
The nun hastened to her bedside and asked her what she wanted.
"And yet I had the impudence to resent Arthur's treatment of me," she
cried.
The nun shook her forefinger at Sylvia and retired again to her table at
the end of the ward.
"Why, I deserved a much worse humiliation," Sylvia went on. "And I got
it, too. The fact was that when I ate those rose leaves and became a
woman again I was so elated really that I thought everything I had done
in the shape of an ass had been obliterated by the disenchantment. Ah,
how much, how tremendously I deserve the humiliation which that Russian
officer inflicted. And then mercifully came this fever on top of it, and
I have got to rise from this bed and confront life from an entirely
different point of view. I'm going to start from where I was that
afternoon in Brompton Cemetery, when I was speculating about the human
soul. Obviously, now I look back at it, I was just then beginning to
apprehend that I might, after all, possess a soul with obligations to
something more permanent than the body it inhabited. What a fool Philip
was! If he'd only nurtured my soul instead of my body. If he'd only not
bit by bit dried it up to something so small that it became powerless to
compete with the arrogant body that held it. I wonder if he's still
alive. But of course he's still alive. He's only forty-six now. Really
I'd like to write and explain what happened. However, he'd only
laugh--he was always so very contemptuous of souls. Anyway, nothing will
ever induce me to believe that my soul hasn't grown in the most
extraordinary way during this fever. What a triumph she has had over her
poor body. Where's that looking-glass?"
She called to the nun and begged her to bring the looking-glass again.
The nun brought it and tried to console Sylvia for the loss of her hair.
"But I'm rejoicing in it," Sylvia declared. "I'm rejoicing in the sight
I present to the world. Look here, can't you sit down beside me and tell
me something about your religion? I'm absolutely bursting for a
revelation. You fast, don't you, and spend long nights and days in
prayer? Well, I am in the sort of condition in which you find yourself
at the end of a long bout of fasting and prayer. I'm as light as a
feather. I could achieve levitation with very little difficulty."
The nun regarded Sylvia in perplexity.
"Have you thanked Almighty God for your recovery?" she asked.
"No, of course I haven't. I can't thank somebody I know nothing about,"
said Sylvia impatiently. "Besides, it's no good thanking God for my
recovery unless I am sure I ought to be grateful. Mere living for the
sake of living seems to me as sensual as any other appetite. Sister,
can't you give me the key to life?"
The nun sheltered herself beneath an array of pious phrases; she was
like a person who has been surprised naked and hurriedly flings on all
the clothes in reach.
"All that you're saying means nothing to me," said Sylvia, sadly. "And
the reason of it is that you've never lived. You've only looked at evil
from the outside; you've only heard of unbelief."
"I'll make a Novena for you," said the nun, hopelessly. She said it in
the same way as she would have offered to knit a woolen vest. "To-day is
the Assumption." It was as if she justified the woolen vest by a change
in the weather.
Sylvia thanked her for the Novena just as she would have thanked her for
the woolen vest.
"Or perhaps you'd like a priest?" the nun suggested.
Sylvia shook her head.
"I don't feel I require professional treatment yet," she said. "Don't
look so sad, little Sister. I expect your Novena will help me to what
I'm trying to find--if I'm trying to find anything," she added,
pensively. "I think really I'm waiting to be found."
The nun retired disconsolate; the next day Sylvia's spiritual problems
vanished before the problem of getting up for the first time, of
wavering across the ward and collapsing into a wicker chair among three
other convalescent patients who were talking and sewing in the sunlight.
The uniformity of their gray shawls and gray dressing-gowns made Sylvia
pay more attention to the faces of her fellow-sufferers than she might
otherwise have done; she sat in silence for a while, exhausted by her
progress across the ward, and listened to their conversation, which was
carried on in French, though as far as she could make out none of them
was of French nationality. Presently a young woman with a complexion
like a slightly shriveled apple turned to Sylvia and asked in her own
language if she were not English.
Sylvia nodded.
"I'm English, too. It's pleasant to meet a fellow-countrywoman here.
What are you going to do about the war?"
"I don't suppose much action on my part will make any difference," said
Sylvia, with a laugh. "I don't suppose I could stop it, however hard I
tried."
The Englishwoman laughed because she evidently wanted to be polite; but
it was mirthless laughter, like an actor's at rehearsal, a mere sound
that was required to fill in a gap in the dialogue.
"Of course not," she agreed. "I was wondering if you would go back to
England as soon as you got out of hospital."
