Chapter 25
"You think one can't afford to bury the past?"
Avery looked at her quickly. "What made you ask me that?"
"I thought you seemed to admire Michael's youthful foolishness."
"I do really. I admire any one that's steadfast even to a mistaken idea. It's strange to meet an Englishwoman here," he said, looking intently at Sylvia. "One's guard drops. I'm longing to make a confidante of you, but you might be bored. I'm rather frightened of you, really. I always was."
"I sha'n't exchange confidences," Sylvia said, "if that's what you're afraid of."
"No, of course not," Avery said, quickly. "Last spring I was in love with a girl...."
Sylvia raised her eyebrows.
"Oh yes, it's a very commonplace beginning and rather a commonplace end, I'm afraid. She was a ballet-girl--the incarnation of May and London. That sounds exaggerated, for I know that lots of other Jenny Pearls have been the same to somebody, but I do believe most people agreed with me. I wanted her to live with me. She wouldn't. She had sentimental, or what I thought were sentimental, ideas about her mother and family. I was called away to Spain. When my business was finished I begged her to come out to me there. That was last April. She refused, and I was piqued, I suppose, at first, and did not go back to England. Then, as one does, I made up my mind to the easiest thing at the moment by letting myself be enchanted by my surroundings into thinking that I was happier as it was. For a while I was happier; in a way our love had been a great strain upon us both. I came to Morocco, and gradually ever since I've been realizing that I left something unfinished. It's become a kind of obsession. Do you know what I mean?"
"Indeed I do, very well indeed," Sylvia said.
"Thanks," he said with a grateful look. "Now comes the problem. If I go back to England this month, if I arrive in England on the first of May exactly a year later, there's only one thing I can do to atone for my behavior--I must ask her to marry me. You see that, don't you? This little thing is proud, oh, but tremendously proud. I doubt very much if she'll forgive me, even if I show the sincerity of my regret by asking her to marry me now; but it's my only chance. And yet--oh, I expect this will sound d.a.m.nable to you, but it's the way we've all been molded in England--she's common. Common! What an outrageous word to use. But then it is used by everybody. She's the most frankly c.o.c.kney thing you ever saw. Can I stand her being snubbed and patronized? Can I stand my wife's being snubbed and patronized? Can love survive the sort of ambushed criticism that I shall perceive all round us? For I wouldn't try to change her. No, no, no! She must be herself. I'll have no throaty 'aws' masquerading as 'o's.' She must keep her own clear 'aou's.' There must not be any 'naceness' or patched-up shop-walker's English. I love her more at this moment than I ever loved her, but can I stand it? And I'm not asking this egotistically: I'm asking it for both of us. That's why you meet me in Tetuan, for I dare not go back to England lest the first c.o.c.kney voice I hear may kill my determination, and I really am longing to marry her. Yet I wait here, staking what I know in my heart is all my future happiness on chance, a.s.suring myself that presently impulse and reason will be reconciled and will send me back to her, but still I wait."
He paused. The fountain whispered in the shade of the pomegranates. A nun was gathering flowers for the chapel. Outside, the turmoil of the East sounded like the distant chattering of innumerable monkeys.
"You've so nearly reached the point at which a man has the right to approach a woman," Sylvia said, "that if you're asking my advice, I advise you to wait until you do actually reach that point. Of course you may lose her by waiting. She may marry somebody else."
"Oh, I know; I've thought of that. In a way that would be a solution."
"So long as you regard her marriage with somebody else as a solution, you're still some way from the point. It's curious she should be a ballet-girl, because Mrs. Gainsborough, you know, was a ballet-girl. In 1869, when she took her emotional plunge, she was able to exchange the wings of Covent Garden for the wings of love easily enough. In 1869 ballet-girls never thought of marrying what were and are called 'gentlemen.' I think Mrs. Gainsborough would consider her life a success; she was not too much married to spoil love, and the captain was certainly more devoted to her than most husbands would have been. The proof that her life was a success is that she has remained young. Yet if I introduce you to her you'll see at once your own Jenny at sixty like her--that won't be at all a hard feat of imagination. But you'll still be seeing yourself at twenty-five or whatever you are; you'll never be able to see yourself at sixty; therefore I sha'n't introduce you. I'm too much of a woman not to hope with all my heart that you'll go home to England, marry your Jenny, and live happily ever afterward, and I think you'd better not meet Mrs. Gainsborough, in case she prejudices your resolve. Thanks for giving me your confidence."
