On the day after she reached Kieff Sylvia went for a walk by herself.
Since she was going to stay only a week in this city and since she still
felt somewhat remote from the world after her long seclusion, she had
not bothered to make friends with any of her fellow-_artistes_.
Presently she grew tired of walking alone and, looking about her, she
saw on the other side of the road a cinema theater, where she decided to
spend the rest of a dreary afternoon. She was surprised to find that the
lowest charge for entrance was two rubles; but when she went inside and
saw the film, she understood the reason. The theater was full of men,
and she could hear them whispering to one another their astonishment at
seeing a woman enter the place; she was thankful that the dim red light
concealed her blushes, and she escaped as quickly as possible, quenching
the impulse to abuse the doorkeeper for not warning her what kind of an
entertainment was taking place inside.
This abrupt and violent reminder of human beastliness shocked Sylvia
very deeply at a moment when she was trying to induce in herself an
attitude of humility; it was impossible not to feel angrily superior to
those swine groveling in their mess. Ordinarily she might have
obliterated the incident with disdain, or at any rate have seen its
proportion to the whole of human life. But now with war closing in upon
the world, and with all the will she had to idealize the abnegation of
the individual that was begotten from the monstrous crime of the mass,
it was terrible to be brought up sharply like this by the unending and
apparently unassailable rampart of human vileness. It seemed to her that
the shame she had felt on finding herself inside that place must even
now be marked upon her countenance, and there was not a passer-by whose
criticism and curiosity she could keep from fancying intently directed
toward herself. Anxious to elude the sensation of this commentary upon
her action, she turned aside from the pavement to stare into the first
shop-window that presented itself, until her blushes had burned
themselves out. The shop she chose happened to be a jeweler's, and
Sylvia, who never cared much for precious stones, was now less than ever
moved by any interest in the barbaric display that winked and glittered
under the artificial stimulus of shaded electric lamps. She tried to see
if she could somehow catch the reflection of her cheeks and ascertain if
indeed they were flaming as high as she supposed. Presently a voice
addressed her from behind, and, looking round, she saw a slim young
soldier well over six feet tall, with slanting almond eyes and wide
nostrils. He pointed to a row of golden hand-bags set with various
arrangements of precious stones and asked her in very bad French if she
admired them. Sylvia's first impulse, when her attention was drawn to
these bags for the first time, was to say that she thought them hideous;
but a sympathetic intuition that the soldier admired them very much and
would be hurt by her disapproval tempted her to agree with him in
praising their beauty. He asked her which of them all she liked the
best; and in order not to spoil this childish game of standing outside a
shop-window and making imaginary purchases, she considered the row for a
while and at last fixed upon one that was set with emeralds, the gold of
which had a greenish tint. The soldier said that he preferred the one in
the middle that was set with rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and emeralds,
which was obviously the most expensive and certainly the most barbaric
of the whole collection. Was Sylvia sure that she had chosen the one she
liked the best? She assured him that her choice was unalterable, and the
soldier, taking her by the arm, bade her enter the shop with him.
"I can't afford to buy a bag," Sylvia protested.
"I can," he replied. "I want to buy you the bag you want."
"But it's impossible," Sylvia argued. "Even if I could give you anything
in return, it would still be impossible. That bag would cost two
thousand rubles at least."
"I have three thousand rubles," said the soldier. "Of what use are they
to me? To-night I go to the front. You like the bag. I like to give it
to you. Come. Do not let us argue in the street like this. We will buy
the bag, and afterward we will have tea together, and then I shall go my
way and you will go your way. It is better that I spend two thousand
rubles on buying you a bag that you want than to gamble them away. You
are French. It is necessary that I do something for you."
"I'm English," Sylvia corrected. "Half English--half French."
"So much the better," the soldier said. "I have never met an
Englishwoman. None of the soldiers in my company have ever met an
Englishwoman. When I tell them that in Kieff I met an Englishwoman and
gave her a golden bag, they will envy me my good fortune. Are we not
suffering all of us together? And is that not a reason why I should give
you something that you very much want?"
"Why do you think I am suffering?" she asked.
"There is sorrow in your eyes," the soldier answered, gravely.
The simplicity of the man overcame her scruples; she felt that her
acceptance of his gift would give him a profound pleasure of which for a
motive of petty pride she had no right to rob him. As for herself, the
meeting with this young soldier had washed away like purest water every
stain with which Russia had marked her--from the brutality of the
drunken officer to the vileness of that cinema theater. Sylvia hesitated
no longer; she accompanied him into the shop and came out again with the
golden bag upon her wrist. Then they went to a confectioner's shop and
ate cakes together; outside in the darkness sleet was falling, but in
her mood of elation Sylvia thought that everything was beautiful.
"It is time for me to go back to the barracks," the soldier announced at
last.
While they were having tea, Sylvia had told him of many events in her
life, and he had listened very seriously, though she doubted if he was
able to understand half of what she told him. He in his turn had not
told her much; but he was still very young, only twenty-one, and he
explained that in his village not much could have happened to him. Soon
after war was declared, his father had died, and, having no brothers or
sisters or mother, he had sold all he had and quitted his village with
thirty-five hundred rubles in his pocket. Five hundred rubles he had
spent riotously and without satisfaction; and he still rejoiced in the
money he had spent on the bag and was even anxious to give Sylvia the
thousand rubles that were left, but she begged him to keep them.
