Chapter 1
The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia.
by Compton Mackenzie.
CHAPTER I.
The first complete memory of her father that Sylvia possessed was of following her mother out into the street on a clear moonlight night after rain and of seeing him seated in a puddle outside the house, singing an unintelligible song which he conducted with his umbrella. She remembered her mother's calling to him sharply, and how at last after numerous shakings and many reproaches he had walked into the house on all fours, carrying the umbrella in his mouth like a dog. She remembered that the umbrella was somehow wrong at the end, different from any other umbrella she had ever seen, so that when it was put into the hall-stand it looked like a fat old market woman instead of the trim young lady it should have resembled. She remembered how she had called her mother's attention to the loss of its feet and how her mother, having apparently realized for the first time her presence at the scene, had promptly hustled her up-stairs to bed with so much roughness that she had cried.
When Sylvia was older and had become in a way her mother's confidante, sitting opposite to her in the window to sew until it was no longer possible to save oil for the lamp, she ventured to recall this scene. Her mother had laughed at the remembrance of it and had begun to hum the song her father had sung: La donna e mobile La da-di la-di-da.
"Shall I ever forget him?" Madame Snow had cried. "It was the day your sister Elene was married, and he had been down to the railway-station to see them off to Bruxelles."
Sylvia had asked what the words of the song meant, and had been told that they meant women were always running around.
"Where?" she had pressed.
"Some of them after men and others running away from them," her mother had replied.
"Shall I do that when I'm big?" Sylvia had continued. "Which shall I do?"
But it had been time to fetch the lamp and the question had remained unanswered.
Sylvia was five when her sister Elene was married; soon afterward Henriette married, too. She remembered that very well, because Marie went to join Francoise in the other bedroom, and with only Marguerite and Valentine left, they no longer slept three in a bed. This a.s.sociation had often been very uncomfortable because Marguerite would eat biscuits, the crumbs of which used to scratch her legs; and worse than the crumbs was the invariable quarrel between Marguerite and Valentine that always ended in their pinching each other across Sylvia, so that she often got pinched by mistake.
For several years Sylvia suffered from being the youngest of many sisters, and her mother's favorite. When she went to school, she asked other girls if it were not nicer to have brothers, but the stories she heard about the behavior of boys made her glad there were only girls in her house. She had practical experience of the ways of boys when at the age of eight she first took part in the annual feerie at the Lille theater. On her first appearance she played a monster; though all the masks were very ugly, she, being the smallest performer, always got the ugliest, and with the progress of the season the one that was most knocked about. In after years these performances seemed like a nightmare of hot cardboard-scented breath, of being hustled down the stone stairs from the dressing-room, of noisy rough boys shouting and scrambling for the best masks, of her legs being pinched, while she was waiting in the wings, by invisible boys, and once of somebody's twisting her mask right round as they made the famous entrance of the monsters, so that, being able to see nothing, she fell down and made all the audience laugh. Such were boys!
In contrast with scenes of discomfort and misery like these were the hours when she sat sewing with her mother in the quiet house. There would be long silences only broken by the sound of her mother's hand searching for new thread or needle in the work-basket, of clocks, of kettle on the hob, or of distant street cries. Then her mother would suddenly laugh to herself and begin a tale so interesting that Sylvia's own needlework would lie idly on her knee, until she was reproved for laziness, and silence again inclosed the room. Sometimes the sunset would glow through the window-panes upon her mother's work, and Sylvia would stare entranced at the great silken roses that slowly opened their petals for those swift fingers. Sometimes it would be a piece of lace that lay on her mother's lap, lace that in the falling dusk became light and mysterious as a cloud. Yet even these tranquil hours had storms, as on the occasion when her mother had been working all day at a lace cap which had been promised without fail to somebody at the theater who required it that night. At six o'clock she had risen with a sigh and given the cap to Sylvia to hold while she put on her things to take it down to the theater. Sylvia had stood by the fire, dreaming over the beauty of the lace; and then without any warning the cap had fallen into the fire and in a moment was ashes. Sylvia wished she could have followed the cap when she saw her mother's face of despair on realizing what had happened. It was then that for the first time she learned how much depended upon her mother's work; for during all that week, whenever she was sent out on an errand, she was told to buy only the half of everything, half the usual b.u.t.ter, half the usual sugar, and what was stranger still to go to shops outside the quartier at which Madame Snow never dealt. When she inquired the reason of this her mother asked her if she wanted all the quartier to know that they were poor and could only afford to buy half the usual amount that week.