"Oh no! Thank you for listening," said Avery.
"I'm glad you're not going to develop her. I once suffered from that kind of vivisection myself, though I never had a c.o.c.kney accent. Some souls can't stand straight lacing, just as some bodies revolt from stays. And so Michael is in a monastery? I suppose that means all his soul spasms are finally allayed?"
"O Lord! No!" said Avery. "He's in the very middle of them."
"What I really meant to say was heart palpitations."
"I don't think, really," said Avery, "that Michael ever had them."
"What was Lily, then?"
"Oh, essentially a soul spasm," he declared.
"Yes, I suppose it was," Sylvia agreed, pensively.
"I think, you know, I must meet Mrs. Gainsborough," said Avery. "Fate answers for you. Here she comes."
Don Alfonso, with the pain that every dog and dragoman feels in the separation of his charges, had taken advantage of Sylvia's talk with Avery to bring Mrs. Gainsborough triumphantly back to the fold.
"Here we are again," said Mrs. Gainsborough, limping down the path. "And my behind looks like a magic lantern. Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn't see you'd met a friend. So that's what Alfonso was trying to tell me. He's been going like an alarm-clock all the way here. Pleased to meet you, I'm sure. How do you like Morocco? We got shut out last night."
"This is a friend of Michael Fane's," said Sylvia.
"Did you know him? He was a nice young fellow. Very nice he was. But he wouldn't know me now. Very stay-at-home I was when he used to come to Mulberry Cottage. Why, he tried to make me ride in a hansom once, and I was actually too nervous. You know, I'd got into a regular rut. But now, well, upon me word, I don't believe now I should say 'no' if any one was to invite me to ride inside of a whale. It's her doing, the tartar."
Avery had learned a certain amount of Arabic during his stay in Morocco and he made the bazaars of Tetuan much more interesting than Don Alfonso could have done. He also had many tales to tell of the remote cities like Fez and Mequinez and Marakeesh.
They stayed a few days at Tetuan, but the bugs were too many for Mrs. Gainsborough, who began to sigh for a tranquil bed. Avery and Sylvia had a short conversation together before they left. He thanked her for her sympathy, held to his intention of spending the summer in Morocco, but was nearly sure he should return to England in the autumn, with a mind serenely fixed.
"I wish, if you go back to London, you'd look Jenny up," he said.
Sylvia shook her head very decidedly. "I can't imagine anything that would annoy her more, if she's the girl I suppose her to be."
"But I'd like her to have a friend like you," he urged.
Sylvia looked at him severely. "Are you quite sure that you don't want to change her?" she asked.
"Of course. Why?"
"Choosing friends for somebody else is not very wise; it sounds uncommonly like a roundabout way of developing her. No, no, I won't meet your Jenny."
"I see what you mean," Avery a.s.sented. "I'll write to Michael and tell him I've met you. Shall I tell him about Lily? Where is she now?"
"I don't know. I've never had even a post-card. My fault, really. Yes, you can tell Michael that she's probably quite happy and--no, I don't think there's any other message. Oh yes, you might say I've eaten one or two rose-leaves but not enough yet."
Avery looked puzzled.
"Apuleius," she added.
"Strange girl. I wish you would go and see Jenny."
"Oh no! She's eaten all the rose-leaves she wants, and I'm sure she's not the least interested in Apuleius."
Next day Sylvia and Mrs. Gainsborough set out on the return journey to Tangier, which, apart from a disastrous attempt by Mrs. Gainsborough to eat a p.r.i.c.kly pear, lacked incident.
"Let sleeping pears lie," said Sylvia.
"Well, you don't expect a fruit to be so savage," retorted Mrs. Gainsborough. "I thought I must have aggravated a wasp. Talk about nettles. They're chammy leather beside them. p.r.i.c.kly pears! I suppose the next thing I try to eat will be stabbing apples."
They went home by Gibraltar, where Mrs. Gainsborough was delighted to see English soldiers.
"It's nice to know we've got our eyes open even in Spain. I reckon I'll get a good cup of tea here."
They reached England at the end of April, and Sylvia decided to stay for a while at Mulberry Cottage. Reading through The Stage, she found that Jack Airdale was resting at Richmond in his old rooms, and went down to see him. He was looking somewhat thin and worried.
"Had rather a rotten winter," he told her. "I got ill with a quinsey and had to throw up a decent shop, and somehow or other I haven't managed to get another one yet."