"And so you must really go?" she said.
She walked with him through the darkness and sleet toward the barracks;
soon there was a sound of bugles, and he exclaimed that he must hurry.
"Good-by," Sylvia said. "I shall never forget this meeting." She stood
on tiptoe and, putting her arm round his neck, pulled him toward her and
kissed him.
"Good-by. May you be fortunate and happy," she repeated.
"It rests with God," said the soldier; and he vanished into the noise of
bugles and the confusion of a regimental muster.
The memory of this casual encounter rested in Sylvia's heart with all
the warmth it had originally kindled; nay, rather, it rested there with
a warmth that increased as time went on, and the golden bag came to be
regarded with that most essential and sacred affection which may be
bestowed upon a relic of childhood, an affection that is not sentimental
or comparable in any way to the emotions aroused by the souvenirs of an
old love. The bag possessed, indeed, the recreative quality of art; it
was emotion remembered in tranquillity, and as such fiercely cherished
by its owner. It was a true mascot, a monstrance of human love; for
Sylvia it had a sacramental, almost a divine significance.
From Kieff, much heartened by the omen of fortune's favor, Sylvia
traveled gladly toward Odessa through leagues of monotonous country
shrouded in mist and rain, which, seen thus by an unfamiliar visitant,
was of such surpassing gloom that the notion of war acquired in contrast
an adventurous cheerfulness. Often at railway stations that appeared to
exist along the track without any human reason for existence Sylvia used
to alight with the rest of the passengers and drink glasses of tea
sweetened by spoonfuls of raspberry jam; in a luxury of despair she
would imagine herself left behind by the train and be sometimes half
tempted to make the experiment in order to see how life would adapt
itself to such eccentricity. The only diversion upon this endless
journey was when the train stopped before crossing a bridge to let
soldiers with fixed bayonets mount it and stand in the corridors that
they might prevent any traveler from leaving his seat or even from
looking out of the window. These precautions against outrages with
dynamite affected her at first with a sense of great events happening
beyond these mournful steppes; but when she saw that the bayonets were
so long that in any scuffle they would have been unmanageable, she had a
revulsion from romantic fancies and told herself a little scornfully
what children men were and how much playing at war went on behind the
bloody scenes of action.
Sylvia reached Odessa on October 28th, and the long front looking toward
a leaden sea held a thought of England in its salt rain. The cabaret at
which she was going to work was like all other cabarets, but, being
situated in some gardens that opened on the sea, it had now a sad and
wintry appearance of disuse. A few draggled shrubs, a few chairs not
worth the trouble of putting into shelter, a deserted band-stand and
open-air theater, served to forbid rather than invite gaiety. However,
since the cabaret itself could be reached from a street behind the
sea-front and visitors were not compelled to pass through the ghosts of
a dead summer, this melancholy atmosphere was obviated. The _pension
d'artistes_ at which Sylvia stayed was kept by a certain Madame Eliane,
a woman of personality and charm, with a clear-cut, rosy face and
snow-white hair, who limped slightly and supported herself upon two
ebony canes. Madame Eliane objected to being called _Mère_, which would
have been the usual prefix of ironical affection awarded to the owner of
such a _pension_; although she must have been nearly sixty, she had an
intense hatred of age and a remarkable faculty for remaining young
without losing her dignity. For all the girls under her roof she felt a
genuine affection that demanded nothing in return except the acceptance
of herself as a contemporary, the first token of which was to call her
Eliane; from the men she always exacted _Madame_. Her nationality was
believed to have originally been Austrian, but she had become
naturalized as a Russian many years before the war, when she was the
mistress of an official who had endowed her with the _pension_ before he
departed to a remote Baltic province and the respectability of marriage.
Sylvia found that Eliane was regarded by all the girls as an
illustration of the most perfect success to which any one of their
profession might aspire.
"She's lucky," said a small cockney called Ruby Arnold, who sang in
English popular songs of four years ago that when Sylvia first heard
them shocked her with their violent resuscitation of the past. "Yes, I
reckon she's lucky," Ruby went on. "There isn't no one that doesn't
respect her, as you might say. Isn't she cunning, too, to let her hair
go white instead of keeping it gold like what it was once? Anybody can't
help taking to anybody with white hair. I reckon with white hair and a
house of my own I'd chuck up this life to-morrow, _I_ would. _N'est-ce
pas que j'ai raison?_" she added, in French, with a more brutal
disregard of pronunciation than Sylvia had ever heard.
"_Oui, petite, tu as raison_," agreed Odette, a vast French blonde with
brilliant, prominent eyes, those bulging myopic eyes that are generally
the mirrors of vanity and hysteria. "I have a friend here," she
continued in French, "_une femme du monde avec des idées très-larges_,
who assured me that if she did not know what Eliane was, she might
easily have mistaken her for a _femme du monde_ like herself."
"She and her lady friends," Ruby muttered, contemptuously to Sylvia. "If
you ask me, these French girls don't know a lady when they see one. She
had the nerve to bring her in here to tea one day, an old crow with a
bonnet that looked as if a dog had worried it. She's bound to ask you to
meet her. She can't talk of anything else since she met her in a tram."
"Well, how's the war getting on? What do they say about it now?" asked a
dancer called Flora, flashing a malicious glance at her partner, a young
Belgian of about twenty-five with a pale and unpleasantly debauched
face, who glared angrily in response. "Armand cannot suffer us to talk
about the war," she explained to Sylvia.