Sylvia, when the first shame of her carelessness had died away, rather enjoyed these excursions to streets more remote, where amusing adventures were always possible. One Sat.u.r.day afternoon in April Sylvia set out with a more than usually keen sense of the discoveries and adventures that might befall her. The first discovery was a boy on a step-ladder, polis.h.i.+ng a shop window; and the second discovery was that she could stand on the curbstone and never once fail to spit home upon the newly polished gla.s.s. She did this about a dozen times, watching the saliva dribble down the pane and speculating with herself which driblet would make the longest journey. Regretfully she saw that the boy was preparing to descend and admire his handiwork, because two driblets were still progressing slowly downward, one of which had been her original fancy for the prize of endurance. As she turned to flee, she saw on the pavement at her feet a golden ten-franc piece; she picked it up and grasping it tightly in her hot little hand ran off, not forgetting, even in the excitement of her sudden wealth, to turn round at a safe distance and put out her tongue at the boy to mark her contempt for him, for the rest of his cla.s.s, and for all their handiwork, especially that newly polished window-pane. Then she examined the gold piece and marveled at it, thinking how it obliterated the memory of that mother-o'-pearl b.u.t.ton which only the other day she had found on the dust-heap and lost a few hours afterward.
It was a wonderful afternoon, an afternoon of unbridled acquisition, which began with six very rich cakes and ended with a case of needles for her mother that used up her last sou. Coming out of the needle-shop, her arms full of packages, she met a regiment of soldiers marching and singing. The soldiers expressed her triumphant mood, and Sylvia marched with them, joining in their songs. She had a few cakes left and, being grateful to the soldiers, she handed them round among them, which earned her much applause from pa.s.sers-by. When the regiment had arrived at the barracks and her particular friends had all kissed her farewell and there were no more bystanders to smile their approbation, Sylvia thought it would be wise to do the shopping for her mother. She had marched farther than she realized with the soldiers; it was nearly dusk when she reached the grocer's where she was to buy the small quant.i.ty of sugar that was all that could be afforded this week. She made her purchase, and put her hand into the pocket of her pinafore for the money: the pocket was empty. Everything in the grocer's shop seemed to be tumbling about her in a great and universal catastrophe. She searched feverishly again; there was a small hole; of course her mother had given her a ten-franc piece, telling her to be very careful indeed of the change, which was wanted badly for the rent. She could not explain to the man what had happened and, leaving the packet on the counter, she rushed from the shop into the cruel twilight, choked by tearless sobs and tremors of apprehension. At first she thought of trying to find the shops where she had made her own purchases that she might recover such of the money as had not been eaten; but her nervous fears refused to let her mind work properly, and everything that had happened on this luckless afternoon seemed to have happened in a dream. It was already dark; all she could do was to run home, clutching the miserable toys to her heart and wondering if the needle-case could possibly allay a little, a very little, of her mother's anger.
Madame Snow began as soon as Sylvia entered the house by demanding what she had been doing to be so late in coming home. Sylvia stammered and was silent; stammered again and let fall all her parcels; then she burst into a flood of tears that voiced a despair more profound than she had ever known. When her mother at last extracted from Sylvia what had happened she, too, wept; and the pair of them sat filling the room with their sobs, until Henry Snow appeared upon the scene and asked if they had both gone mad.
His wife and daughter sobbed a violent negative. Henry stared at the floor littered with Sylvia's numerous purchases, but found there no answer to the riddle. He moved across to Juliette and shook her, urging her not to become hysterical.
"The last bit of money I had and the rent due on Monday!" she wailed.
"Don't you worry about money," said Henry, importantly. "I've had a bit of luck at cards," and he offered his wife a note. Moreover, when he heard the reason for all this commotion of grief, he laughed, said it might have happened to any one, congratulated Sylvia upon her choice of goods, declared it was time she began to study English seriously and vowed that he was the one to be her teacher, yes, by gad, he was, and that to-morrow morning being Sunday they would make a start. Then he began to fondle his wife, which embarra.s.sed Sylvia, but nevertheless because these caresses so plainly delighted her mother, they consoled her for the disaster. So she withdrew to a darker corner of the room and played with the doll she had bought, listening to the conversation between her parents.
"Do you love me, Henri?"
"Of course I love you."
"You know that I would sacrifice the world for you? I've given you everything. If you love me still, then you must love me for myself--myself alone, mon homme."
"Of course I do."
