"Forget about it, child."
"Were you angry because I was being too much with that boy? If you like,
I shall say to him to-morrow that I cannot dance with him longer."
"Please, Queenie, forget about it. Somebody said something that made me
angry, and I vented my anger on you. It was of no importance."
Queenie looked only half convinced, and when she was in bed she turned
for consolation to the little chromolithographs that were always at
hand. She had the custom of wearing a lace nightcap, and, sitting up
thus in bed while her rapt gaze sought in those fairy landscapes the
reflection of her own visions, she was remote and impersonal as a
painted figure in some adoring angelic company. Sylvia felt that the
moment was come to raise the question of the spiritual mood with which
Queenie's outward appearance seemed in harmony, and that it was her duty
to suggest a way of positively capturing and forever enshrining the
half-revealed wonders of which these pictures spoke to her. Sylvia
fancied that Queenie's development had now only reached as far as her
own at about fifteen, and, looking back to herself at that age, she
thought how much it might have meant to her if somebody could have given
expression to her capacity for wonder then. Moreover, it was improbable
that Queenie would grow much older mentally, and it was impossible for
Queenie to reach her own present point of view by her own long process
of rejecting every other point of view in turn. Queenie would never
reject anything of her own accord, and it seemed urgent to fortify her
with the simple and in some eyes childish externals of religion, which
precisely, on account of such souls, have managed to endure.
"The great argument in favor of the Church seems to me," Sylvia thought,
"that it measures humanity by the weakest and not by the strongest link,
which of course means that it never overestimates its power and survives
assaults that shatter more ambitious and progressive organizations of
human belief. Well, Queenie is a weak enough link, and I sha'n't feel
happy until I have secured her incorporation first into the Church, and,
secondly--I suppose into the state. Yet why should I want to give her
nationality? What is the aim of a state? Material comfort,
really--nothing else. I'm tempted to give her to the Church, but deny
her to the state. Alas! it's a material world, and it's not going to be
spiritualized by me. The devil was sick, etc. No doubt at present
everything promises well for a spiritual revival after this orgy of
insane destructiveness. But history with its mania for repetition isn't
encouraging about the results of war. As a matter of fact, I've got no
right to talk about the war at present. I choked and spluttered for a
while in some of its vile back-wash, and Bucharest hasn't managed to get
the taste out of my mouth. Queenie," she said, aloud, "you know that
during these last weeks I've been going to church regularly?"
Queenie extricated herself from whatever path she was following in her
pictures and looked at Sylvia with blue eyes that were intensely willing
to believe anything her friend told her.
"I knew you were always going out," she said. "But I thought it was to
see a boy."
"Great heavens! child, do you seriously think that I should so much
object to men's getting hold of you if I were doing the same thing
myself in secret? Haven't you yet realized that I can't do things in
secret?"
"Don't be cross with me again. I think you are cross, yes?"
Sylvia shook her head. "What I want to know is: did you ever go to
church in your life, and if you did do you ever think about wanting to
go again?"
"I was going to church with my mother when I was four; my stepmother was
never going to church, and so I was never going myself until two years
ago at Christmas. There was a girl who asked me to go with her, and it
was so sweet. We looked at all the dolls, and there was a cow, but some
woman said, quite loudly: 'Well, if this is the sort of women we was
meeting on Christmas night, I'm glad Christmas only comes once in the
year.' My friend with me was very _maquillée_. Too much paint she was
having, really, and she said to this woman such rude things, and a man
came and was asking us to move along farther. And then outside my friend
sat down on the steps and cried and cried. _Ach_, it was dreadful! She
was making a scene. So I was not going more to church, because I was
always remembering this and being unhappy."
On the next day Sylvia took Queenie to the mission church and introduced
her to the priest; afterward they often went to Mass together. It was
like taking a child; Queenie asked the reason of every ceremony, and
Sylvia, who had never bothered her head with ceremonies, began to wish
she had never exposed herself to so many unanswerable questions. It
seemed to her that she had given Queenie nothing except another shadowy
land in which her vague mind would wander without direction; but the
priest was more hopeful, and undertook to give her instruction so that
she might be confirmed presently. When the question was gone into, there
was no doubt that she had been baptized, for by some freak of memory she
was able to show that she understood the reason of her being called
Concetta from being born on the 8th of December. However, the revelation
of her true name to the priest gave Queenie a horror of his company, and
nothing would induce her to go near him again, or even to enter the
church.
"This was going to bring me bad luck," she told Sylvia. "That name! that
name! How was you so unkind to tell him that name?"
Sylvia was distressed by the thought of the fear she had roused and
explained the circumstances to the priest, who, rather to her
irritation, seemed inclined to resort placidly to prayer.
"But I can only pray when I am in the mood to pray," she protested; and
though she was aware of the weakness of such a habit of mind, she was
anxious to shake the priest out of what she considered his undue
resignation to her failure with Queenie.
The fact was that the atmosphere of the Petit Maxim was getting on
Sylvia's nerves. Apart from the physical revolt that it was impossible
not to feel against the fumes of tobacco and wine, the scent of Eau de
Chypre and Quelques Fleurs, the raucous chatter of conversation and the
jangle of fidgety tunes, there was the perpetual inner resentment
against the gossip about herself and Queenie. Sylvia did not lose any of
her own joy at being able to rest in the high airs of Christian thought
away from all this by reading the books of doctrine and ecclesiastical
history that the priest lent her; but she was disappointed at her
inability to provide any alternative for Queenie except absolute
dependence upon herself. She was quite prepared to accept the final
responsibility of guardianship, and she made it clear to the child that
her ambition to have a permanent sister might be considered achieved.
What she was not prepared to do was to invoke exterior aid to get them
both back to England. She reproached herself sometimes with an
unreasonable egotism; yet when it came to the point of accepting
Philidor's offer to lend her enough money to return home, she always
drew back. Life with Queenie at Mulberry Cottage shone steadily upon the
horizon of her hopes, but she had no belief in the value of that life
unless she could reach it unaided and offer its freedom as the fruit of
her own perseverance and indomitableness. She was annoyed by Queenie's
forebodings over the revelation of her name, and her annoyance was not
any the less because she had to admit that her own behavior in holding
out against accepting the means of escape from Rumania was based upon
nothing more secure than a superstitious fancy.
The Petit Maxim closed at Easter; at the beginning of May the whole
company was re-engaged for an open-air theater called the Petit Trianon.
Sylvia and Queenie were still many francs short of their fares to
England and were forced to re-engage themselves for the summer. The new
place was an improvement on the cabaret because, at any rate during the
first half of May, it was too cold for the public to enjoy sitting about
in a garden and drinking sweet champagne. After a month, however, all
Sylvia's friends went away, some to Sinaia, whither the court had moved;
others, and among them Philidor, were sent to the Austrian frontier; the
expedition to the Dardanelles and the intervention of Italy had brought
Rumania much nearer to the prospect of entering the war. Meanwhile in
Bucharest the German agents worked more assiduously than ever to promote
neutrality and secure the passage of arms and munitions to Turkey.
