Chapter 2
Sylvia blessed the persistency with which she had worried Clara on the subject of racing; otherwise, bis.e.xual and solitary, she might have been moping in Lillie Road. She hoped that Maudie Tilt would not offer any objections to the proposed party, and determined to point out most persuasively the benefit of Monkley's patronage, if she really meant to go on the stage. However, Maudie was not at all difficult to convince and showed herself as eager for the party as Sylvia herself. She was greatly impressed by her visitor's experience of the stage, but reckoned that no boys should have pinched her legs or given her the broken masks.
"You ought to have punched into them," she said. "Still, I dare say it wasn't so easy for you, not being a girl. Boys are very nasty to one another, when they'd be as nice as anything to a girl."
Sylvia was conscious of a faint feeling of contempt for Maudie's judgment, and she wondered from what her illusions were derived.
Clara, when she heard of the proposed party, was dubious. She had no confidence in Monkley, and said so frankly.
"No one wants to go chasing after a servant-girl for nothing," she declared. "Every cloud's got a silver lining."
"But what could he want to do wrong?" Sylvia asked.
"Ah, now you're asking. But if I was Maudie Tilt I'd keep myself to myself."
Clara snapped out the last remark and would say nothing more on the subject.
A few days later, under Sylvia's guidance, James Monkley and Henry Scarlett sought Castleford Road. Maudie had put on a black silk dress, and with her hair done in what she called the French fas.h.i.+on she achieved a kind of j.a.panese piquancy.
"N'est-ce pas qu'elle a un chic?" Sylvia whispered to her father.
They had supper in the dining-room and made a good deal of noise over it, for Monkley had brought two bottles of champagne, and Maudie could not resist producing a bottle of cognac from her master's cellar. When Monkley asked if everything were not kept under lock and key, Maudie told him that if they couldn't trust her they could lump it; she could jolly soon find another place; and, any way, she intended to get on the stage somehow. After supper they went up-stairs to the drawing-room; and Maudie was going to sit down at the piano, when Monkley told her that he would accompany her, because he wanted to see how she danced. Maudie gave a most spirited performance, kicking up her legs and stamping until the ornaments on the mantelpiece rattled. Then Monkley showed Maudie where she could make improvements in her renderings, which surprised Sylvia very much, because she had never connected Monkley with anything like this.
"Quite an artist is Jimmy," Henry Scarlett declared. Then he added in an undertone to Sylvia: "He's a wonderful chap, you know. I've taken a rare fancy to him. Do anything. Sharp as a needle. I may as well say right out that he's made all the difference to my life in London."
Presently Monkley suggested that Maudie should show them over the house, and they went farther up-stairs to the princ.i.p.al bedroom, where the two men soused their heads with the various hair-washes left behind by the master of the house. Henry expressed a desire to have a bath, and retired with an enormous sponge and a box of bath-salts. Monkley began to flirt with Maudie; Sylvia, feeling that the evening was becoming rather dull, went down-stairs again to the drawing-room and tried to pa.s.s the time away with a stereoscope.
After that evening Monkley and Scarlett went often to see Maudie, but, much to Sylvia's resentment, they never took her with them. When she grumbled about this to Clara, Clara told her that she was well out of it.
"Too many cooks drink up the soup, which means you're one too many, my lad, and a rolling stone doesn't let the gra.s.s grow under its feet, which means as that Monkley's got some game on."
Sylvia did not agree with Clara's point of view; she still felt aggrieved by being left out of everything. Luckily, when life in Lillie Road was becoming utterly dull again, a baboon escaped from Earl's Court Exhibition, climbed up the drain-pipe outside the house, and walked into Mrs. Meares's bedroom; so that for some time after this she had palpitations whenever a bell rang. Mr. Morgan was very unkind about her adventure, for he declared that the baboon looked so much like an Irishman that she must have thought it was her husband come back; Mr. Morgan had been practising the Waldstein Sonata at the time, and had been irritated by the interruption of a wandering ape.
A fortnight after this there was a scene in the house that touched Sylvia more sharply, for Maudie Tilt arrived one morning and begged to speak with Mr. Monkley, who, being in the Scarletts' room at the moment, looked suddenly at Sylvia's father with a question in his eyes.
"I told you not to take them all," Henry said.
"I'll soon calm her down," Monkley promised. "If you hadn't insisted on taking those bottles of hair-wash she'd never have thought of looking to see if the other things were still there."
Henry indicated his daughter with a gesture.
"Rot! The kid's got to stand in on this," Monkley said, with a laugh. "After all, it was he who introduced us. I'll bring her up here to talk it out," he added.
Presently he returned with Maudie, who had very red eyes and a frightened expression.
"Oh, Jimmy!" she burst out. "Whatever did you want to take that jewelry for? I only found out last night, and they'll be home to-morrow. Whatever am I going to say?"
"Jewelry?" repeated Monkley, in a puzzled voice. "Harry took some hair-wash, if that's what you mean."
"Jewelry?" Henry murmured, taking the cue from his friend. "Was there any jewelry?"