"But I'm growing old," protested Juliette. "There are others younger than I. Ah, Henri, amour de ma vie, I'm jealous even of the girls. I want them all out of the house. I hate them now, except ours--ours, ma poupee."
Sylvia regarding her own doll could not help feeling that this was a most inappropriate name for her father; she wondered why her mother called him that and decided finally that it must be because he was shorter than she was. The evening begun so disastrously ended most cheerfully; when Francoise and Marie arrived back at midnight, they escaped even the mildest rebuke from their mother.
Sylvia's father kept his promise about teaching her English, and she was granted the great pleasure of being admitted to his room every evening when he returned from work. This room until now had always been a Bluebeard's chamber, not merely for Sylvia, but for every one else in the house. To be sure Sylvia had sometimes, when supper was growing cold, peeped in to warn her father of fleeting time, but it had always been impressed upon her that in no circ.u.mstances was she to enter the room; though she had never seen in these quick glimpses anything more exciting than her father sitting in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves and reading in a tumble-down arm-chair, there had always been the sense of a secret. Now that she was made free of this apartment she perceived nothing behind the door but a bookcase fairly full of books, nothing indeed anywhere that seemed to merit concealment, unless it were some pictures of undressed ladies looking at themselves in a gla.s.s. Once she had an opportunity of opening one of the books and she was astonished, when her father came in and caught her, that he said nothing, for she felt sure that her mother would have been very angry if she had seen her reading such a book. She had blushed when her father found her; when he had said nothing and even laughed in a queer unpleasant sort of a way, she had blushed still more deeply. Yet whenever she had a chance she read these books afterward and henceforth regarded her father with an affectionate contempt which was often expressed too frankly to please her mother, who finally became so much irritated by it that she sent her away to Bruxelles to stay with Elene, her eldest married sister. Sylvia did not enjoy this visit very much, because her brother-in-law was always making remarks about her personal appearance, comparing it most unfavorably with his wife's. It seemed that Elene had recently won a prize for beauty at the Exposition, and though Sylvia would have been suitably proud of this family achievement in ordinary circ.u.mstances, this continual harping upon it to her own disadvantage made her wish that Elene had been ign.o.bly defeated.
"Strange her face should be so round and yours such a perfect oval," Elene's husband would say. "And her lips are so thin and her eyes so much lighter than yours. She's short, too, for her age. I don't think she'll ever be as tall as you. But of course every one can't be beautiful."
"Of course they can't," Sylvia snapped. "If they could, Elene might not have won the prize so easily."
"She's not a great beauty, but she has a tongue. And she's smart," her brother-in-law concluded.
Sylvia used to wonder why every one alluded to her tongue. Her mother had told her just before she was sent to Bruxelles that the priest had put too much salt on it when she was christened. She resolved to be silent in future; but this resolve reacted upon her nerves to such an extent that she wrote home to Lille and begged to be allowed to come back. There had been diplomacy in the way she had written to her father in English rather than to her mother in French. Such a step led her mother to suppose that she repented of criticizing her father; it also prevented her sister Elene from understanding the letter and perhaps writing home to suggest keeping her in Bruxelles. Sylvia was overjoyed at receiving an early reply from her mother bidding her come home, and sending stamps for her to buy a picture post-card alb.u.m, which would be much cheaper in Belgium; she was enjoined to buy
Sylvia had heard a great deal of smuggling and was thrilled by the illegal transaction, which seemed to her the most exciting enterprise of her life. She said good-by to Bruxelles without regret; clasping her alb.u.m close, she waited anxiously for the train to start, thinking to herself that Elene only kept on putting her head into the carriage window to make stupid remarks because the compartment was crowded and she hoped some one would recognize her as the winner of the beauty compet.i.tion at the Bruxelles Exposition.
At last the train started, and Sylvia settled down to the prospect of crossing the frontier with contraband. She looked at all the people in the carriage, thinking to herself what dangers she would presently encounter. It was almost impossible not to tell them, as they sat there in the stuffy compartment scattering crumbs everywhere with their lunches. Soon a pleasant woman in black engaged Sylvia in conversation by offering her an orange from a string-bag. It was very difficult to eat the orange and keep a tight hold of the alb.u.m; in the end it fell on the floor, whereupon a fat old gentleman sitting opposite stooped over and picked it up for her. He had grunted so in making the effort that Sylvia felt she must reward him with more than thanks; she decided to divulge her secret and explain to him and the pleasant woman with the string-bag the history of the alb.u.m. Sylvia was glad when all her other fellow-travelers paid attention to the tale, and she could point out that an alb.u.m like this cost two francs fifty centimes in Lille, whereas in Bruxelles she had been able to buy it for two francs. Then, because everybody smiled so encouragingly, she unwrapped the alb.u.m and showed the single picture post-card, discoursing upon the ruse. Everybody congratulated her, and everybody told one another anecdotes about smuggling, until finally a tired and anxious-looking woman informed the company that she was at that very moment smuggling lace to the value of more than two thousand francs. Everybody warned her to be very careful, so strict were the customs officials; but the anxious-looking woman explained that it was wrapped round her and that in any case she must take the risk, so much depended upon her ability to sell this lace at a handsome profit in France.