At the end of May the manager of the Petit Trianon, observing that
Sylvia had for some time failed to take advantage of the warmer weather
by gathering to her table a proper number of champagne-drinkers, and
having received complaints from some of his clients that she made it
impossible to cultivate Queenie's company to the extent they would have
liked, announced to her that she was no longer wanted. Her songs at the
beginning of the evening were no attraction to the thin audience
scattered about under the trees, and he could get a cheaper first
number. This happened to be Lottie, who was engaged to thump on the
piano for half an hour at two hundred francs a month.
"I never knew that I was cutting you out," Lottie explained. "But I've
been playing for nearly four months at a dancing-hall in a low part of
the town and I only asked two hundred in desperation. He'll probably
engage you again if you'll take less."
Sylvia forced herself to ask the manager if he would not change his
mind. She hinted as a final threat that she would make Queenie leave if
he did not, and he agreed at last to engage her again at three hundred
francs instead of three hundred and fifty, which meant that she could
not save a sou toward her going home. At the same time the manager
dismissed Lottie, and everybody said that Sylvia had played a mean
trick. She would not have minded so much if she had not felt really sad
about the fat girl, who was driven back to play in a low dancing-saloon
at less than she had earned before; but she felt that there was no time
to be lost in getting Queenie away from this life, and if it were a
question of sacrificing Queenie or Lottie, it was certainly the fat girl
who must go under.
Since the manager's complaint of the way she kept admirers away from her
friend, Sylvia had for both their sakes to relax some of her
discouraging stiffness of demeanor. One young man was hopeful enough of
ultimate success to send Queenie a bunch of carnations wrapped up in a
thousand-franc note. Normally, Sylvia would have compelled her to refuse
such a large earnest of future liberality; but these months upon the
verge of penury had hardened her, and she bade Queenie keep the money,
or rather she kept it for her to prevent its being frittered away in
petty extravagance. Queenie could not hold her tongue about the
offering; and the young man, when he found that the thousand francs had
brought him no nearer to his goal than a bottle of champagne would have
done, was loud in his advertisement of the way Sylvia had let Queenie
take the money and give nothing in return. Everybody at the Petit
Trianon was positive that Sylvia was living upon her friend, and much
unpleasant gossip was brought back to them by people who of course did
not believe it themselves, but thought it right that they should know
what all the world was saying.
This malicious talk had no effect upon Queenie's devotion, but it added
greatly to Sylvia's disgust for the tawdry existence they were both
leading, and she began to play with the idea of using the thousand
francs to escape from it and get back to England. She was still some way
from bringing herself to the point of such a surrender as would be
involved by temporarily using this money, but each time that she argued
out the point with herself the necessity of doing so presented itself
more insistently. In the middle of July something occurred which swept
on one side every consideration but immediate flight.
All day long a warm and melancholy fog had suffused the suburbs of
Bucharest, from which occasional scarves of mist detached themselves to
float through the high center of the town, dislustering the air as they
went, like steam upon a shining metal. Sylvia had been intending for
some time to visit Lottie and explain to her the circumstances in which
she had been supplanted by herself; such a day as this accorded well
with such an errand. As with all cities of its class, a few minutes
after one left the main streets of Bucharest to go downhill one was
aware of the artificiality of its metropolitan claims. Within five
hundred yards of the sumptuous Calea Victoriei the side-turnings were
full of children playing in the gutter, of untidy women gossiping to one
another from untidy windows, and of small rubbish heaps along the
pavement: and a little farther on were signs of the unquiet newness of
the city in the number of half-constructed streets and half-built
houses.
Lottie lived in one of these unfinished streets in a tumble-down house
that had survived the fields by which not long ago it had been
surrounded. A creeper-covered doorway opened into a paved triangular
courtyard shaded by an unwieldy tree, along one side of which, at an
elevation of about two feet, ran Lottie's room. As Sylvia crossed the
courtyard she could see indistinct forms moving about within, and she
stopped for a moment listening to the drip of the fog above the murmur
of human voices. She did not wish to talk to Lottie in front of
strangers and turned to go back; but the fat girl had already observed
her approach and was standing on the rotten threshold to receive her.
"You're busy," Sylvia suggested.
"No, no. Come in. One of my friends is an English girl."
"But I wanted to talk to you alone. I wanted to explain that I couldn't
refuse to sing again at the Trianon; I've been worrying about you all
this time."
"Oh, that's all right," Lottie said, cheerfully. "I never expected
anything else."
"But the other girls--"
"Oh, the other girls," she repeated, with a contemptuous laugh. "Don't
worry about the other girls. People can always afford to be generous in
this world if it doesn't hurt themselves and does hurt somebody else.
One or two of them came here to condole with me, and I'm sure they got
more pleasure out of seeing my wretched lodging than I got out of their
sympathy. Come in and forget all about them."
Sylvia squeezed her pudgy hand gratefully; it was a relief to find that
the object of so much commiseration had grasped the shallowness of it.
"Who are your friends?" she whispered.
"The man's a juggler who wants an engagement at the Trianon. He's a
Swiss called Krebs. The girl's an English dancer and singer called Maud.
You'll see them both up there to-night for certain. You may as well come
in. What a dreary day, isn't it?"
Sylvia agreed and was aware of ascribing to the weather the faint
malaise that she experienced on following Lottie into her room, which
smelled of stale wall-paper and musty wood, and which, on account of the
overhanging tree and the dirty French windows, was dark and miserable
enough.
"Excuse me getting up to shake hands," said Krebs, in excellent English.
"But this furniture is too luxurious."
He was lying back, smoking a cigarette in an armchair all the legs of
which were missing and the rest of it covered with exudations of
flocculence that resembled dingy cauliflowers. Sylvia saw that he was a
large man with a large undefined face of dark complexion. He offered a
huge hand, brutal and clumsy in appearance, an inappropriate hand for a
juggler, she thought, vaguely. His companion, crudely colored and
shapeless as a quilt, sprawled on another chair. Everything about this
woman was defiant; her harsh accent, the feathers in her hat, her loose
mouth, her magenta cheeks, her white boa, and her white boots affronted
the world like an angry housemaid.
"This is a fine hole, this Rumania," she shrilled. "Gawd! I went to the
English consul at Galantza, expecting to be treated with a little
consideration, and the---- pushed me out of his office. Yes, we read a
great deal about England nowadays, but I've been better treated by
everybody than what I have by the English. Stuck-up la-di-da set of----,
that's what they are, and anybody as likes can hear me say so."
She raised her voice for the benefit of the listeners without that might
be waiting anxiously upon her words.
"Don't kick up such a row," Krebs commanded; but Maud paid no attention
to him and went on.