"She hates him," Ruby whispered. "And whenever she can she gets in a dig
because he hasn't tried to fight for his country. Funny thing for two
people to live together for three years and hate each other like they
do."
Sylvia said that she had no more information about the war than they had
in Odessa, and there followed groans from all the _artistes_ gathered
together over coffee for the havoc which the war had brought in their
profession.
"I was always _anti-militariste_," Armand proclaimed, "even before the
war. Why, once in France I was arrested for singing a song that made fun
of the army. It's a fine thing to talk about valor and glory and _la
patrie_ when you're _du premier grade_, but when you're not--" He shook
his fist at a world of generals. "_Enfin_, Belgium no longer exists. And
who first thought of stopping the Germans? The king! Does he have to
dance for a living? _Ah, non alors!_ She is always talking about the
war," he went on, looking at Flora. "But if I applied for a passport to
go back, she'd be the first to make a row."
"_Menteur!_" Flora snapped. "_Je m'en fiche._"
"_Alors, ce soir je n'irai pas au cabaret._"
"_Tant mieux! Qu'est-ce que ça peut me ficher? Bon Dieu!_"
"_Alors, nous verrons, ma gosse._"
"_Insoumis!_" she spat forth. "_Comme t'es lâche._"
"They always carry on like that," Ruby whispered. "But they'll be
dancing together to-night just the same as usual."
When Sylvia came down from the dressing-room for her turn she found that
Ruby had prophesied truly. Armand and Flora were dancing together on the
stage, but, though their lips were smiling, the eyes of both were sullen
and hateful. The performance at the Cabaret de l'Aube could not be said
to differ in any particular from that of any other cabaret. Sylvia, when
she was brought face to face with such evidences of international bad
taste, wondered how the world had ever gone to war. All over Europe
people slept in the same kind of wagon-lits (though here in Russia with
a broad gauge they slept more comfortably), ate the same kind of food in
the same kind of hotel, clapped the same mediocre _artistes_, and drank
the same sweet champagne: yet they could talk about the individuality of
nations. How remote war seemed here in Odessa: it was perhaps wrong of
her to escape from it like this, and she pondered the detached point of
view of Armand. Had she the right to despise his point of view? Did she
not herself merit equal contempt?
"I'm too comfortable," she decided, "while there is so much misery in
the distance."
However comfortable Sylvia felt when at a quarter past three she let
herself into the _Pension Eliane_, she felt extremely uncomfortable
about an hour later, when the sound of an explosion and the crash of
falling glass made those inmates of the _pension_ who were still
gossiping down-stairs in the dining-room drop their cigarettes and stare
at one another in astonishment.
"Whatever's that?" Ruby cried.
"It must be the gas," said Armand, who could not turn paler than he was,
but whose lips trembled.
Another crash followed; outside in the street rose a moan of frightened
voices and the clatter of frightened feet.
Two more explosions still nearer drove everybody that was in the
_pension_ out of doors, and when it became certain that war-ships were
bombarding Odessa there was a rush to join the inhabitants who were
fleeing to what they supposed was greater safety in the heart of the
town. In vain Sylvia protested that if the town was really being
bombarded, they were just as safe in a _pension_ near the sea-front as
anywhere else; the mere idea of propinquity to the sea set everybody
running faster than ever away from it. She could hear now the shells
whinnying like nervous horses, and with every crash she kept saying to
herself in a foolish way:
"Well, at any rate, there's no more danger from that one."
At first in the rush of panic she had not observed any particular
incident; but now, as shell after shell exploded without any visible
sign of damage, she began to look with interest at non-combatant
humanity in the presence of danger. She did not know whether to be glad
or sorry that, on the whole, the men behaved worse than the women; she
put this observation on one side to be argued out later with Armand, who
had certainly run faster than any one else in the _pension_. The number
of the shells was already getting less, yet there were no signs of the
populace's recovery. Fear was begetting fear with such rapidity that to
stand still and listen to the moans and groans of the uninjured was
awe-inspiring. In one doorway a distraught man with nothing on but a
shirt and slippers was dancing about with a lighted candle, evidently in
a quandary of terror whether to join the onflowing mob or to stay where
he was. An explosion quite close made up his mind, and he dived down the
steps into the street, where the candle was immediately extinguished;
nevertheless, he continued to hold it as if it were still alight while
he ran with the crowd. In another doorway stood a woman confronted with
a triple problem. Wearing nothing but a wrapper and carrying in her arms
a pet dog, she was trying at the same time to keep her wrapper fastened,
to avoid letting the dog drop, and to shut the door behind her. The
problem was a nice one: she could either keep her wrapper fastened,
maintain the dog, and leave the door open, in which case she would lose
her silver; or she could keep her wrapper close, shut the door, and drop
the dog, in which case she would lose the dog; or she could keep the
dog, shut the door, and let go of her wrapper, in which case she would
lose her modesty. Sylvia's anxiety to see how she would solve the
problem made her forget all about the shells; and it was only when the
perplexed lady in a last desperate attempt slammed the door, so that her
wrapper came flying open and the dog went bolting down the street, that
Sylvia realized the bombardment was over. She turned back toward the
_pension_ with a last look over her shoulder at the lady, who was
vanishing into the darkness, gathering the wrapper round her nakedness
as she ran, and calling wildly to her pet.