When the frontier was reached Sylvia alighted with the rest of the travelers to pa.s.s through the customs, and with quickening heart she presented herself at the barrier, her alb.u.m clutched tightly to her side. No, she had nothing to declare, and with a sigh of relief at escape from danger she saw her little valise safely chalked. When she pa.s.sed through to take her seat in the train again, she saw a man whom she recognized as a traveler from her own compartment that had told several anecdotes about contraband. He was talking earnestly now to one of the officials at the barrier and pointing out the anxious woman, who was still waiting to pa.s.s through.
"I tell you she had two thousand francs' worth of lace wrapped round her. She admitted it in the train."
Sylvia felt her legs give way beneath her when she heard this piece of treachery. She longed to cry out to the woman with the lace that she had been betrayed, but already she had turned deathly pale at the approach of the officials. They were beckoning her to follow them to a kind of cabin, and she was moving toward it hopelessly. It was dreadful to see a poor woman so treated, and Sylvia looked round to find the man who had been the cause of it, but he had vanished.
Half an hour afterward the woman of the lace wearily climbed into the compartment and took her seat with the rest; her eyes were red and she was still weeping bitterly. The others asked what had happened.
"They found it on me," she moaned. "And now what shall I do? It was all we had in the world to pay the mortgage on our house. My poor husband is ill, very ill, and it was the only way to save him. I should have sold that lace for four thousand francs, and now they have confiscated it and we shall be fined one thousand francs. We haven't any money. It was everything--everything. We shall lose our house and our furniture, and my husband will die. Oh, mon Dieu! mon Dieu!"
She rocked backward and forward in her grief; nothing that any one could say comforted her. Sylvia told how she had been betrayed; everybody execrated the spy and said how careful one should be to whom one spoke when traveling; but that did not help the poor woman, who sobbed more and more despairingly.
At last the train came to its first stop in France, and the man that had denounced the poor woman suddenly jumped in, as they were starting again, and took his old seat. The fat gentleman next to Sylvia swelled with indignation; his veins stood out, and he shouted angrily at the man what a rascal he was. Everybody in the carriage joined in abusing him; and the poor woman herself wailed out her sad story and reproached him for the ruin he had brought upon her. As for Sylvia, she could not contain herself, but jumped up and with all her might kicked him on the s.h.i.+ns, an action which made the fat gentleman shout: "Bravo! Vas-y! Encore, la gosse! Bravo! Bis! Bis!"
When the noise had subsided the man began to speak.
"I regret infinitely, madame, the inconvenience to which I was unfortunately compelled to put you, but the fact is that I myself was carrying diamonds upon me to the value of more than two hundred thousand francs."
He suddenly took out a wallet from his pocket and emptied the stones into his hand, where they lay sparkling in the dusty suns.h.i.+ne of the compartment. Everybody was silent with surprise for a moment; when they began to abuse him again, he trickled the diamonds back into the wallet and begged for attention.
"How much have you lost, madame?" he inquired, very politely.
The woman of the lace poured forth her woes for the twentieth time.
"Permit me to offer you these notes to the value of six thousand francs," he said. "I hope the extra thousand will recompense you for the temporary inconvenience to which I was unfortunately compelled to put you. Pray accept my deepest apologies, but at the same time let me suggest greater discretion in future. Yet we are all human, are we not, monsieur?" he added, turning to the fat gentleman next to Sylvia. "Will you be very much surprised when I tell you that I have never traveled from Amsterdam but I have found some indiscreet fellow-traveler that has been of permanent service to me at temporary inconvenience to himself. This time I thought I was going to be unlucky, for this was the last compartment left; fortunately that young lady set a bad example."
He smiled at Sylvia.
This story, when she told it at home, seemed to make a great impression upon her father, who maintained that the stranger was a fool ever to return to the carriage.