"England! Yes, I left England ten years ago, and if it wasn't for my
poor old mother I'd never go back. Treat you as dirt, that's what the
English do. That consul threw me out of his office the same as a
_commissionnaire_ might throw any old two-and-four out of the Empire.
Yes, they talk a lot about patriotism and all pulling one way, but when
you ask a consul to lend you the price of your fare to Bucharest, you
don't hear no more about patriotism. As I said to him, 'I suppose you
don't think I'm English?' and he sat there grinning for answer. Yes, I
reckon when they christened that talking chimpanzee at the Hippodrome
'Consul' it was done by somebody who'd had a bit of consul in his time.
What's a consul for? That's what I'm asking. As I said to him, 'What are
you for? Are you paid,' I said, 'to sit there smoking cigarettes for the
good of your country?' 'This ain't a workhouse,' he answered, very
snotty. 'You're right,' I said. 'No fear about any one ever making that
mistake. Why, I reckon it's a bloody sleeping-car, I do.' And with that
I slung my hook out of it. Yes, I could have been very rude to him; only
it was beneath me, the uneducated la-di-da savage! Well, all he's done
is to put me against my own country. That's _his_ war work."
The tirade exhausted itself, and Sylvia, unwilling to be Maud's sponsor
at the Petit Trianon that evening, made some excuse to leave. While she
was walking across the courtyard with Lottie, she heard:
"And who's she? I'll have to tell _her_ off, that's very plain. Did you
see the way she looked down her nose at me? Nice thing if any one can't
say what they think of a consul without being stared at like a mummy by
_her_."
Sylvia asked Lottie if she had known this couple long.
"I've known him a year or two, but she's new. I met them coming up from
the railway station this morning. The girl was stranded without any
money at Galantza, and Krebs brought her on here. He's a fine juggler
and conjurer. Zozo he calls himself on the stage."
Sylvia's heart throbbed as she climbed the streets that led toward the
high center of the city away from the hot mists below: it was imperative
to get Queenie out of Rumania at once, and while she walked along she
began to wonder if she could not procure an English passport, the
delight of possessing which would counterbalance for Queenie the shock
of hearing that the dreaded Zozo was in Bucharest.
"It's such a ridiculous name for a bogy," Sylvia thought. "And the man
himself was not a bit as I pictured him. I'd always imagined some one
lithe and subtle. I wonder what his object was in helping that painted
hussy he was with. Queer, rather."
She reached the British Consulate, but was told rather severely to
direct herself to the special office that occupied itself with
passports.
"Do you want a visa for England?" the clerk inquired.
"Yes, and I also want to inquire about a new passport for my sister,
who's lost hers."
"Lost her passport?" the clerk echoed; he shuddered at the information.
"It seems to upset you," Sylvia said.
"Well, it's a pretty serious matter in war-time," he explained.
"However, we have nothing to do with passports at the Consulate."
The clerk washed his hands of Sylvia's past and future, and she left the
Consulate to discover the other office. By the time she arrived it was
nearly five o'clock, and the clerk looked hurt at receiving a visitor so
late.
"Do you want a visa for England?" he asked.
She nodded, and he pointed to a printed notice that hung above his desk.
"The morning is the time to make such applications," he told her,
fretfully.
"Then why are you open in the afternoon?" Sylvia asked.
"If the application is favorably entertained, the recommendation is
granted in the afternoon. You must then take your passport to the
Consulate for the consular visa, which can only be done in the morning
between twelve and one."
It was like the eternal competition between the tube-lifts and the
tube-trains, she thought.
"But they told me at the Consulate that they have nothing to do with
passports."
"The Consulate _has_ nothing to do with passports until the applicant
for a visa has been approved here."
"Then I must come again to-morrow morning?" Sylvia asked.
"To-morrow morning," the clerk repeated, bending over with intrepid
fervor to the responsible task upon which he was engaged. Sylvia
wondered what it was: the whole traffic of Europe might hang upon these
few minutes.
"I'm sorry to interrupt you again," she said. "But in addition to
requiring a visa, my sister wants a new passport."
She decided not to say anything about a lost passport, the revelation of
which had so much shocked the man at the Consulate.
"Miss Johnstone," the clerk called in a weary voice to somebody in an
inner office, "kindly bring Form AQ--application for renewal of expired
passport."
A vague-looking young woman, who seemed to have been collecting native
jewelry since her arrival in Bucharest, tinkled into the office.
"There aren't any AQ forms left, Mr. Mathers," she said, plaiting, as
she spoke, a necklace of coins into another of what looked like broken
pieces of mosaic.
"It really is too bad that the forms are not given out more regularly,"
Mr. Mathers cried, in exasperation. "How am I to finish transferring
these Greeks beginning with _C_ to _K_? You know how anxious Mr. Iredale
is to get the index in order, and the _F_'s haven't been checked with
the _Ph_'s yet."
"Well, it's Miss Henson's day off," said Miss Johnstone, "so it's not my
fault, is it? I'm sure I hate the forms! They're always a bother. Won't
an AP one do for this lady? We've a lot of them left, and there's only a
difference in one question."
"Excuse me," Sylvia asked. "Did you mention a Mr. Iredale?"
"Mr. Iredale is the O.C.P.T.N.C. for Bucharest," said Mr. Mathers.
"Not Mr. Philip Iredale, by chance?" she went on.
That transposition of Greek initials had sounded uncommonly like Philip.
"That's right," the clerk replied.
"Oh well, I know him. I should like to see him personally."
"See Mr. Iredale? But he's the O.C.P.T.N.C."
"Does that confer invisibility?" she asked. "I tell you I'm a friend of
his. If you send up my card I'm sure he'll see me."
"But he never sees anybody," Mr. Mathers objected. "I'm afraid you
didn't understand that he's the Officer Controlling Passenger Traffic
from Neutral Countries in Bucharest. If he was to see everybody that
came to this office, he wouldn't be able to control _himself_, let alone
passenger traffic. No, really, joking apart, madam, Mr. Iredale is very
busy and by no means well."
"He's worn out," put in Miss Johnstone, who, having by now plaited four
necklaces into a single coil, was swinging the result round and round
like a skipping-rope. "His nerves are worn out. But if you like, I'll
take up your card."
"You might ask him at the same time if he wants all the Greek names
entered under _Y_ transferred to _G_, will you?" said Mr. Mathers. "Oh,
and Miss Johnstone," he called after her, "there seems to be some
confusion between _Tch_ and _Ts_. Ask him if he's got any preference.
Awful names the people in this part of Europe get hold of," he added to
Sylvia. "Even Mr. Iredale can't transpose the Russians, and of course
the War Office likes accuracy. There was rather a strafe the other day
because a man traveling from here to Spain got arrested three times on
the way, owing to his name being rather like a suspect spelled
differently by us, the French, and the Italians. As a matter of fact,
the original suspect's dead, but his name was spelled a fourth way in
the notification that was sent around, and so it's not realized yet."
"It must be rather like that whispering game," Sylvia said. "You know,
where somebody at one end of the room starts a sentence and it comes out
quite differently at the other."