Next day the military and civil population set out to find who could
possibly have told the Turkish destroyers that such a place as Odessa
existed. Armand, the Belgian dancer, was particularly loud on the
subject of spies; Sylvia suspected it was he who had suggested to the
police that Madame Eliane, as a reputed Austrian, should be severely
examined with a view to finding out if the signals of which all were
talking could be traced to her windows. If he did inform the police, his
meanness recoiled upon his own head, for the examination of Madame
Eliane was succeeded by an examination of all her guests, in the course
of which Armand's passport was found to be slightly irregular, and he
was nearly expelled to Rumania in consequence. The authorities made up
their minds that no Turkish destroyer should ever again discover the
whereabouts of their town, and the most stringent ordinances against
showing lights were promulgated; but a more important result of the
declaration of war by Turkey than the lighting of Odessa was its
interference with the future plans of the mountebanks at the Cabaret de
l'Aube. There was not one of them who had not intended to proceed from
here to Constantinople, a much more profitable winter engagement than
this Black Sea port.
"_C'est assommant_," Armand declared. "_Zut! On ne peut pas rester ici
tout l'hiver. On crevera._"
"But at any rate one should be thankful that one was not hit by an
_obus_," said Odette. "I nearly died of fright."
"It wasn't the fault of the Turks that we weren't hit," Armand grumbled.
"They did their best."
"Luckily the shells didn't travel so fast as you," Sylvia put in.
Flora laughed at this; but when everybody began to tease Armand about
his cowardice she got angry, and invited any girl present to produce a
man that would have behaved differently.
At last the flotsam that had been stirred up by the alarm of the
bombardment drifted together again and stayed idly in what was, after
all, still a backwater to the general European unrest. The manager of
the cabaret was glad enough to keep his company together for as long as
they would stay. It was getting more difficult all the time to import
new attractions; and since as much money was being made out of human
misery in Odessa as everywhere else, the champagne flowed not much less
freely because, since the Imperial edict, some bribery of the police
was required in order to procure it. Sylvia was puzzled to find what was
fate's intention in thus keeping her from moving farther south: it
seemed a tame end to all her expectation to be stranded here, lost to
everything except the petty life of her fellow-players. However, she
sang her songs every night; somehow her personality attracted the
frequenters of the cabaret, and when after a month she informed the
manager that she must leave and go north again, he begged her to stay at
any rate for another two months--after that he would arrange for her to
travel north and sing at Kieff, Warsaw, and Petrograd, whence she could
make her way back to England.
"Or you might go to Siberia," he suggested.
"Siberia?" she echoed.
That any one should propose a tour in Siberia seemed a joke at first;
when Sylvia found the suggestion was serious, she plunged back with a
shiver into the warmer backwater of Odessa. Deciding that with a
comfortable _pension_, a friendly management, and an appreciative
audience, it would be foolish to risk her health by moving about too
much, she settled down to read Russian novels and study the characters
of her associates.
"You are a funny girl," Ruby said. "Don't you care about fellows?"
"Why should I?" Sylvia countered.
"Oh, I don't know. It seems more natural, somehow. I left home over a
fellow and went with a musical comedy to Paris. That's how I started
touring the continong. Funny you and I should meet like this in Odessa."
"Why?"
"Well, I don't know. We're both English. Talk about the World's End,
Chelsea! I wonder what they'd call this? Do you know, Sylvia, I
sometimes say to myself--supposing if I was to go back to England and
find it didn't really exist any more? I'm a funny girl. I think a lot
when I'm by myself, which isn't often, thank God, or I should get the
willies worse than what I do. I don't know: when I look round and see
that I'm in Odessa, I can't somehow believe that there is such a place
as London. Do you know, sometimes I'd go mad to hear a bus-driver call
out to a cabby, 'You bloody----, where the---- hell do you think you're
shoving yerself!' Well, after seven years without seeing England, any
one does get funny fancies."
"There aren't any cab-drivers now," Sylvia said.
"I suppose that's a fact. Taxis were only just beginning to bob up when
I went away. Oh, well, I reckon the language is still just as choice.
But I would love to hear it. Of course I might hear you swear in the
dressing-room over your corsets or anything, but it's the tone of voice
I hanker after. Oh, well, it'll all come out in the wash, and I don't
suppose they notice the war much in England. Still, I hope the
squareheads won't blow London to pieces. I once did a tour in Germany,
and a fellow with a mustache like a flying trapeze wanted to sleep with
me for ten marks. They've got nerve enough for anything. What's this
word 'boche'? I suppose it's French for rubbish." She began to sing
softly:
"Take me back to London Town,
London town, London town!
That's where I want to be,
Where the folks are kind to me.
Trafalgar Square, oh, ain't it grand?
Oxford Street, the dear old Strand!
Anywhere, anywhere, I don't care....
O God, it gives any one the hump to think about it. Fancy England at
war. Wonders will never cease. I reckon my brother Alf's well in it. He
was never happy without he was fighting somebody."
It was curious, thought Sylvia that evening, as she watched Ruby Arnold
singing her four-year-old songs, how even to that cynical, rat-faced
little cockney in her red-velvet baby's frock the thought of England at
war should bring such a violent longing for home. She tried to become
intimate with Ruby; but after that single unfolding of secret
aspirations and regrets, she drew away from Sylvia, who asked the reason
of her sudden reserve.