"Some people seem to think money's made to throw into the gutter," he grumbled.
Sylvia was sorry about his point of view, but when she argued with him he told her to shut up; later on that same evening he had a dispute with his wife about going out.
"I want to win it back," he protested. "I've had a run of bad luck lately. I feel to-night it's going to change. Did I tell you I saw the new moon over my right shoulder, as I came in?"
"So did I," said his wife. "But I don't rush off and gamble away other people's money for the sake of the moon."
"You saw it, too, did you?" said Henry, eagerly. "Well, there you are!"
The funny thing was that Henry was right; he did have a run of good luck, and the house became more cheerful again. Sylvia went on with her English studies; but nowadays even during lessons her father never stopped playing cards. She asked him once if he were telling his fortune, and he replied that he was trying to make it. "See if you can pick out the queen," he would say. And Sylvia never could, which made her father chuckle to himself with pleasure. About this time, too, he developed a habit of playing with a ten-centime piece. Whenever he or any one else was talking, he used to fidget with this coin; in the middle of something important or interesting it used to jingle down on the floor, and everybody had to go on hands and knees to search for it. This habit became so much the intrinsic Henry Snow that Sylvia could never think of him without that ten-centime piece sliding over his long mobile hands, in and out of his prehensile fingers: and though with the progress of time he ceased to drop the coin very often, the restless motion always irritated her. When Sylvia was eleven her uncle Edouard came to Lille with his caravan and brought the news of the death of her grandfather. She was not much impressed by this, but the caravan and the booth delighted her; and when her uncle asked if he might not take her away with him on a long tour through the south of France, she begged to be allowed to go. Her mother had so often held her spellbound by tales of her own wandering life that, when she seemed inclined to withhold her permission, Sylvia blamed her as the real origin of this longing to taste the joys of vagrancy, pleading so earnestly that at last her mother gave way and let her go.
Uncle Edouard and Aunt Elise, who sat in the box outside the booth and took the money, were both very kind to Sylvia, and since they had no children of their own, she was much spoilt. Indeed, there was not a dull moment throughout the tour; for even when she went to bed, which was always delightfully late, bed was really a pleasure in a caravan.
In old Albert Ba.s.sompierre's days the players had confined themselves to the legitimate drama; Edouard had found it more profitable to tour a variety show interspersed with one-act farces and melodrama. Sylvia's favorites in the company were Madame Perron, the wife of the chanteur grivois, and Blanche, a tall, fair, noisy girl who called herself a diseuse, but who usually sang indecent ballads in a powerful contralto. Madame Perron was Sylvia's first attraction, because she had a large collection of dolls with which she really enjoyed playing. She was a femme tres-propre, and never went farther with any of her admirers in the audience than to exact from him the gift of a doll.
"Voila ses amours manques," her husband used to say with a laugh.
In the end Sylvia found her rather dull, and preferred to go tearing about the country with Blanche, who, though she had been a scullery-maid in a Boulogne hotel only a year ago, had managed during her short career on the stage to collect more lovers than Madame Perron had collected dolls. She had a pa.s.sion for driving. Sylvia could always be sure that on the morning after their opening performance in any town a wagonette or dog-cart would be waiting to take them to some neighboring village, where a jolly party would make a tremendous noise, scandalize the inhabitants, and depart, leaving a legacy of unpopularity in the district for whichever of Blanche's lovers had paid for the entertainment with his purse and his reputation. Once they arrived at a village where a charity bazaar was being held under the direction of the cure. Blanche was presented to him as a distinguished actress from Paris who was seeking peace and recreation in the depths of the country. The cure asked if it would be presuming too far on her good nature to give them a taste of her art in the cause of holy charity, a speech perhaps from Corneill or Racine. Blanche a.s.sented immediately and recited a piece stuffed so full of spicy argot that the rustic gentility understood very little of it, though enough to make them blush--all except the priest, that is, who was very deaf and asked Blanche, when she had finished, if it were not a speech from Phedre she had declaimed, thanking her very earnestly for the pleasure she had given his simple parish folk, a pleasure, alas, which he regretted he had not been able to enjoy as much as he should have enjoyed it before he became deaf.