Sylvia could not make out why she did not feel more nervous when she was
following Miss Johnstone up-stairs to meet Philip for the first time
since she had run away from him, thirteen years ago. The fact was that
her anxiety to escape from Rumania with Queenie outweighed everything
else, and she was so glad to find somebody she knew in a position of
authority who would be able to help her in the matter of Queenie's
passport that any awkwardness was quenched in relief. The discovery of
Philip was such an encouraging answer by destiny to the reappearance of
Zozo.
He came forward to greet her from behind a large roll-top desk, and she
saw that he looked tired and ill, yet, except for his baldness, not
really much older.
"Would you have recognized me, Philip?" she asked.
He was far more nervous than she was, and he stumbled a good deal over
Mr. Mathers's questions.
"I'll tell him you're too busy now to answer," said Miss Johnstone at
last in a cheerful voice.
This was a happy solution of the problem of _Ts_ and _Tch_, and Philip
gratefully accepted it.
"And I dare say I might find time to help him with the transpositions,
if you're very anxious to get them done."
"Oh, will you? Yes, thank you, that would be excellent."
Miss Johnstone turned to leave the room; one of her necklaces broke
under the strain of continuous plaiting, and a number of tiny green
shells peppered the floor.
"There, that's the third time it's done that to-day," she exclaimed.
"I'm so sorry."
Sylvia, Philip, and she gathered up as many as were not trodden upon in
the search, and at last Miss Johnstone managed to get out of the room.
"No wonder you're worn out," said Sylvia, with a smile. It seemed quite
natural to comment rather intimately like this upon Philip's health.
"But you haven't answered my question. Would you have recognized me?"
"Oh yes, I should have recognized you. I only saw you last year at the
Pierian Hall."
"Did you go to see me there?" she exclaimed, touched by his having
wanted to see her act without letting her know anything about his visit.
"Yes, I enjoyed the performance; it was excellent. I wonder why you're
in Bucharest. Wouldn't you be better in England in war-time?"
"I think it's much more surprising to find you here," she said.
"Oh, I was sent out here to look after passports."
"But, Philip, why were you chosen as an expert on human nature?"
She could not resist the little stab; and he smiled sadly.
"I knew the country," he explained. "I'd done some excavating here, so
the War Office made me an honorary captain and sent me out."
"Are you a captain? What fun! Do you remember when I wanted you to
enlist for the South African War and you were so annoyed? But I suppose
you're shocked by my reviving old memories like this. Are you shocked,
Philip?"
"No, no, I'm not shocked. I'm still rather overcome by the suddenness of
your visit. What are you doing here?"
"I'm singing at the Trianon. All the winter I was at the Petit Maxim."
"Those places," he said, with a look of distaste.
"It would take too long to explain to you why," she went on. "But you
can't disapprove of my being there more than I do myself; and it's for
that very reason that I want a visa for England."
"Of course you shall have one immediately. You're much better at home in
these detestable times."
"But I also want something else. I want a passport for a friend--an
English girl."
"Hasn't she got a passport? Does she want hers renewed?"
"I'd better tell you the whole story. I expect that since you've become
the U.V.W.X.Y.Z. of Bucharest you've listened to plenty of sad stories,
but you must pay special attention to this one for my sake. I don't know
why I say 'for my sake'--it's rather an improper remark for a divorced
wife. Philip, do you remember in my show at the Pierian an Improvisation
about a girl who had been horribly ill treated as a child and was
supposed to be lost in a great city?"
"Yes, I think I do; in fact, I'm sure I do. I remember that at the time
I was reminded of our first meeting in Brompton Cemetery." He blinked
once or twice very quickly, and coughed in his old embarrassed way.
"Well, that's the girl for whom I want a passport."
Sylvia told him Queenie's story in detail from the time she met her
first in Granada to the present moment under the shadow of Zozo's
return.
"But, my dear Sylvia, I can't possibly procure an English passport for
her. She's not English."
"I want her to be my sister," Sylvia pursued. "I'm prepared to adopt her
and to be responsible for her. Any difference in the name she has been
generally known by can easily be put down to the needs of the stage. I
myself want to take once more my own name, Sylvia Snow, and I thought
you could issue two passports, one to Sylvia Snow, professionally known
as Sylvia Scarlett, and the other to Queenie Snow, known professionally
as Queenie Walters. Surely you won't let mere pedantry interfere with a
deed of charity?"
"It's not a question of pedantry. This is war-time. I should render
myself liable to--to--a court martial for doing a thing like that.
Besides, the principle of the thing is all wrong."
"But you don't seem to understand."
"Indeed I understand perfectly," Philip interrupted. "This girl was born
in Germany."
"Of an Italian father."
"What papers has she?" he asked.
"None at all. That's the whole point. She couldn't get even a German
passport if she wanted to. But she doesn't want one. She longs to be
English. It's the solitary clear ambition that she has. She was living
in England before war broke out, and she only came away to help this
girl who was kind to her. Surely the most rigid rule can be unbent to
fit a special case?"
"I could not possibly assume the responsibility," Philip declared.
"Then you mean to say you'll condemn this child to damnation--for that's
what you're doing with your infernal rules and regulations? You're
afraid of what will happen to you."
"Excuse me, even if I were certain that nothing could possibly be known
about the circumstances in which this passport was issued, I should
still refuse the application. Everybody suffers in this war; I suffer
myself in a minor degree by having to abandon my own work and masquerade
in this country as what you well call a U.V.W.X.Y.Z."
"But even if we grant that in some cases suffering is inevitable,"
Sylvia urged, eagerly, "here's a case where it is not. Here's a case
where, by applying a touch of humanity, you can save a soul. But I won't
put it that way, because I know you have no use for souls. Here's a case
where you can save a body for civilization, for that fetish on whose
account you find yourself in Bucharest and half Europe is slaughtering
the other half. You are not appealing to any divine law when you refuse
to grant this passport: you are appealing to a human law. Very well,
then. You are in your own way at this moment fighting for England; yet
when somebody longs to be English you refuse her. If there is any
reality behind your patriotism, if it is not merely the basest
truckling to a name, a low and cowardly imitation of your next-door
neighbor whose opinion of yourself you fear as much as he fears your
opinion of him, if your patriotism is not just this, you'll be glad to
give this child the freedom of your country. Philip, you and I made a
mess of things. I was to blame for half the mess; but when you married
me, though you married me primarily to please yourself, there was
another motive behind--the desire to give a lonely little girl a chance
to deal with the life that was surging round her more and more
dangerously every day. Now you have another opportunity of doing the
same thing, and this time without any personal gratification. It isn't
as if I were asking you to do something that could possibly hurt
England. I tell you I will be responsible for her. If the worst came to
the worst and anything were found out, I could always take the blame and
you could never be even censured for accepting my word in such a case."