"It's not that I don't like you," Ruby explained. "I reckon no girl
could want a better pal than you if she was your sort. Only I'm not. I
like fellows. You don't. Besides, you're different. I won't say you're a
lady, because when all's said and done we're both of us working-girls.
But I don't know. Perhaps it's because you're older than me, only
somehow you make me feel fidgety. That's flat, as the cook said to the
pancake; but you asked me why I was a bit stand-offish and I've got to
speak the truth to girls. I should go balmy otherwise with all the lies
I tell to men. I reckon you'd get on better with Odette and her Fam dee
mond."
Sylvia was vexed by her inability to bridge the gulf between herself and
Ruby; it never occurred to her that the fault lay with any one but
herself, and she felt humiliated by this failure that was so crushing to
her will to love; it seemed absurd that in a few minutes she should have
been able to get so much nearer the heart of that Russian soldier who
accosted her in Kieff than to one of her own countrywomen.
"Perhaps I've learned how to receive good-will," she told herself, "but
not yet how to offer it."
It was merely to amuse herself that Sylvia approached Odette for an
introduction to her famous _femme du monde_. The suggestion, while it
gratified Odette's sense of importance, caused her, nevertheless,
several qualms about Sylvia's fitness for presentation to Madame
Corvelis.
"_Elle a des idées très-larges, tu sais, mais--_" Odette paused. She
could not bring herself to believe that Madame Corvelis's
broad-mindedness was broad enough to include Sylvia. "_Pourtant_, I will
ask her quite frankly. I will say to her, '_Madame_, there is an
_artiste_ who wishes to meet a _femme du monde_.' _Ses idées sont
tellement larges que peut-être elle sera enchantée de faire ta
connaissance._ She has been so charming to me that if I make a _gaffe_
she must forgive me. _Enfin_, she came to take tea with me _chez
Eliane_, and though of course I was careful not to introduce anybody
else to her, she assured me afterward that she had enjoyed herself.
_Alors, nous verrons._"
Madame Corvelis was a little French Levantine who had married a Greek of
Constantinople. Odette had made her acquaintance one afternoon by
helping to unhitch her petticoats, which had managed to get caught up
while she was alighting from a tram. Her gratitude to Odette for
rescuing her from such a blushful situation was profuse and had
culminated in an invitation to take tea with her "in the wretched little
house she and her husband temporarily occupied in Odessa," owing to
their flight from Constantinople at the rumor of war.
"What was M. Corvelis?" Sylvia asked, when she and Odette were making
their way to visit _madame_.
"Oh, he was a man of business. I believe he was secretary to some large
company. You must not judge them by the house they live in here; they
left everything behind in Constantinople. But don't be frightened of M.
Corvelis. I assure you that for a man in his position he is very
simple."
"I'll try not to be very frightened," Sylvia promised.
"And _madame_ is charming. She has the perfect manners of a woman of
forty accustomed to the best society. When I think that eight years
ago--don't tell anybody else this--but eight years ago, _chérie_,"
Odette exclaimed, dramatically, "_je faisais le miché autour des
boulevards extérieurs! Ma chérie_, when I think of my _mauvais début_, I
can hardly believe that I am on my way to take tea with a femme _du
monde_. _Enfin, on arrive!_"
Odette flung proud glances all round her; Sylvia marveled at her
satisfied achievement of a life's ambition, nor did she marvel less when
she was presented to Madame Corvelis, surely the most insignificant
piece of respectability that had ever adorned a cocotte's dream. It was
pathetic to see the way in which the great, flaunting creature worshiped
this plump _bourgeoise_ with her metallic Levantine accent: anxious lest
Odette's deference should seem too effusive, Sylvia found herself
affecting an equally exaggerated demeanor to keep her friend in
countenance, though when she looked at their hostess she nearly laughed
aloud, so much did she resemble a little squat idol receiving the
complimentary adoration of some splendid savage.
"I am really ashamed to receive you in this miserable little house,"
Madame Corvelis protested. "_Mais que voulez-vous?_ Everything is in
Constantinople. Carpets, mirrors, china, silver. We came away like
beggars. _Mais que voulez-vous?_ My husband is so nervous. He feared the
worst. But of course he's nervous. _Que voulez-vous?_ The manager of one
of the largest companies in the East! Well, I say manager, but of course
when a company is as large as his, one ought to say secretary. 'Let us
go to Odessa, Alceste,' he begged. My name is Alceste, but I've no Greek
blood myself. Oh no, my father and mother were both Parisian. _Enfin_,
my father came under the glamour of the East and called me Alceste. _Que
voulez-vous?_"
All the time that Madame Corvelis was talking, Odette was asking Sylvia
in an unbroken whisper if she did not think that _madame_ was
_charmante_, _aimable_, _gentille_, and every other gracious thing she
could be.
"Have you ever been to Constantinople? Have you ever seen the
Bosphorus?" Madame Corvelis went on, turning to Sylvia. "What, you've
never seen the most enchanting city in the world? Oh, but you must! Not
now, of course. The war! It robs us all of something. Don't, please
don't think that Odessa resembles Constantinople."
Sylvia promised she would not.