On another occasion they drove to see the ruins of an ancient castle in Brittany, and afterward went down into the village to drink wine in the garden of the inn, where an English family was sitting at afternoon tea. Sylvia stared curiously at the two little girls who obeyed their governess so promptly and ate their cakes so mincingly. They were the first English girls she had ever seen, and she would very much have liked to tell them that her father was English, for they seemed to want cheering up, so solemn were their light-blue eyes and so high their boots. Sylvia whispered to Blanche that they were English, who replied that so much was very obvious, and urged Sylvia to address them in their native tongue; it would give them much pleasure, she thought. Sylvia, however, was too shy, so Blanche in her loudest voice suddenly shouted: "Oh yes! T'ank you! I love you! All right! You sleep with me? G.o.ddambleudi!"
The English family looked very much shocked, but the governess came to their rescue by asking in a thin throaty voice for the "att.i.tion," and presently they all walked out of the garden. Blanche judged the English to be a dull race, and, mounting on a table, began a rowdy dance. It happened that, just when the table cracked, the English governess came back for an umbrella she had left behind, and that Blanche, leaping wildly to save herself from falling, leaped on the governess and brought her to the ground in a general ruin of chairs and tables. Blanche picked up the victim and said that it was all very rigolo, which left miss as wise as she was before, her French not extending beyond the tea-table and the chaster portions of a bedroom. Blanche told Sylvia to explain to miss that she had displayed nothing more in her fall than had given much pleasure to all the world. Sylvia, who really felt the poor governess required such practical consolation, translated accordingly, whereat miss became very red and, s.n.a.t.c.hing her umbrella, walked away muttering, "Impertinent little gipsy." When Blanche was told the substance of her last remark, she exclaimed, indignantly: "Elles sont des vrais types, vous savez, ces gonzesses. Mince, alors! Pourquoi s'emballer comme ca? Elle portait un pantalon ferme! Quelle race infecte, ces Anglais! Moi, je ne peux pas les suffrir."
Sylvia, listening to Blanche's tirade, wondered if all the English were like that. She thought of her father's books, and decided that life in France must have changed him somehow. Then she called to mind with a s.h.i.+ver the solemn light-blue eyes of the little girls. England must be a cold sort of a place where n.o.body ever laughed; perhaps that was why her father had come away. Sylvia decided to remain in France, always in a caravan if possible, where no English miss could poke about with bony fingers in one's bread and b.u.t.ter.
Sylvia acquired a good deal of worldly wisdom from being so continuously in the society of Blanche, and for a child of eleven she was growing up somewhat rapidly. Yet it would have been hard to say that the influence of her noisy friend was hurtful, for it never roused in Sylvia a single morbid thought. Life in those days presented itself to her mostly as an amusing game, a game that sometimes caused tears, but tears that were easily dried, because, after all, it was only a game. Such was the situation created on one occasion by the unexpected arrival of Blanche's fiance from his regiment, the 717th of the line.
The company was playing at St.-Nazaire at the time, and Louis Moreau telegraphed from Nantes that he had been granted a conge of forty-eight hours.
"Mince, alors!" cried Blanche to Sylvia. "And, you know, I don't want to give him up, because he has thirty thousand francs and he loves me a la folie. We are only waiting till he has finished his military service to get married. But I don't want him here. First of all, I have a very chic lover, who has a poignon fou and doesn't care how much he spends, and then the lover of my heart is here."
Sylvia protested that she had heard the last claim too often.
"No, but this is something much greater than a beguin. It is real love. Il est tres trr-es-beau garcon, tu sais. And, chose tres-drole, he also is doing his military service here. Tout ca ne se dessine pas du tout bien, tu sais, mais pas du tout, tu comprends! Moi, je ne suis pas veineuse. Ah, non, alors, c'est le comble!"
Blanche had been sufficiently agile to extract the usual wagonette and pair of horses from the chic lover to whom she had introduced her real lover, a tall cuira.s.sier with fierce mustaches, as her brother; but the imminent arrival of Louis was going to spoil all this, because Louis knew well that she did not possess a relative in the world, in fact, as Blanche emphasized, her solitary position had been one of her charms.
"You'll have to get rid of Monsieur Beaujour." This was the rich lover.
"And lose my horses? Ah, non, alors!"
"Well, then you'll have to tell Marcel he mustn't come near you until Louis has gone."
"And see him go off with that Jeanne at the Clair de la Lune Concert!"
"Couldn't Louis pay for the horses?" suggested Sylvia.
"I'm not going to let him waste his money like that; besides, he'll only be here two nights. C'est a.s.sommant, tu sais," Blanche sighed.
In the middle of the discussion Louis arrived, a very short little sous-officier with kind watery eyes and a mustache that could only be seen properly out of doors. Louis had not had more than five minutes with his fiancee before M. Beaujour drove up with the wagonette and pair. He was the son of a rich s.h.i.+pping agent in St.-Nazaire, with a stiff manner that he mistook for evidence of aristocratic descent, and bad teeth that prevented him from smiling more than he could help.