"I shall if I can rake together the money for my fare," Sylvia said.
"Oh, won't your family pay your fare back? Didn't you get that in the
agreement?"
"I don't possess a family," Sylvia said.
"Oh, aren't you a governess? How funny!"
"It would be very much funnier if I was," said Sylvia.
"My name is Eva Savage. What's yours?"
Sylvia hesitated a moment and then plunged.
"Sylvia Snow."
Immediately afterward, with an access of timidity, she supplemented this
by explaining that on the stage she called herself Sylvia Scarlett.
"On the stage," repeated the little governess. "Are you on the stage?
You are lucky."
Sylvia looked at her in surprise, and realized how much younger she was
than a first glance at her led one to suppose.
"I came out to Russia when I was nineteen," Miss Savage went on. "And of
course that's better than staying in England to teach, though I hate
teaching."
Sylvia asked how old she was now, and when she heard that she was only
twenty-four she decided that illness must be the cause of that shriveled
rosy skin that made her look like an old maid of fifty.
They talked for a while of their illness and compared notes, but it
seemed that Miss Savage must have had a mild attack, for she had been
brought into the hospital some time after Sylvia and had already been up
a week.
"I'm going to ask the Sister in charge to let me sleep in the bed next
to yours," said Miss Savage. "After all, we're the only two English
girls here."
Sylvia did not feel at all sure that she liked this plan, but she did
not want to hurt her companion's feelings and agreed without enthusiasm.
Presently she asked if the other two women spoke English, and Miss
Savage told her that one was a German-Swiss, the wife of a pastry-cook
called Benzer, and that the other was a Swedish masseuse; she did not
think that either of them spoke English, but added in a low voice that
they were both very common.
"Interesting?"
"No, common, awfully common," Miss Savage insisted.
Sylvia made a gesture of impatience: her countrywomen always summed up
humanity with such complacent facility. At this moment a little girl of
about thirteen, habited like the rest in a gray shawl, came tripping
down the ward, clapping her hands with glee.
"How lovely war is!" she cried in French. "I am longing to be out of
hospital. I've been in the other ward, and through the window I saw
thousands and thousands of soldiers marching past. _Maman_ cried
yesterday when I asked her why _papa_ hated soldiers. He hates them.
Whenever he sees them marching past he shakes his fist and spits. But I
love them."
This child had endeared herself to the invalids of the hospital; she was
a token of returning health, the boon of which she seemed to pledge to
every one in the company. Even the grim Swedish masseuse smiled and
spoke gently to her in barbaric French. Moreover, here in this quiet
hospital the war had not yet penetrated; it was like a far-distant
thunder-storm which had driven a number of people who were out of doors
to take shelter at home; as Miss Savage said to Sylvia:
"I expect everybody got excited and afraid; yet it all seems very quiet,
really, and I shall stay here with my family. There's no point in
_making_ oneself uncomfortable."
Sylvia agreed with Miss Savage and decided not to worry about her fare
back to England, but rather to stay on for a while in Russia and get up
her strength after leaving the hospital; then when she had spent her
money she should work again, and when this war was over she could
return to Mulberry Cottage with one or two Improvisations added to her
repertory. Now that she was out of bed, life seemed already simple
again, and perhaps she had exaggerated the change in herself; she wished
she had not spoken to the nun so intimately; one of the disadvantages of
being ill was this begetting of an intimacy between the nurse and the
patient, which grows out of bodily dependence into mental servitude; it
was easy to understand why men so often married their nurses.
"I am not sure," said Sylvia to herself, "that the right attitude is not
the contempt of the healthy animal for one of its kind who is sick.
There's a sort of sterile sensuality about nursing and being nursed."
Sylvia's feelings about the war were confirmed by the views of the
doctor who attended her. He had felt a little nervous until England had
taken her place beside Russia and France, but once she had done so, the
war would be over at the latest by the middle of October.
"It's easy to see how frightened the Germans are by the way they are
behaving in Belgium."
"Why, what are they doing?" Sylvia asked.
"They've overrun it like a pack of wolves."
"I have a sister in Brussels," she said, suddenly.
The doctor shook his head compassionately.
"But of course nothing will happen to her," she added.
The doctor hastened to support this theory; Sylvia was still very weak
and he did not want a relapse brought on by anxiety. He changed the
conversation by calling to Claudinette, the little girl who thought war
was so lovely.
"Seen any more soldiers to-day?" he asked, jovially.