Sylvia could see by Philip's face that her arguments were doing nothing
to convince him, yet she went on, desperately:
"And if you refuse this, you don't merely condemn her, you condemn me,
too. Nothing will induce me to abandon her to that man. By your bowing
down to the letter of the regulation you expose me for the second time
to the life that you drove me to before."
Philip made a gesture of protest.
"Very well, then I won't accuse you of being responsible on the first
occasion, certainly not wantonly. But this time, if I'm driven to the
same life, it _will_ be your fault and your fault alone. I'm not going
to bother about my body if I think that by destroying it I can save a
soul. I shall stick at nothing to preserve Queenie--at nothing, do you
hear? You have the chance to send us both safely back to England.
Philip, you won't refuse!"
"I'm sorry. It's terribly painful for me to say 'no.' But it's
impossible. Only quite recently the Foreign Office sent round a warning
that we were to be specially careful in this part of the world. No
papers of naturalization are issued in time of war. Why, I'm sent here
to Bucharest for the express purpose of preventing people like your
friend obtaining fraudulent passports."
"The Foreign Office!" Sylvia scoffed. "How can you expect people not to
be Christians? It was just to redeem mankind from the sin that creates
Foreign Offices and War Offices and bureaucrats and shoddy kings and
lawyers and politicians that Christ died. Oh, you can sneer! but your
belief is condemned out of your own mouth. You puny little U.V.W.X.Y.Z.
with your nose buried in your own waste-paper basket, with a red
tapeworm gnawing at your vitals, with some damned fool of a
narrow-headed general for an idol, you have the impertinence to sneer at
Christianity. Do you think that after this war people are going to be
content with the kind of criminal state that you represent? Life is not
a series of rules, but a set of exceptions. Philip, forgive me if I have
been rude, and let this girl have a passport, please, please!"
"You must not think," Philip answered, "that because I plead the
necessities of war in defense of what strikes you as mere bureaucratic
obscurantism that therefore I am defending war itself; I loathe war from
the bottom of my heart. But just as painful operations are often
necessary in accidents which might easily have been avoided, yet which
having happened must be cured in the swiftest way, so in war-time for
the good of the majority the wrongs of the nation must take precedence
over the wrongs of the individual. I sympathize profoundly with the
indignation that you feel on account of this girl, but the authorities
in England, after due consideration of the danger likely to accrue to
the state from the abuse of British nationality by aliens, have decided
to enforce with the greatest strictness the rules about the granting of
passports."
"Oh, don't explain the reasons to me as if I were a baby," Sylvia burst
in. "The proposition of the Foreign Office is self-evident in its
general application. My point is with you personally. You are not a
professional bureaucrat who depends for his living on his capacity for
dehumanizing himself. In this case you have a special reason to exercise
your rights and your duties as an amateur. You are as positive as you
can ever hope to be positive about anything, even your absurd positivist
creed, that while no harm can result to your country, a great mercy will
be conferred upon an individual as the result of enlightened action."
"It is precisely this introduction of the personal element," Philip
said, "that confirms me in refusing your request. You are taking
advantage of--our--of knowing me to gain your point. As a stranger you
would not stand the least chance of doing this, and you have no business
to make the matter a personal one. You don't seem to realize what such a
proceeding would involve. It is not merely a question of issuing a
passport as passports used to be issued before the war on the
applicant's bare word. A whole set of searching questions has to be
answered in writing, and you ask me to put my name to a tissue of lies.
Go back to England yourself. You have done your best for this girl, and
you must bow before circumstances. She has reached Rumania, and if she
does not try to leave it, she will be perfectly all right."
"But have you appreciated what I told you about this man who has just
arrived? He's a German-Swiss, and if he's not a spy, he has all the
makings of one. Suppose he gets hold of Queenie again? Can't you see
that on the lowest ground of material advantage you are justified--more
than justified, you owe it to your country to avoid the risk of creating
another enemy?"
"My dear Sylvia," said Philip, more impatiently than he had spoken yet,
"it is none of my business to interfere with potential agents of the
enemy. I have quite enough to do to keep pace with the complete
article. If your little friend is in danger of being turned into a spy,
it seems to me that you have stated the final argument against granting
your request."
"If she were with me, she could never become a spy; but if I were to
leave her helpless here, anything might happen. I am struggling for this
child's soul, Philip, more bitterly than I ever struggled for my own.
Your mind is occupied with the murder of human bodies: my mind is
obsessed with the destruction of human souls."
"Well, if I accept your own definition of your attitude," Philip
answered, "perhaps you will admit that logically a passport occupies
itself with the body, and that Christians do not consider nationality
necessary to salvation. I can't make out your exalted frame of mind. You
used to be rather sensible on this subject. But if, as I gather, you
have taken refuge in that common weakness of humanity--religion--let me
recommend you to find therein the remedy for your friend's future."
"Yes, I suppose logically you've scored," Sylvia said, slowly.
"But please don't think I want to score," Philip went on in a distressed
voice. "Please understand that for me to refuse is torture. I've often
wondered about a judge's emotions when he puts on the black cap; but
since I've faded out of real life into this paper world I've worn myself
out with worrying over private griefs and miseries. It's only because I
feel that, if every one on our side does not martyr himself for a year
or so, the future of the world will be handed over to this kind of
thing; and that is an unbearable thought."
"You're very optimistic about the effect upon your own side," Sylvia
said. "Have you such faith in humanity as to suppose that this war will
cure it more radically than all the wars that have gone before? I doubt
it. When I listened to our arguments this afternoon, I began to wonder
if either side is fighting for anything but a sterile nominalism. I
can't argue any more. It's not your fault, Philip. You lack the creative
instinct. I'll fight out this Queenie business by myself without
invoking state aid. I am rather ashamed of myself, really. I feel as if
I'd been compelled to ask a policeman the way. Perhaps I've got
everything out of proportion. Women usually manage to do that, somehow.
There must be something very satisfying about personal conflict--bayonet
to bayonet, I mean: but even in the trenches I suppose men get taken out
and shot for cowardice. Even there you wouldn't escape from the grim
abstract heartlessness that hangs like a fog over a generalized
humanity--generalized is doubly appropriate in this connection. What a
wretched thing man is in the mass and how rare and wonderful in the
individual! The mass creates that arch-bureaucrat, God, and the
individual seeks the heart of Christ. Good-by, Philip, I'm sorry you
look so ill. I'm afraid I've tired you. No, no," she added, seeing that
he was bracing himself up to talk about themselves. "This wasn't really
the personal intrusion you accuse me of making. We were never very near
to one another, and we are more remote than ever now."
"But what about your own visa?" he asked.
"It's no use to me at present. When I want it, I'll apply in the morning
to Mr. Mathers and come for it in the afternoon, most correctly. I
promise to attempt no more breaches in the formality of your office. By
the way, one favor I would ask: please don't come to the Trianon. You
wouldn't understand the argot in my songs, and if you did you wouldn't
understand my being able to sing them. Get better."