"I shall tell him you're my brother," said Blanche, quickly. Louis began to protest.
"Pas de boniment," Blanche went on. "I must be pleasant to strangers in front. Madame Ba.s.sompierre insists on that, and you know I've never given you any cause to be really jealous."
M. Beaujour looked very much surprised when Blanche presented Louis to him as her brother; Sylvia, remembering the tall cuira.s.sier with the fierce mustaches that had also been introduced as Blanche's brother, appreciated his sensations. However, he accepted the relations.h.i.+p and invited Louis to accompany them on the drive, putting him with Sylvia and seating himself next Blanche on the box; Louis, who found Sylvia sympathetic, talked all the time about the wonderful qualities of Blanche, continually turning round to adore her shapely back.
M. Beaujour invited Louis to a supper he was giving that evening in honor of Blanche, and supposed, perhaps a little maliciously, that Monsieur would be glad to meet his brother again, who was also to be of the party. Louis looked at Blanche in perplexity; she frowned at him and said nothing.
That supper, to which M. and Mme. Perron with several other members of the company were invited, was a very restless meal. First, Blanche would go out with the host while Marcel and Louis glared alternately at each other and the door; then she would withdraw with Louis, while M. Beaujour and Marcel glared and fidgeted; finally she would disappear with Marcel, once for such a long time that Sylvia grew nervous and went outside to find her. Blanche was in tears; Marcel was stalking up and down the pa.s.sage, twisting his fierce mustaches and muttering his annoyance. Sylvia was involved in a bitter discussion about the various degrees of Blanche's love, and in the end Blanche cried that her whole life had been shattered, and rushed back to the supper-room. Sylvia took this opportunity of representing Blanche's point of view to Marcel, and so successful was she with her tale of the emotional stress caused by the conflict of love with prudence that finally Marcel burst into tears, called down benedictions upon Sylvia's youthful head, and rejoined the supper-party, where he drank a great quant.i.ty of red wine and squeezed Blanche's hand under the table for the rest of the evening.
Sylvia, having been successful once, now invited Louis to accompany her outside. To him she explained that Marcel loved Blanche madly, that she, the owner, as Louis knew, of a melting heart, had been much upset by her inability to return his love, and that Louis must not be jealous, because Blanche loved only him. Louis's eyes became more watery than ever, and he took his seat at table again, a happy man until he drank too much wine and had to retire permanently from the feast. Finally Sylvia tackled M. Beaujour, and, recognizing that he was probably tired of lies, told him the truth of the situation, leaving it to him as an homme superieur to realize that he could only be an episode in Blanche's life and begging him not to force his position that night. M. Beaujour could not help being flattered by this child's perception of his superiority, and for the rest of the entertainment played the host in a manner that was, as Madame Perron said, tres tres-correcte.
However, amusing evenings like this came to an end for Sylvia when once more the caravan returned to Lille. Her uncle and aunt had so much enjoyed her company that they proposed to Madame Snow to adopt Sylvia as their own daughter. Sylvia, much as she loved her mother, would have been very glad to leave the house at Lille, for it seemed, when she saw it again, poverty-stricken and pinched. There was only Valentine now left of her sisters, and her mother looked very care-worn. Her father, however, declined most positively to listen to the Ba.s.sompierres' proposal, and was indeed almost insulting about it. Madame Snow wearily bade Sylvia say no more, and the caravan went on its way again. Sylvia wondered whether life in Lille had always been as dull in reality as this, or if it were dull merely in contrast with the gay life of vagrancy. Everybody in Lille seemed to be quarreling. Her mother was always reproaching Valentine for being late, and her father for losing money, and herself for idleness in the house. She tried to make friends with her sister, but Valentine was suspicious of her former intimacy with their mother, and repelled her advances. The months dragged on, months of eternal sewing, eternal saving, eternal nagging, eternal sameness. Then one evening, when her mother was standing in the kitchen, giving a last glance at everything before she went down to the theater, she suddenly threw up her arms, cried in a choking voice, "Henri!" and collapsed upon the floor. There was n.o.body in the house except Sylvia, who, though she felt very much frightened, tried for a long time, without success, to restore her mother to consciousness. At last her father came in and bent over his wife.