"Thousands," Claudinette declared. "Oh, _monsieur_, when shall I be able
to leave the hospital? It's terrible to be missing everything. Besides,
I want to make _papa_ understand how lovely it is to march along, with
everybody thinking how fine and brave it is to be a soldier. Fancy,
_maman_ told me he has been invited to go back to France and that he has
actually refused the invitation."
The doctor raised his eyebrows and flashed a glance at Sylvia from his
bright brown eyes to express his pity for the child's innocence.
At this point Madame Benzer intervened.
"The only thing that worries me about this war is the food: it's bound
to upset custom. People don't order so many tarts when they're thinking
of something else. And the price of everything will go up. Luckily I've
told my husband to lay in stores of flour and sugar. It's a comfort to
be a neutral."
The Swedish masseuse echoed Madame Benzer's self-congratulation:
"Of course one doesn't want to seem an egoist," she said, "but I can't
help knowing that I shall benefit. As a neutral I sha'n't be able to go
and nurse at the front, but I shall be useful in Petersburg."
"Petrograd," the doctor corrected her, with marked irritation.
"I shall never get used to the change," said the masseuse. "When do you
think I shall be strong enough to begin my work again?"
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
"November, perhaps."
"Why, the war will be over by then!" said the masseuse, indignantly.
"They're calling for volunteers in England," Miss Savage observed to
Sylvia. "I'm sure my two brothers have gone. They've always been mad
about soldiering. They're like you, Claudinette."
"If only I could be a _vivandière_!" cried the child. She was unable to
contain her romantic exultation at the idea, and, snatching the doctor's
stethoscope, she marched up and down the ward, pursing her lips to a
shrill "Marseillaise."
"Children are children," said Madame Benzer, fatly.
"It's true," sighed the doctor.
"_She's_ quite well again," said the masseuse, enviously.
"I love children," Sylvia exclaimed.
"Do you?" said Miss Savage. "Wait till you've had to teach them. You'll
hate them then!"
Claudinette's march was interrupted by the nun on duty, who was
horrified at the ward's being used so noisily: though there were no
fresh patients, the rule of stillness could not be broken like this.
Claudinette having been deprived of her bugle, went and drummed out her
martial soul upon a window-pane; the doctor, who felt a little guilty,
stroked his beard and passed on.
The governess carried out her intention of having her bed moved next to
Sylvia; on the first night of the change she whispered across to her in
the darkness, which seemed the more intense round their beds because at
the far end of the ward a lamp burned before an image of the Virgin,
and, inclosed by two screens, the nun on night-duty sat in a dim, golden
mist.
"Are you awake?"
Sylvia answered her in a low voice in order not to disturb the other
patients; she could not bring herself to answer in a whisper, because it
would have made this conversation seem surreptitious.
"Hush! Don't talk so loud. Are you a Catholic?"
"I'm nothing," said Sylvia.
"Do tell me about your life."
"We can talk about that in the morning."
"Oh no, one can't talk secrets in the morning. I want to ask you
something. Do you think that everybody in Russia will go and fight? You
see, Prince Paul isn't a soldier. You remember I told you that Prince
George and Prince Paul, the two elder sons of the family, were both very
handsome? Well, Prince George is in the army, but Prince Paul isn't.
They both made love to me," she added, with a stifled giggle.
Sylvia lay silent.
"Are you shocked?"
"Neither shocked nor surprised," said Sylvia, coldly. "The nobility of
Russia seem to think of nothing else but making love."
"Paul gave me a book once. I've got it here with me in my box. It's
called The _Memories of a German Singer_. Would you like to read it?"
"That book!" Sylvia exclaimed, scornfully. "Why, it's the filthiest book
I ever read."
"You are shocked, then," the governess whispered. "I thought you'd be
more broad-minded. I sha'n't tell you now about Prince Paul. He makes
love divinely. He said it was so thrilling to make love to somebody like
me who looked so proper. I'm dreadfully afraid that when I get back I
shall find he's gone to fight. It's awful to think how dull it will be
without George or Paul. Haven't you had any interesting love-affairs?"
"Good God!" exclaimed Sylvia, angrily. "Do you think there's anything to
be proud of in having love-affairs like yours? Do you think there's
anything fine in letting yourself be treated like a servant by a
lascivious boy? You make me feel sick. How dare you assume that I should
be interested in your--oh, I have no word to call it that can be even
spoken in a whisper."