"_Mais non_, Odessa is nothing. Look at this house! Ah, when I think of
what we've left behind in Constantinople. But M. Corvelis insisted, and
he was right. At any rate, we've brought a few clothes with us, though
of course when we came to this dreadful place we never thought that we
shouldn't be back home in a month. It was merely a precaution. But he
was right to be nervous, you see: the Turks have declared war. When I
think of the poor ambassador. You never saw the ambassador?"
Sylvia shook her head.
"I remember he trod on my toe--by accident, of course--oh yes, it was
entirely an accident. But he was so apologetic. What manners! But then I
always say, if you want to see good manners you must frequent good
society. What a pity you never saw the ambassador!"
"_N'est-ce pas que c'est merveilleux?_" Odette demanded.
"_Merveilleux_," Sylvia agreed, fervently.
"_Encore, madame!_" Odette begged. "_Vos histoires sont tellement
intéressantes._"
"Ah, well, one can't live all one's life in Constantinople without
picking up a few stories."
"Adhesive as burs," Sylvia thought.
"But really the best story of all," Madame Corvelis went on, "is to find
myself here in this miserable little house. That's a pretty bag you
have," she added to Sylvia. "A very pretty bag. Ah, _mon Dieu_, when I
think of the jewelry I've left behind."
At this moment M. Corvelis came in with the cunningly detached
expression of a husband who has been hustled out of the room by his wife
at the sound of a bell in order to convey an impression, when he has had
time to change his clothes, that he habitually dresses _en grande
tenue_. It was thus that Odette described her own preparatory toilet,
and she was ravished by M. Corvelis's reciprocity, whispering to Sylvia
her sense of the compliment to his humble visitors.
"_Homme chic! homme du monde! homme élégant! Mais ça se voit. Dis, t'es
contente?_"
Sylvia smiled and nodded.
The mold of form who had drawn such an ecstasy of self-congratulatory
admiration from Odette treated the two actresses as politely as his wife
had done, and asked Sylvia the same questions. When his reduplication of
the first catechism was practically complete, Odette gave the signal for
departure, and in a cyclone of farewells and compliments they left.
"_Elle est vraiment une femme du monde?_" Odette demanded.
"_De pied en cap_," Sylvia replied.
"_Ton sac en or lui plaisait beaucoup_," said Odette, a little
enviously. "Ah, when I think of myself eight years ago," she went on,
"it seems _incroyable_. I should like to invite them both to tea again
_chez Eliane_. If only the other girls were like you! And last time I
put too much sugar in her tea! _Non, je n'ose pas!_ One sees the
opportunity to raise oneself, but one does not dare grasp it. _C'est la
vie_," she sighed.
Moved by the vision of herself thwarted from advancing any higher,
Odette poured out to Sylvia the story of her life--a sad, squalid story,
lit up here and there by the flashes of melodramatic events and
culminating in the revelation of this paradise that was denied her.
"What would you have done if you had been invited to her house in
Constantinople where the carpets and the mirrors are?"
"She would never have invited me there," Odette sighed. "Here she is not
known. However broad her ideas, she could not defy public opinion at
home. _À la guerre comme à la guerre! Enfin, je suis fille du peuple,
mais on me regarde; c'est déjà quelque chose._"
The _pension_ that to Odette appeared so mean after the glories of
Madame Corvelis's little house had never been so welcome to Sylvia, and
it was strange to think that any one could be more impressed by that
pretentious little _bourgeoise_ with her figure like apples in a string
bag than by Madame Eliane, who resembled a mysterious lady in the
background of a picture by Watteau.
It was in meditation upon such queer contrasts that Sylvia passed away
her time in Odessa, thus and in pondering the more terrifying
profundities of the human soul in the novels of Dostoievski and Tolstoi.
She was not sorry, however, when the time came to leave; she could never
exclude from her imagination the hope of some amazing event immemorially
predestinate that should decide the course of the years still to come.
It would have been difficult for her to explain or justify her
conviction, but it would have been impossible to reject it, and it was
with an oddly superstitious misgiving that she found herself traveling
north again, so strong had been her original impulse to go south. If
anything had been wanting to confirm this belief, her arrival in Warsaw
at the beginning of February would have been enough.
Sylvia left Kieff on the return visit without any new revelation of
human vileness or human virtue, and reached Warsaw to find a mad
populace streaming forth at the sound of the German guns. She had
positively the sensation of meeting a great dark wave that drove her
back, and her interview with the distracted Jew who managed the cabaret
for which she had been engaged was like one of those scenes played in a
front set of a provincial drama to the sounds of feverish preparation
behind the cloth.
"Don't talk to me about songs," the manager cried. "Get out! Can't you
hear the guns? Everything's closed. Oh, my God! My God! Where have I put
it? I had it in my hands a moment ago. Get out, I say."
"Where to?" Sylvia demanded.
"Anywhere. Listen. Don't you think they sound a little nearer even in
these few minutes? Oh, the Germans! They're too strong. What are you
waiting for? Can't you understand me when I say that everything's
closed?"
He wiped the perspiration from his big nose with a duster that left long
black streaks in its wake.
"But where shall I go?" Sylvia persisted.
"Why don't you go to Bucharest? Why in the devil's name does any one
want to be anywhere but in a neutral country in these times? Go to the
Rumanian consul and get your passport _visé_ for Bucharest, and for the
love of God leave me in peace! Can't you see I'm busy this evening?"