"Good G.o.d, she's dead!" he exclaimed, and Sylvia broke into a sweat of horror to think that she had been alone in the twilight with something dead. Her father struggled to lift the body on the sofa, calling to Sylvia to come and help him. She began to whimper, and he swore at her for cowardice. A clock struck and Sylvia shrieked. Her father began to drag the body toward the sofa; playing-cards fell from his sleeves on the dead woman's face.
"Didn't she say anything before she died?" he asked. Sylvia shook her head.
"She was only forty-six, you know," he said; in and out of his fingers, round and round his hand, slipped the ten-centime piece.
For some time after his wife's death Henry Snow was inconsolable, and his loudly expressed grief had the effect of making Sylvia seem hard, for she grew impatient with him, especially when every week he used to sell some cherished piece of furniture. She never attempted to explain her sentiments when he accused her of caring more for furniture than for her dead mother; she felt it would be useless to explain them to him, and suffered in silence. What Sylvia found most inexplicable was the way in which her father throve on sorrow and every day seemed to grow younger. This fact struck her so sharply that one day she penetrated the hostility that had been gathering daily between her and Valentine and asked her sister if she had observed this queer change. Valentine got very angry; demanded what Sylvia meant; flung out some cruel sneers; and involved her in a scene with her father, who charged her with malice and underhanded behavior. Sylvia was completely puzzled by the effect of her harmless observation, and supposed that Valentine, who had always been jealous of her, had seized the opportunity to make further mischief. She could never understand why Valentine was jealous of her, because Valentine was really beautiful, and very much like her mother, enviable from any point of view, and even now obviously dearer to her stepfather than his own daughter. She would have liked to know where the caravan was now; she was sure that her father would no longer wish to forbid her adoption by Uncle Edouard and Aunt Elise.
The house grew emptier and emptier of furniture; Sylvia found it so hard to obtain any money from her father for current expenses that she was often hungry. She did not like to write to any of her older sisters, because she was afraid that Valentine would make it appear that she was in the wrong and trying to stir up trouble. Summer pa.s.sed into autumn, and with the lengthening darkness the house became unbearably still; neither her father nor her sister was ever at home; even the clocks had now all disappeared. Sylvia could not bear to remain indoors; for in her nervous, hungry state old childish terrors were revived, and the great empty loft at the top of the house was once again inhabited by that one-legged man with whose clutches her mother used to frighten her when naughty long ago. There recurred, too, a story told by her mother on just such a gusty evening as these, of how, when she first came to Lille, she had found an armed burglar under her bed, and of how the man had been caught and imprisoned. Even her mother, who was not a nervous woman, had been frightened by his threats of revenge when he should be free again, and once when she and her mother were sewing together close to the dusky window her mother had fancied she had seen him pa.s.s the house, a large pale man in a dark suit. Supposing he should come back now for his revenge? And above all these other terrors was the dread of her mother's ghost.
Sylvia took to going out alone every evening, whether it rained or blew, to seek in the streets relief from the silence of the desolate house. Loneliness came to seem to her the worst suffering imaginable, and the fear of it which was bred during these months haunted her for years to come.
In November, about half past eight of a windy night, Sylvia came back from one of her solitary walks and found her father sitting with a bottle of brandy in the kitchen. His face was haggard; his collar was loose; from time to time he mopped his forehead with a big blue handkerchief and stared at himself in a small cracked shaving-gla.s.s that he must have brought down from his bedroom. She asked if he were ill, and he told her not to worry him, but to go out and borrow a railway time-table.
When Sylvia returned she heard Valentine's angry voice in the kitchen, and waited in the pa.s.sage to know the cause of the dispute.
"No, I won't come with you," Valentine was saying. "You must be mad! If you're in danger of going to prison, so much the worse for you. I've got plenty of people who'll look after me."
"But I'm your stepfather."
Valentine's laugh made Sylvia turn pale.
"Stepfather! Fine stepfather! Why, I hate you! Do you hear? I hate you! My man is waiting for me now, and he'll laugh when he hears that a convict wants his step-daughter to go away with him. My mother may have loved you, but I'd like her to see you now. L'amour de sa vie. Son homme! Sa poupee, sa poupee! Ah, mais non alors! Sa poupee!"
Sylvia could not bear any longer this mockery of her mother's love, and, bursting into the kitchen, she began to abuse Valentine with all the vulgar words she had learned from Blanche.
Valentine caught her sister by the shoulders and shook her violently: "Tu seras bien avec ton pere, sale gosse!"
Then she smacked her cheek several times and left the house.
Sylvia flung her arms round her father.