"Yes, I'm taking Sanatogen," Philip said, hopefully. At this moment Miss
Johnstone entered with a cup on a small tray, which, just escaping being
lassoed by one of her chains, was set down on his desk.
"I'm afraid I haven't got it quite so smooth as Miss Henson does," said
Miss Johnstone.
"Oh, never mind, please. It was so kind of you to remember."
"Well, I didn't think you ought to miss it on Miss Henson's day off."
Sylvia waved her hand and left him with Miss Johnstone; he seemed to be
hesitating between the injury to her feelings if he did not take the
lumpy mixture and the harm to his digestion if he did.
"Even offices are subject to the clash of temperament on temperament,"
said Sylvia to herself. "A curious thing really that Philip should be
prepared to choke himself over a cup of badly mixed Sanatogen rather
than wound that young woman's feelings, and yet that he should be able
to refuse me what I asked him to do this afternoon."
She nodded to Mr. Mathers as she passed through the outer office, who
jumped up and opened the door for her. He had evidently been impressed
by the length of her interview with the O.C.P.T.N.C. in Bucharest.
"I believe I've had the pleasure of hearing you sing," he murmured. "Are
you staying long at the Trianon?"
"I hope not," she answered.
"Quite, quite," he murmured, nodding his head with an air of deep
comprehension, while he bowed her forth with marked courtesy.
The fog had cleared away when Sylvia started to walk back to her hotel,
and though it was still very hot, there was a sparkle in the air that
made it seem fresher than it really was. The argument with Philip had
braced her point of view to accord with the lightening of the weather;
it had thrown her so entirely back upon her own resources that the
notion of ever having supposed for an instant that he could help her in
the fight for Queenie now appeared ludicrous. Although her arguments had
been unavailing, and although at the end Philip had actually defeated
her by the very logic on which she prided herself, she nevertheless felt
wonderfully elated at the prospect of a struggle with Zozo and no
longer in the least sensible of that foreboding dejection which was
lying so heavily upon her heart when she left Lottie's house three hours
ago.
Poor Philip! He had spoken of his own sufferings in a minor degree from
the war. Yet to be rooted up at his age--he was nearly fifty, after
all--and to be set down in Rumania to dig for human motives, he who had
no instinct to dig for anything but dry bones and ancient pottery, it
was surely for him suffering in a major degree. He had been so
pathetically proud of being a captain, and at the same time so obviously
conscious of the radical absurdity of himself in such a position; it was
like a prematurely old child playing with soldiers to gratify his
parents. And here in a neutral country he was even debarred from
dressing up in uniform. When she first saw him she had been surprised to
find that he did not appear much older than thirteen years ago; now,
looking back at him in his office, he seemed to her a very old man. Poor
Philip, he did not belong to the type that is rejuvenated in war-time by
a sense of his official importance. Sylvia had seen illustrations in
English newspapers of beaming old gentlemen "doing," as it was called,
"their bit," proud of the nuisance they must be making of themselves,
incorrigible optimists about the tonic effects of war because they had
succeeded in making their belts meet round their fat paunches,
pantaloons that should have buried themselves out of sight instead of
pirouetting while young men were being killed in a war for which they
and their accursed Victorianism were responsible by licking the boots of
Prussia for fifty years.
Sylvia found Queenie in a state of agitation at her long absence; she
did not tell her anything about Zozo at once, in the hope that he would
not come to the Trianon on the first night of his arrival. She did think
it advisable, however, to tell Queenie of her failure to secure the
passport.
"Then we can't be going to England?" Queenie asked.
"Well, not directly from here," Sylvia answered. "But we'll move on as
soon as we can into Bulgaria. We can get down to the Piræus from
Dedeagatch. I don't think these neutral countries are very strict about
passports. We'll manage somehow to get away from here."
"But if we cannot be going to England why must we be going from
Bucharest? Better to stay, I think. Yes?"
"We might want to go," Sylvia said. "We might get tired of the Trianon.
It wouldn't be difficult."
"I shall never be going to England now," said Queenie, in a toneless
voice. "Never shall I be going! I shall learn a new song and a new
dance, yes?"
Sylvia felt tired after her long afternoon and thought she would rest
for an hour before getting ready for the evening's work. The mist
gathered again at sunset, and the gardens of the theater, though they
were unusually full, lacked any kind of gaiety. When they were walking
down the narrow laurel-bordered path that screened the actors from the
people sitting at their tables under the trees, Sylvia was sure that
Zozo would be standing by the stage door at the end of it; but he was
nowhere to be seen. After the performance, however, when they came out,
as the custom was, to take their seats in the audience, the juggler made
a dramatic appearance from behind a tree; Queenie seemed to lose all her
fairy charm and become a terrified little animal.
"I don't think there's room at our table for you," Sylvia said.
"There are plenty of chairs," Maud insisted, stridently; she had
followed the juggler into the lamplight round the table.
"I'm quite sure there's no room for you," said Sylvia, sharply; and,
taking advantage of Queenie's complete limpness, she dragged her away by
the wrist and explained quickly to the manager, who was walking up and
down by the entrance gate, that Queenie was ill and must go home at
once.
"Ill!" he exclaimed, skeptically. "Well, I shall have to fine you both
your evening's salary. Why, it's only half past eleven!"
Sylvia did not wait to argue with him, but hurried Queenie to a
carriage, in which they drove back immediately to their hotel.
"I said to you that it was going to bring me bad luck when you said to
that priest my real name. _Ach!_ what shall I be doing? What shall I be
doing now?" Queenie wailed.
"You must pay no attention to him," Sylvia told her; but she found that
Queenie did not recover herself as she usually did at the tone of
command. "What can he do to you while you're with me?" she continued.
"You don't know him," Queenie moaned. "He's very strong. Look at the
mark on my leg where he was shooting me. _Ach_, if we could be going to
England, but we cannot. We are here and he is here. You are not strong
like he was, Sylvia."
"If you're going to give way like this before he has touched you and
frighten yourself to death in advance, of course he'll do what he likes,
because I can do nothing without support from you. But if you'll try to
be a little bit brave and remember that I can protect you, everything
will be all right and we'll get away from Rumania at the first
opportunity."
"_Ach_, you have papers. You are English. Nobody will protect me. Any
one was being able to do what they was liking to do with me."
Sylvia tried to argue courage into her until early morning; but Queenie
adopted an attitude of despair, and it was impossible to convince her
that Zozo could not at whatever moment he chose take her away, and, if
he wished, murder her without any one's interfering or being able to
interfere. In the end Sylvia fell asleep exhausted, resolving that if
Queenie was not in a more courageous frame of mind next day she should
not move from the hotel. When Sylvia woke up she found that Queenie was
already dressed to go out, and for an instant she feared that the
juggler's power over her was strong enough to will her to go back to him
by the mere sense of his being near at hand. She asked her almost
angrily why she had dressed herself so quietly and where she was going.