Sylvia accepted the manager's suggestion and set out to find the consul:
by this time it was too late to obtain a _visa_ that night, and she was
forced to sleep in Warsaw--a grim experience that remained as a memory
of distant guns booming through a penetrating reek of onions. In the
morning the guns were quieter, and there was a rumor that for the third
time the German thrust for Warsaw had been definitely foiled. Sylvia,
however, could not get over the impression of the evening before, and
what the manager had suggested to rid himself of an importunate woman
she accepted as a clear indication of the direction she ought to follow.
In the waiting-room of the Rumanian Consulate there was an excessively
fat girl who told Sylvia that she was an accompanist anxious, like
herself, to get to Bucharest. Sylvia took the occasion to ask her if she
thought there was a certainty of being engaged in Bucharest, and the fat
girl was fairly encouraging. She told Sylvia that she was a Bohemian
from Prague who had been warned by the Russian police that she would do
well to seek another country.
"And will you get an engagement?" Sylvia asked.
"Oh, well, if I don't, I may as well starve in Bucharest as in Warsaw,"
she replied.
There seemed something ludicrous in the notion of any one so fat as this
starving; the accompanist seemed to divine Sylvia's thoughts, for she
laughed bitterly.
"I dare say you think I'm pretending, but ever since I was warned, I've
been scraping together the money to reach Bucharest somehow; I haven't
eaten a proper meal for a month. But the less I eat the fatter I seem to
get."
Sylvia was vexed that the poor girl should have guessed what she was
thinking, and she went out of her way to ask her advice on the smallest
details of the proposed journey; she knew that there was nothing that
restored a person's self-respect like a request for advice. The fat
girl, whose name inappropriately for a Bohemian appeared to be Lottie,
cheered up, as Sylvia had anticipated, and brimmed over with
recommendations about work in Bucharest.
"You'd better go to the management of the Petit Maxim. You're a singer,
aren't you? Of course Bucharest is very gay and terribly expensive.
You're English, aren't you? You are lucky. But fancy leaving England
now! Still, if you don't get any work you'll be able to go to your
consul and he'll send you home. I'll be able to get home, too, from
Bucharest, but I don't know if I want to. All my friends used to be
French and English girls. I never cared much for Austrians and Germans.
But now I get called _sale boche_ if I open my mouth. How do you explain
this war? It seems very unnecessary, doesn't it?"
"I don't want to be inquisitive," said Sylvia. "But I wish you'd tell me
why you're called Lottie."
"Ah, lots of people ask that." It was evident by the way she spoke that
the ability of her name to arouse the curiosity of strangers was one of
the chief pleasures life had brought to this fat girl. "Well, I had an
_amant de coeur_ once who was English. At least his mother was English:
his father was from Hamburg; in fact, I think he was more Jewish than
anything. He didn't treat me very well, and he threw me over for an
English dancer called Lottie, who died of consumption. It seems a funny
thing to tell you, but the only way I could be revenged was to take her
name when she died. You'd have been surprised to see how much my taking
her name seemed to annoy him. He threatened me with a pistol once, but I
stuck to the name, and then I got fond of it, because I found it created
_beaucoup de réclame_. You see, I've traveled all over Europe, and
people remember me as the fat girl Lottie; so I've never gone back to
my own name. It's just as well, because nobody can pronounce Bohemian
names."
The long formalities at the Consulate were finished at last, and as they
came out Sylvia suggested to the fat girl that they should travel
together. She looked at Sylvia in astonishment.
"But I'm an Austrian."
"Yes, I know. I dare say it's very reprehensible, but, unfortunately, I
can't feel at war with you."
"Thank you for your kindness," said Lottie, "which I'm not going to
repay by traveling with you. After we get out of Russia, yes. But till
we're over the frontier, I sha'n't know you for your own sake. You'd
only have trouble with the Russian police."
"Even police could surely not be so stupid as that?" Sylvia argued.
"_À la guerre comme à la guerre_," the fat girl laughed. "_Au revoir,
petite chose._"
Sylvia left Warsaw that night. Having only just enough money to pay her
fare second-class, she found the journey down through Russia almost
unendurable, especially the first part when the train was swarmed with
fugitives from Warsaw, notwithstanding the news of the German failure to
pierce the line of the Bzura, which was now confirmed. Yet with all the
discomfort she was sustained by an exultant relief at turning south
again; and her faculties were positively strained to attention for the
disclosure of her fate. She was squeezed so tightly into her seat, and
the atmosphere of the compartment was so heavy with the smell of
disturbed humanity that it was lucky she had this inner assurance over
which she could brood hour after hour. She was without sleep for two
nights, and when toward dusk of a dreary February afternoon the frontier
station of Ungheny was reached and she alighted from the third train in
which she had traveled during this journey, she felt dazed for a moment
with the disappointment of somebody who arrives at a journey's end
without being met.
However, there was now the frontier examination by the Russian
authorities of passengers leaving the country to occupy Sylvia's mind,
and she passed with an agitated herd toward a tin-roofed shed in the
middle of which a very large stove was burning. She had noticed Lottie
several times in the course of the journey, and now, finding herself
next her in the crowd, she greeted her cheerfully; but the fat girl
frowned and whispered:
"I'm not going to speak to you for your own sake. Can't you understand?"
Sylvia wondered if she were a spy, who from some motive of charity
wished to avoid compromising her; but there was no time to think about
such problems, because an official was taking her passport and waving
her across to the stacked-up heaps of luggage. There was something
redolent of old sensational novels in this frontier examination,
something theatrically sinister about the attitude of the officials when
they commanded everybody to turn everything out of his trunks and bags.