"You _are_ proper," the governess murmured, resentfully. "I thought
girls on the stage were more broad-minded."
"Is this muttering going to continue all night?" an angry voice
demanded. Farther along the ward could be heard the sound of a bed
rattling with indignation.
The nun pushed back her screen, and the candle-light illumined Madame
Benzer sitting up on her ample haunches.
"One must not talk," said the nun, reproachfully. "One disturbs the
patients. Besides, it is against the rules to talk after the lights are
put out."
"Well, please move me away from here," Sylvia asked, "because if
_mademoiselle_ stays here I shall have to talk."
"I'm sure I'd much rather not stay in this bed," declared Miss Savage in
an injured voice. "And I was only whispering. There was no noise until
_mademoiselle_ began to talk quite loudly."
"Is this discussion worth while?" Sylvia asked, wearily.
"Am I ever to be allowed to get to sleep?" Madame Benzer demanded.
"I should like to sleep, too," protested the masseuse. "If I'm to get
strong enough to resume work in November, I need all the sleep I can
get. I'm not like a child that can sleep through anything."
"_I'm_ not asleep," cried Claudinette, shrilly. "And I'm very content
that I'm not asleep. I adore to hear people talking in the night."
The nun begged for general silence, and the ward was stilled. Sylvia lay
awake in a rage, listening to Madame Benzer and the masseuse while they
turned over and over with sighs and groans and much creaking of their
beds. At last, however, all except herself fell asleep; their united
breathing seemed like the breathing of a large and placid beast. Behind
the screens in that dim golden mist the pages of the nun's breviary
whispered now instead of Miss Savage; the lamp before the image of the
Virgin sometimes flickered and cast upon the insipid face subtle shadows
that gave humanity to what by daylight looked like a large pale-blue
fondant.
"Or should I say 'divinity'?" Sylvia asked herself.
She lay on her side staring at the image, which was the conventional
representation of Our Lady of Lourdes with eyes upraised and hands
clasped to heaven. Contemplated thus, the tawdry figure really acquired
a supplicatory grace, and in the night, the imagination, dwelling upon
this form, began to identify itself with the attitude and to follow
those upraised eyes toward an unearthly quest. Sylvia turned over on her
other side with a perfectly conscious will not to be influenced
externally by what she felt was an unworthy appeal. But when she had
turned over she could not stay averted from the image; a restless
curiosity to know if it was still upon its bracket seized her, and she
turned back to her contemplation.
"How ridiculous all those stories are of supernatural winkings and
blinkings!" she thought. "Why, I could very easily imagine the most
acrobatic behavior by that pathetic little blue figure. And yet it has
expressed the aspirations of millions of wounded hearts."
The thought was overwhelming: the imagination of what this figure
reduplicated innumerably all over the earth had stood for descended upon
Sylvia from the heart of the darkness about her, and she shuddered with
awe.
"If I scoff at that," she thought, "I scoff at human tears. And why
shouldn't I scoff at human tears? Because I should be scoffing at my own
tears. And why not at my own?"
"You dare not," the darkness sighed.
Sylvia crept out of bed and, bending over the governess, waked her with
soft reassurances, as one wakes a child.
"Forgive me," she whispered, "for the way I spoke. But, oh, do believe
me when I tell you that love like that is terrible. I understand the
dullness of your profession, and if you like I will take you with me on
my gipsy life when we leave the hospital. You can amuse yourself with
seeing the world; but if you want love, you must demand it with your
head high. Every little governess who behaves like you creates another
harlot."
"Did you wake me up to insult me?" demanded Miss Savage.
"No, my dear, you don't understand me. I'm not thinking of what you make
yourself. _You_ will pay for that. I'm thinking of some baby now at its
mother's breast, for whose damnation you will be responsible by giving
another proof to man of woman's weakness, by having kindled in him
another lust."
"I think you'd do better to bother about your own soul instead of mine,"
said Miss Savage. "Please let me go to sleep again. When I wanted to
talk, you pretended to be shocked. I asked you if you were a Catholic,
and you told me you were nothing. I particularly avoided hurting your
susceptibilities. The least you can do is to be polite in return."
Sylvia went back to bed, and, thinking over what the governess had said,
decided that, after all, she was right: she ought to bother with her own
soul first.
Three weeks later Sylvia was told that she was now fit to leave the
hospital. The nuns charged her very little for their care; but when she
walked out of the door she had only about eighty rubles in the world.
With rather a heavy heart she drove to Mère Gontran's _pension_.