"To the hairdresser's," Queenie answered, in a normal voice.
Sylvia was puzzled what to do. She did not like to put the idea into
Queenie's head of the juggler's being able to mesmerize her into
following him apparently of her own accord, and if she really intended
to go to the hairdresser's, it might imply that the terror of the night
before had burned itself out. Certainly she did not seem very nervous
this morning. It was taking a risk, but probably the only way out of the
situation was by taking risks, and in the end she decided not to oppose
her going out by herself.
Two hours passed; when Queenie had not returned to the hotel Sylvia went
out and made inquiries at the hairdresser's. Yes, she had been there
earlier that morning and had bought several bottles of scent. Sylvia
made a gesture of disapproval; scent was an extravagance of Queenie's,
and she was strictly rationed in this regard on account of the urgency
of saving all the money they could for their journey. She returned to
the hotel; Queenie was still absent, and she opened her bag to look for
the address of a girl whom Queenie occasionally visited; she found the
card, but the thousand-franc note that she was guarding for her had
vanished. Queenie must have joined that infernal Swiss, after all, and
the old instinct of propitiating him with money had been too strong for
her.
"Fool that I was to let her go this morning," Sylvia cried. As she
spoke, Queenie came in, her cheeks flushed with excitement, her arms
full of packages.
"Where have you been and what have you been doing?" she demanded.
"Oh, you must pardon me for taking the money from your bag," Queenie
cried. "I was taking it to buy presents for all the girls."
"Presents for the girls?" Sylvia echoed, in amazement.
"Yes, yes, it was the only way to make them on my side against him.
To-night in the dressing-room I shall give these beautiful presents. I
was spending all of my thousand francs. It was no use any longer,
because we cannot be going to England. Better that I was buying these
presents to make all the girls be on my side."
Sylvia was between laughter and tears, but she could not bring herself
to be angry with the child; at least her action showed that she was
taking her own part against the juggler. Queenie spent the rest of the
day quite happily, arranging how the presents were to be allotted. Those
that were small enough she put into chocolate-boxes that she had bought
for this purpose; the larger ones were tied up with additional pink and
blue silk ribbons to compensate for the lack of a box. To each
present--there were fifteen of them--a picture post-card was tied, on
which Sylvia had to write the name of the girl for whom it was intended
_with heaps of love and kisses from Queenie_; it was like a child
preparing for her Christmas party.
They went down to the Trianon earlier than usual in order that Queenie
might get ready in time to sit at the entrance of the dressing-room and
hand each girl her present as she came in. Sylvia tried to look as
cheerful as possible under the ordeal, for she did not want to confirm
the tale that she was living on Queenie's earnings by seeming to grudge
her display of generosity. The girls were naturally eager to know the
reason of the unexpected entertainment. When Queenie took each of them
aside in turn and whispered a long confidence in her ear, Sylvia
supposed that she was explaining about the advent of Zozo; but it turned
out Queenie was explaining that, having no longer any need for the
money since she could not get a passport for England, she was doing now
what she had wanted to do before, but had been unable to do on account
of saving up for the journey. Sylvia remonstrated with her for this
indiscretion, and she said:
"I think it was you that was being silly, not me, yes? If I say to these
girls, 'Here is a silver brush, help me against Zozo,' they was thinking
that I was buying them to help me. But when he tries to take me, I shall
call out to them and they will be loving me for these presents and will
be fighting against him, I think, yes?"
Sylvia had her doubts, but she had not the heart to discourage such
trust in the grateful appreciation of her companions.
Neither Zozo nor Maud came to the Trianon that evening; nevertheless,
outside on the playbill was an announcement that next Sunday would
appear Zozo: LE MEILLEUR PRESTIDIGITATEUR DU MONDE.
"It was always so that he was writing himself," said Queenie, when
Sylvia read her the announcement; she spoke in a voice of awe as if the
playbill had been inscribed by a warning fate. In due course the juggler
made a successful first appearance, dressed in green, with a snake of
shimmering tinsel wound round him. They watched the performance from the
wings; when he came off he asked Queenie with a laugh if she would stand
for his dagger act, as in the old days she had stood.
"You've got Maud for that," Sylvia interposed quickly.
"Maud!" he scoffed.
Earlier in the evening she had thundered about the stage in what was
described as the world-famous step-dance of the world-famous American
cowgirl Maud Moffat, to the authentic and original native melody, which
happened this year to be "On the Mississippi," and might just as easily
have been "A Life on the Ocean Wave."
Sylvia was puzzled by the relationship between Zozo and Maud, for there
was evidently nothing even in the nature of affection between them, and
as far as she could make out they had never met until the day he paid
her fare from Galantza to Bucharest. Her first idea had been that he was
a German agent and intended to use Maud in that capacity, her
patriotism, judging by her loud denunciations of England and everything
English, not being very deep. But Sylvia had already outlived the habit
of explaining as a spy every one in war-time that is not immediately and
blatantly obvious. She could imagine nobody less fitted to be a spy than
Maud, who was attractive neither to her compatriots nor to foreigners,
and who, even had she possessed attraction, would have had no brains to
take advantage of it. Yet she came back to the theory that Zozo was a
German agent when she saw with whom he consorted in Bucharest, and she
decided that when he had brought Maud here he had done so in the hope of
having found a useful recruit, but that on discovering her dull
coarseness he had come to the conclusion that her hostility to England
was counterbalanced by England's hostility to her. Sylvia decided that
if her surmises were at all near to being correct she must be
particularly on her guard against any attempt on the part of the Swiss
to corrupt Queenie. She had supposed at first that she should only have
to contend with his lust or with his desire of personal domination; now
it seemed that the argument she had used with Philip to procure Queenie
a passport had really been a sound argument. Superficially Queenie might
not strike anybody as a valuable agent; knowing her charm for men, her
complete malleableness, and her almost painful simplicity, Sylvia could
imagine that she might be a practical weapon in the hands of an
unscrupulous adventurer like the Swiss, who was finding, like so many
other rascals of his type, that in war natural dishonesty is a lucrative
asset. She wondered to what extent her ideas about his intentions were
based upon his behavior at Granada, and whether, after all, she was not
attributing to him all sorts of schemes of which he was entirely
innocent. Really he had always been for her a symbol of evil that she
was inclined to turn into a crude personification. It was strange the
way that one was apt, in changing one's mode of life, to abandon
simultaneously the experience one had gathered formerly. Most probably
she was giving this juggler with an absurd name an importance quite
beyond his power, simply because she herself was giving her present
surroundings a permanence far more durable and extensive than they
actually possessed. After all, could one but realize it, the way from
the Petit Trianon to Mulberry Cottage did exist as a material fact:
there was no impassable gulf of space or time between them.