The shed took on the appearance of a vast rag-heap, and the accumulated
agitation of the travelers was pitiable in its subservience to these
machines of the state; it seemed incredible that human beings should
consent to be treated thus. Presently it became evident that the object
of this relentless search was paper; every scrap of paper, whether it
was loose or used for wrapping and packing, was taken away and dropped
into the stove. The sense of human ignominy became overwhelming when
Sylvia saw men going down on their knees and weeping for permission to
keep important documents; yet no appeal moved the officials, and the
stove burned fiercely with the mixed records of money, love, and
business; with contracts and receipts and title-deeds; even with
toilet-paper and old greasy journals. Sylvia fought hard for the right
to keep her music, and proclaimed her English nationality so insistently
that for a minute or two the officials hesitated and went out to
consult the authorities who had taken charge of her passport; but when
it was found that she was entered there as a music-hall _artiste_, the
music was flung into the stove at once. Confronted with the proofs of
her right to carry music, this filthy spawn of man's will to be enslaved
took from her the only tools of her craft: orang-outangs would have been
more logical. And all over the world the human mind was being debauched
like this by war, or would it be truer to say that war was turning
ordinary stupidity into criminal stupidity? Oh, what did it matter?
Sylvia clasped her golden bag to reassure herself that nobility still
endured in spite of war. Now they were throwing books into the stove!
Sylvia sat down and laughed so loudly that two soldiers came across and
took her arms to lead her outside: they evidently thought she was going
to have hysterics, which would doubtless have been unlawful in the shed.
She waved aside their attentions and went across to pick up her luggage.
When Sylvia had finished and was passing out to find the office where
she had to receive back her passport inscribed with illegible permits to
leave Russia, she saw Lottie being led through a curtained door on the
far side of the shed. The sight made her feel sick: it brought back with
horrible vividness her emotion when, years ago, she had seen on the
French frontier the woman with the lace being led away for smuggling
contraband. What were they going to do? She paused, expecting to hear a
scream issue from that curtained doorway. She could not bring herself to
go away, and, with an excuse of having left something behind in the
shed, she went back. The curtain was pulled aside a moment for some one
within to call the assistance of some one without, and Sylvia had a
brief vision of the fat girl, half undressed, with her arms held, high
above her head while two police officers prodded her like a sheep in a
fair.
"O God!" Sylvia murmured. "God! God! Grant these people their revenge
some day!"
The passengers were at last free to mount another train, and Sylvia saw
with relief that Lottie was taking her place with the rest. She avoided
speaking to her, because she was suffering herself from the humiliation
inflicted upon the fat girl, and felt awed at the idea of any intrusion
upon her shame. The train steamed out of the station, crossed a long
bridge, and pulled up in Rumanian Ungheny, where everybody had to alight
again for the Rumanian officials to look for the old-fashioned
contraband of the days before the war. They did this as perfunctorily as
in those happy days; and the quiet of the neutral railway station was
like the sudden lull that sheltering land gives to the stormiest seas.
If only she had not lost all her music, if only she had not seen the fat
girl behind that curtain, Sylvia could have clapped her hands for
pleasure at this unimpressive little station, which, merely because it
belonged to a country at peace, had a kind of innocence and jollity that
gave it a real beauty.
"Well, aren't you glad I wouldn't have anything to do with you?" said
Lottie, coming up to her with a smile. "You'd have had to go through the
same, probably. The Russian police are brutes."
"All policemen are brutes," Sylvia declared.
"I suppose they have their orders, but I think they might have a woman
searcher."
"Oh, don't talk about it!" Sylvia cried. "Such things crucify the soul."
"You're very _exagérée_ for an English girl," said Lottie. "Aou yes! Aou
yes! I never met an English girl who talked like you."
The train arrived at Jassy about nine o'clock; here they had to change
again, and, since the train for Bucharest did not leave till about
eleven and she was feeling hungry, Sylvia invited Lottie to have dinner
with her. While they were walking along the platform toward the
restaurant there was a sound of hurried footsteps behind them, and a
moment later a breathless voice called out in English:
"Excuse me, please! Excuse me, please! They told me there was being an
English _artiste_ on the train."
That voice reproduced so many times by Sylvia at the Pierian Hall was
the voice of Concetta and, turning round, she saw her.
"Concetta!"
The girl drew in her breath sharply.
"How was you knowing me? My name is Queenie Walters. How was you calling
me Concetta? Ah, the English girl! Oh, my dear, I am so content to see
you."
Sylvia took her in her arms and kissed her.
"Oh, Sylvia! You see I remember your name. I can't get away from Jassy.
I was being expelled from Moscow, and I had no money to come more than
here, and the man I am with here I hate. I want to go to Bucharest, but
he isn't wanting to let me go and gives to me only furs, no money."
"You're not still with Zozo?"
"_Ach_, no! He--how do you say--he shooted me in the leg three years
from now and afterward we were no more friends. The man I am with here
was of Jassy. I had no money. What else must I do?"
Sylvia had not much money, either; but she had just enough to pay
Concetta's fare to Bucharest, whither at midnight they set out.
"And let no one ever tell me again that presentiments don't exist,"
murmured Sylvia, falling asleep for the first time in forty-eight
hours.