"Oh, don't pretend you don't know nothing about it," Maudie cried, dissolving into tears. "For the love of G.o.d give it to me, so as I can put it back. If you're hard up, Jimmy, you can take what I saved for the stage; but give us back that jewelry."
"If you act like that you'll make your fortune as a professional," Monkley sneered.
Maudie turned to Sylvia in desperation. "Sil," she cried, "make them give it back. It'll be the ruin of me. Why, it's burglary! Oh, whatever shall I do?"
Maudie flung herself down on the bed and wept convulsively. Sylvia felt her heart beating fast, but she strung herself up to the encounter and faced Monkley.
"What's the good of saying you haven't got the jewelry," she cried, "when you know you have? Give it
She stopped and challenged Monkley with flas.h.i.+ng eyes, head thrown back, and agitated breast.
"You oughtn't to talk to a grown-up person like that, you know," said her father.
Something unspeakably soft in his att.i.tude infuriated Sylvia, and spinning round she flashed out at him: "If you don't make Monkley give back the things you stole I'll tell everybody about you. I mean it. I'll tell everybody." She stamped her feet.
"That's a daughter," said Henry. "That's the way they're bringing them up nowadays--to turn round on their fathers."
"A daughter?" Monkley echoed, with an odd look at his friend.
"I mean son," said Henry, weakly. "Anyway, it's all the same."
Monkley seemed to pay no more attention to the slip, but went over to Maudie and began to coax her.
"Come on, Maudie, don't turn away from a good pal. What if we did take a few things? They shouldn't have left them behind. People deserve to lose things if they're so careless."
"That's quite true," Henry agreed, virtuously. "It'll be a lesson to them."
"Go back and pack up your things, my dear, and get out of the house. I'll see you through. You shall take another name and go on the stage right away. What's the good of crying over a few rings and bangles?"
But Maudie refused to be comforted. "Give them back to me. Give them back to me," she moaned.
"Oh, all right," Monkley said, suddenly. "But you're no sport, Maudie. You've got the chance of your life and you're turning it down. Well, don't blame me if you find yourself still a slavey five years hence."
Monkley went down-stairs and came back again in a minute or two with a parcel wrapped up in tissue-paper.
"You haven't kept anything back?" Maudie asked, anxiously.
"My dear girl, you ought to know how many there were. Count them."
"Would you like me to give you back the hair-wash?" Henry asked, indignantly.
Maudie rose to go away.
"You're not angry with me, Jim?" she asked, pleadingly.
"Oh, get out!" he snapped.
Maudie turned pale and rushed from the room.
"Silly b----h," Monkley said. "Well, it's been a very instructive morning," he added, fixing Sylvia with his green eyes and making her feel uncomfortable.
"Some people make a fuss about the least little thing," Henry said. "There was just the same trouble when I p.a.w.ned my wife's jewelry. Coming round the corner to have one?" he inquired, looking at Monkley, who said he would join him presently and followed him out of the room.
When she was alone, Sylvia tried to put her emotions in order, without success. She had wished for excitement, but, now that it had arrived, she wished it had kept away from her. She was not so much shocked by the revelation of what her father and Monkley had done (though she resented their cowardly treatment of Maudie), as frightened by what might ultimately happen to her in their company. They might at any moment find themselves in prison, and if she were to be let out before the others, what would she do? She would be utterly alone and would starve; or, what seemed more likely, they would be arrested and she would remain in Lillie Road, waiting for news and perhaps compelled to earn her living by working for Mrs. Meares. At all costs she must be kept informed of what was going on. If her father tried to shut her out of his confidence, she would appeal to Monkley. Her meditation was interrupted by Monkley himself.
"So you're a little girl," he said, suddenly. "Fancy that."
"What if I am?" challenged Sylvia, who saw no hope of successfully denying the accusation.
"Oh, I don't know," Monkley murmured. "It's more fun, that's all. But, look here, girl or boy, don't let me ever have any more heroics from you. D'ye hear? Or, by G.o.d! I'll--"
Sylvia felt that the only way of dealing with Monkley was to stand up to him from the first.
"Oh, shut up!" she broke in. "You can't frighten me. Next time, perhaps you'll tell me beforehand what you're going to do, and then I'll see if I'll let you do it."
He began to laugh. "You've got some pluck."
"Why?"
"Why, to cheek me like that."
"I'm not Maudie, you see," Sylvia pointed out.
Presently a spasm of self-consciousness made her long to be once more in petticoats, and, grabbing wildly at her flying boyhood, she said how much she wanted to have adventures. Monkley promised she should have as many as she liked, and bade her farewell, saying that he was going to join her father in a saloon bar round the corner. Sylvia volunteered to accompany him, and after a momentary hesitation he agreed to take her. On the stairs they overtook the baron, very much dressed up, who, in answer to an inquiry from Monkley, informed them that he was going to lunch with the Emperor of Byzantium.
"Give my love to the Empress," Monkley laughed.
"It's-s nothing to laugh at," the baron said, severely. "He lives in West Kensington."
"Next door to the Pope, I suppose," Monkley went on.
"You never will be serious, but I'll take you there one afternoon, if you don't believe me."