"Look here, old son," Sylvia said, "I don't want any d.a.m.ned pride from you. I've got plenty of money at present. You've got to borrow fifty pounds. You want feeding up and fitting out. Don't be a cad now, and refuse a 'lidy.' Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You know me by this time. Who's going to be more angry, you at being lent money or me at being refused by one of the few, the very few, mark you, good pals I've got? Don't be a beast, Jack. You've got to take it."
He surrendered, from habit. Sylvia gave him all her news, but the item that interested him most was her having half taken up the stage.
"I knew you'd make a hit," he declared.
"But I didn't."
"My dear girl, you don't give yourself a chance. You can't play hide and seek with the public, though, by Jove!" he added, ruefully, "I have been lately."
"For the present I can afford to wait."
"Yes, you're d.a.m.ned lucky in one way, and yet I'm not sure that you aren't really very unlucky. If you hadn't found some money you'd have been forced to go on."
"My dear lad, lack of money wouldn't make me an artist."
"What would, then?"
"Oh, I don't know. Being fed up with everything. That's what drove me into self-expression, as I should call it if I were a temperamental miss with a light-boiled ego swimming in a saucepan of emotion for the public to swallow or myself to crack. But conceive my disgust! There was I yearning unattainable 'isms' from a soul nurtured on tragic disillusionment, and I was applauded for singing French songs with an English accent. No, seriously, I shall try again, old Jack, when I receive another buffet. At present I'm just dimly uncomfortable. I shall blossom late like a chrysanthemum. I ain't no daffodil, I ain't. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that I was forced when young--don't giggle, you ribald a.s.s, not that way--and I've got to give myself a rest before I bloom, en plein air."
"But you really have got plenty of money?" Airdale inquired, anxiously.
"Ma.s.ses! Cataracts! And all come by perfectly honest. No, seriously, I've got about four thousand pounds."
"Well, I really do think you're rather lucky, you know."
"Of course. But it's all written in the book of Fate. Listen. I've got a mulberry mark on my arm; I live at Mulberry Cottage; and Morera, that's the name of my fairy G.o.dfather, is Spanish for mulberry-tree. Can you beat it?"
"I hope you've invested this money," said Airdale.
"It's in a bank."
He begged her to be careful of her riches, and she rallied him on his inconsistency, because a moment back he had been telling her that their possession was hindering her progress in art.
"My dear Sylvia, I haven't known you for five years not to have discovered that I might as well advise a schoolmaster as you, but what are you going to do?"
"Plans for this summer? A little gentle reading. A little browsing among the cla.s.sics. A little theater-going. A little lunching at Verrey's with Mr. John Airdale. Resting address, six Rosetree Terrace, Richmond, Surrey. A little b.u.mming around town, as Senor Morera would say. Plans for the autumn? A visit to the island of Sirene, if I can find a nice lady-like young woman to accompany me. Mrs. Gainsborough has decided that she will travel no more. Her brain is bursting with unrelated adventure."
"But you can't go on from month to month like that."
"Well, if you'll tell me how to skip over December, January, and August I'll be grateful," Sylvia laughed.
"No, don't rag about. I mean for the future in general," he explained. "Are you going to get married? You can't go on forever like this."
"Why not?"
"Well, you're young now. But what's more gloomy than a restless old maid?"
"My dear man, don't you fret about my withering. I've got a little crystal flask of the finest undiluted strychnine. I believe strychnine quickens the action of the heart. Verdict. Death from attempted galvanization of the cardiac muscles. No flowers by request. Boomph! as Mrs. Gainsborough would say. Ring off. The last time I wrote myself an epitaph it led me into matrimony. Absit omen."
Airdale was distressed by Sylvia's joking about her death, and begged her to stop.
"Then don't ask me any more about the future in general. And now let's go and be Epicurean at Verrey's."
After Jack Airdale the only other old friend that Sylvia took any trouble to find was Olive Fanshawe. She was away on tour when Sylvia returned to England, but she came back to London in June, was still unmarried, and had been promised a small part in the Vanity production that autumn. Sylvia found that Olive had recaptured her romantic ideals and was delighted with her proposal that they should live together at Mulberry Cottage. Olive took very seriously her small part at the Vanity, of which the most distinguished line was: "Girls, have you seen the Duke of Mayfair? He's awfully handsome." Sylvia was not very encouraging to Olive's opportunities of being able to give an original reading of such a line, but she listened patiently to her variations in which each word was overaccentuated in turn. Luckily there was also a melodious quintet consisting of the juvenile lead and four beauties of whom Olive was to be one; this, it seemed, promised to be a hit, and indeed it was.