After Zozo had been juggling for about a fortnight in Bucharest without
having given the least sign of wanting to interfere with Queenie, Sylvia
began to think that she had worked herself up for nothing, though the
problem of his relationship to Maud, with whom he remained on terms of
contemptuous intimacy, still puzzled her. She thought of making a report
on the queer association to Philip, but she was afraid he might think it
was an excuse to meet him again; and since Philip himself had made no
effort to follow up their interview, she gave up speculating upon Zozo
and Maud and took to speculating instead upon Philip's want of
curiosity, as she called it. Unreasonable as she admitted to herself
that the emotion was, she could not help being piqued by his
indifference, and she resented now the compassion she had felt for him
when she left the office that afternoon. She could not understand any
man, however badly a woman had treated him--and she had not treated
Philip badly--being able to contemplate so calmly that woman's existence
as a cabaret singer without wanting to know what had brought her to it
so short a time after her success. No, certainly she should not trouble
Philip with her suspicions of Zozo and Maud; it was inviting a rebuff.
Just when Sylvia was beginning to feel reassured about Queenie and not
to worry about anything except the waste of that thousand francs and the
continuous difficulties in the way of saving any money, the girls at the
Trianon began to whisper among themselves. Queenie's presents had given
her a brief popularity that began to fade when it was evident that no
more presents were coming; her attempt to secure the friendship of her
companions, inasmuch as it seemed a token of weakness, reacted against
her and made her in the end less popular than before. The story about
the refusal of a passport by the British authorities was soon magnified
into a demand for her expulsion from Rumania as a German agent
masquerading as an English girl. Hence the whispers. The French girls
were naturally the most venomous; but the Austrian girls were nearly as
bad, because, having lived for months under the perpetual taunt of being
spies, they were anxious to re-establish their own virtue at Queenie's
expense. Zozo commiserated with her on the unfairness of the whispers,
and one evening, to Sylvia's dismay, Queenie told her that he had
offered to secure her a passport and take her with him when he left
Bucharest.
"He was really being very nice to me," Queenie said. "Oh, Sylvia, what
shall I do? I cannot be staying here with these girls who are so unkind
to me."
The following evening Sylvia asked Zozo straight out about the kind of
passport he proposed to find for Queenie and where he proposed to take
her.
The juggler sneered.
"That's my business, I think. What can you do for her? If the kid's
anything, she's German. What the hell's the good of you trying to make
her English? Why don't you let her alone instead of stopping her from
earning good money?"
Sylvia kept her temper with a great effort and contented herself with
denying that Queenie was German and with asking who had first made the
assertion. The juggler spat on the floor and walked away without
replying.
After the performance that night, a hot, thunderous night in August,
Zozo, with Maud and two well-known pro-German natives, took the next
table to Sylvia and Queenie. Maud was drinking heavily and presently she
began to talk in a loud voice:
"Well, I may have spoken against England once or twice, but, thank Gawd,
I'm not a bloody little yellow-haired German pretending to be English. I
never went and tried to pass off a dirty little German as my sister the
same as what some people who's proud of being English does. Yes, I earn
my living honestly. I've never heard any one call me a spy, and any----
as did wouldn't do it twice. My name's Maud Moffat, born and bred a
cockney, and proud I am when I see some people who think theirselves
superior and all the time is dirty German spies betraying their country.
Does any one presume to say I'm not English?" she shouted, rising
unsteadily to her feet. "And if he does, where is he so as I can show
him he's a bloody liar by breaking his head open?"
Her companions made a pretense of restraining her, but it was plain that
they were enjoying the scene, and Maud continued to hold forth.
"German! And calls herself English. Goes round giving presents to honest
working-girls so as she can carry on her dirty work of spying. Goes
round trying to get a girl's boy away from her by low, dirty, mean
tricks as she's learnt from the bloody Germans who she belongs to. Yes,
it's you I'm talking to," she shrieked at Queenie.
White as paper, she sprang up from her seat and began to answer Maud,
notwithstanding Sylvia's efforts to silence her.
"You was being a bad wicked girl," she panted. "You dare to say I was
being German! I hate the Germans! I _am_ English. I _am_ English. You
dare to say I was being German!"
Upon this an Austrian girl at another table began to revile Queenie from
her point of view for abusing the Germans; before ten seconds had
passed the gardens were in an uproar.
A fat French Jewess stood on a table and shouted:
"_Oh, les sales boches! Oh, les sales boches!_"
Whereupon an Austrian girl pushed her from behind, and she crashed down
into a party of Francophile young Rumanians who instantly began to throw
everything within reach at a party of Germanophile young Rumanians.
Glasses were shivered; fairy lamps were pulled out of the trees and
hurtled through the air like Roman candles; somebody snatched a violin
from the orchestra and broke it on the head of his assailant; somebody
else climbed on the stage and made a speech in Rumanian, calling upon
the country to intervene on behalf of the Entente, until two pro-Germans
seized him and flung him down on top of the melancholy dotard who played
the double-bass; the manager and the waiters rushed into the street to
find the police; everybody argued with everybody else.
"_Tu dis que je suis boche, moi? M--e pour toi!_"
"La ferme! La ferme! Espionne! Type infecte!"
"_Moi, je suis roumaine. Si tu dis que je suis hongroise, je dis que
t'es une salope. Tu m'entends?_"
"_Oh, la vache! Elle m'a piquée!_"
"_Elle a bien fait! Elle a bien fait!_"
Some French girls began to sing:
"_Les voyez-vous?
Les hussards! Les dragons! La gar-rrde!
Glorieux fous_...."
and a very shrill little soprano who was probably a German, but declared
she was a Dane, sang:
"It's a larway to Tipperary,
It's a larway to go,
It's a larway to Tipperary,
It's a la-a-way to go!
Gooba, Piccadilli,
Farwa lar-sa sca-aa!
It's a lar-lar-way to Tipperary
Ba-ma-ha's ra-tha."
After which somebody hit her on the nose with a vanilla ice: then the
police came in and quieted the uproar by arresting several people on the
outskirts of the riot.
The next evening, when Sylvia and Queenie presented themselves for the
performance, the manager told them that they were dismissed: he could
not afford to let the Petit Trianon gain a disorderly reputation. Sylvia
was glad that the decision of taking a definite step had been settled
over her head. As they were passing out, they met Lottie looking very
happy.
"I've been engaged for three hundred francs to play the piano in the
orchestra. The accompanist broke his wrist last night in the row," she
told them. "So they sent for me in a hurry."
"We've been sacked," Sylvia said.
"Oh, I am sorry!" the fat girl exclaimed, trying to curb her own
pleasure. "What will you do?"
Sylvia shrugged her shoulders.
"Why don't you go to Galantza and Bralatz and Avereshti? You ought to be
able to get engagements there in the summer-time--especially at
Avereshti."
Sylvia nodded thoughtfully. "Yes, that's rather an idea. But, Lottie,
don't tell Zozo where we've gone. Good-by! Good luck! I'm glad you've
got an engagement."
"Yes, I shall leave that room now. It smells, rather, as the summer gets
on."
The next morning Sylvia and Queenie left Bucharest for Galantza.