The baron continued on his way down-stairs with a kind of mincing dignity, and Mrs. Meares came out of her bedroom.
"Isn't it nice for the dear baron?" she purred. "He's received some of his money from Berlin, and at last he can go and look up his old friends. He's lunching with the Emperor to-day."
"I hope he won't drop his crown in the soup," Monkley said.
"Ah, give over laughing, Mr. Monkley, for I like to think of the poor baron in the society to which he belongs. And he doesn't forget his old friends. But there, after all, why would he, for, though I'm living in Lillie Road, I've got the real spirit of the past in my blood, and the idea of meeting the Emperor doesn't elate me at all. It seems somehow as if I were used to meeting emperors."
On the way to the public house Monkley held forth to Sylvia on the prevalence of human folly, and vowed that he would hold the baron to his promise and visit the Emperor himself.
"And take me with you?" Sylvia asked.
"You seem very keen on the new partners.h.i.+p," he observed.
"I don't want to be left out of things," she explained. "Not out of anything. It makes me look stupid. Father treats me like a little girl; but it's he who's stupid, really."
They had reached the public house, and Henry was taken aback by Sylvia's arrival. She, for her part, was rather disappointed in the saloon bar. The words had conjured something much more sumptuous than this place that reminded her of a chemist's shop.
"I don't want the boy to start learning to drink," Henry protested.
Monkley told him to give up the fiction of Sylvia's boyhood with him, to which Henry replied that, though, as far as he knew, he had only been sitting here ten minutes, Jimmy and Sylvia seemed to have settled the whole world between them in that time.
"What's more, if she's going to remain a boy any longer, she's got to have some new clothes," Monkley announced.
Sylvia flushed with pleasure, recognizing that cooperative action of which preliminary dressing-up was the pledge.
"You see, I've promised to take her round with me to the Emperor of Byzantium."
"I don't know that pub," said Henry. "Is it Walham Green way?"
Monkley told him about meeting the baron, and put forward his theory that people who were willing to be duped by the Emperor of Byzantium would be equally willing to be duped by other people, with much profit to the other people.
"Meaning you and me?" said Henry.
"Well, in this case I propose to leave you out of the first act," Monkley said. "I'm going to have a look at the scene myself. There's no one like you with the cards, Harry, but when it comes to the patter I think you'll give me first."
Presently, Sylvia was wearing Etons, at Monkley's suggestion, and waiting in a dream of antic.i.p.ation; the baron proclaimed that the Emperor would hold a reception on the first Thursday in June. When Monkley said he wanted young Sylvester to go with them, the baron looked doubtful; but Monkley remarked that he had seen the baron coming out of a certain house in Earl's Court Road the other day, which seemed to agitate him and make him anxious for Sylvia to attend the reception.
Outside the very commonplace house in Stanmore Crescent, where the Emperor of Byzantium lived, Monkley told the baron that he did not wish anything said about Sylvester's father. Did the baron understand? He wished a certain mystery to surround Sylvester. The baron after his adventure in Earl's Court Road would appreciate the importance of secrecy.
"You are a regular devil, Monkley," said von Statten, in his most mincing voice. Remembering the saloon bar, Sylvia had made up her mind not to be disappointed if the Emperor's reception failed to be very exciting; yet on the whole she was rather impressed. To be sure, the entrance hall of 14 Stanmore Crescent was not very imperial; but a footman took their silk hats, and, though Monkley whispered that he was carrying them like flower-pots and was evidently the jobbing gardener from round the corner, Sylvia was agreeably awed, especially when they were invited to proceed to the antechamber.
"In other words, the dining-room," said Monkley to the baron.
"Hus.h.!.+ Don't you see the throne-room beyond?" the baron whispered.
Sure enough, opening out of the antechamber was a smaller room in which was a dais covered with purple cloth. On a high Venetian chair sat the Emperor, a young man with dark, bristling hair, in evening dress. Sylvia stood on tiptoe to get a better look at him; but there was such a crush in the entrance to the throne-room that she had to be content for the present with staring at the numerous courtiers and listening to Monkley's whispered jokes, which the baron tried in vain to stop.
"I suppose where the young man with a head like a door-mat and a face like a sc.r.a.per is sitting is where the Imperial family congregates after dinner. I'd like to see what's under that purple cloth. Packing-cases, I'll bet a quid."
"Hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+ not so loud," the baron implored. "Here's Captain Grayrigg, the Emperor's father."
He pointed to a very small man with pouched eyes and a close-cropped pointed beard.
"Do you mean to tell me the Emperor hasn't made his father a field-marshal? He ought to be ashamed of himself."
"My dear man, Captain Grayrigg married the late Empress. He is nothing himself."
"I suppose he has to knock the packing-cases together and pay for the ices."
But the baron had pressed forward to meet Captain Grayrigg and did not answer. Presently he came back very officiously and beckoned to Monkley, whom he introduced.
"From New York City, Colonel," said Monkley, with a quick glance at the baron.
Sylvia nearly laughed, because Jimmy was talking through his nose in the most extraordinary way.