The most interesting event for the Vanity world that autumn, apart from the individual successes and failures in the new production, was the return of Lord and Lady Clarehaven to London, and not merely their return, but their re-entry into the Bohemian society from which Lady Clarehaven had so completely severed herself.
"I know it's perfectly ridiculous of me," said Olive, "but, Sylvia, do you know, I'm quite nervous at the idea of meeting her again."
A most cordial note had arrived from Dorothy inviting Olive to lunch with her in Curzon Street.
"Write back and tell her you're living with me," Sylvia advised. "That'll choke off some of the friendliness."
But to Sylvia's boundless surprise a messenger-boy arrived with an urgent invitation for her to come too.
"Curiouser and curiouser," she murmured. "What does it mean? She surely can't be tired of being a countess already. I'm completely stumped. However, of course we'll put on our clean bibs and go. Don't look so frightened. Olive, if conversation hangs fire at lunch, we'll tickle the footmen."
"I really feel quite faint," said Olive. "My heart's going pitter-pat. Isn't it silly of me?"
Lunch, to which Arthur Lonsdale had also been invited, did nothing to enlighten Sylvia about the Clarehavens' change of att.i.tude. Dorothy, more beautiful than ever and pleasant enough superficially, seemed withal faintly resentful; Clarehaven was in exuberant spirits and evidently enjoying London tremendously. The only sign of tension, well not exactly tension, but slight disaccord, and that was too strong a word, was once when Clarehaven, having been exceptionally rowdy, glanced at Dorothy a swift look of defiance for checking him.
"She's grown as prim as a parlor-maid," said Lonsdale to Sylvia when, after lunch, they had a chance of talking together. "You ought to have seen her on the ancestral acres. My mother, who presides over our place like a Queen Turnip, is without importance beside Dolly, absolutely without importance. It got on Tony's nerves, that's about the truth of it. He never could stand the land. It has the same effect on him as the sea has on some people. Black vomit, coma, and death--what?"
"Dorothy, of course, played the countess in real life as seriously as she would have played her on the stage. She was the star," Sylvia said.
"Star! My dear girl, she was a comet. And the dowager loved her. They used to drive round in a barouche and administer gruel to the village without anesthetics."
"I suppose they kept them for Clarehaven," Sylvia laughed.
"That's it. Of course, I shouted when I saw the state of affairs, having first of all been called in to recover old Lady Clarehaven's reason when she heard that her only child was going to wed a Vanity girl. But they loved her. Every frump in the county adored her. It's Tony who insisted on this move to London. He stood it in Devons.h.i.+re for two and a half years, but the lights of the wicked city--soft music, please--called him, and they've come back. Dolly's fed up to the wide about it. I say, we are a pair of gossips. What's your news?"
"I met Maurice Avery, in Morocco."
"What, Mossy Avery! Not really? Disguised as a slipper, I suppose. Rum bird. He got awfully keen on a little girl at the Orient and tootled her all over town for a while, but I haven't seen him for months. I used to know him rather well at the 'Varsity: he was one of the esthetic push. I say, what's become of Lily?"
"Married to a croupier? Not, really. By Jove! what a time I had over her with Michael Fane's people. His sister, an awfully good sort, put me through a fearful catechism."
"His sister?" repeated Sylvia.
"You know what Michael's doing now? Greatest scream on earth. He's a monk. Some special kind of a monk that sounds like omelette, but isn't. Nothing to be done about it. I buzzed down to see him last year, and he was awfully fed up. I asked him if he couldn't stop monking for a bit and come out for a spin on my new forty-five Shooting Star. He wasn't in uniform, so there's no reason why he shouldn't have come."
"He's in England, now, then?" Sylvia asked.
"No, he got fed up with everybody buzzing down to see what he looked like as a monk, and he's gone off to Chartreuse or Benedictine or somewhere--I know it's the name of a liqueur--somewhere abroad. I wanted him to become a partner in our business, and promised we'd put a jolly little runabout on the market called The Jovial Monk, but he wouldn't. Look here, we'd better join the others. Dolly's got her eye on me. I say," he chuckled, in a whisper, "I suppose you know she's a connection of mine?"
"Yes, by carriage."
Lonsdale asked what she meant, and Sylvia told him the origin of Dorothy's name.
"Oh, I say, that's topping. What's her real name?"
"No, no," Sylvia said. "I've been sufficiently spiteful."