Chapter 27
CHAPTER XIII.
The play in which Sylvia was to appear in New York was called "A Honeymoon in Europe," and if it might be judged from the first few rehearsals, at which the performers had read their parts like half-witted board-school children, it was thin stuff. Still, it was not fair to pa.s.s a final opinion without the two American stars who were awaiting the English company in their native land.
The author, Mr. Marchmont Hearne, was a timid little man who between the business manager and producer looked and behaved very much like the Dormouse at the Mad Tea-party. The manager did not resemble the Hatter except in the broad brim of his top-hat, which in mid-Atlantic he reluctantly exchanged for a cloth cap. The company declared he was famous for his tact; certainly he managed to suppress the Dormouse at every point by shouting, "One minute, Mr. Stern, please," or, "Please, Mr. Burns, one minute," and apologizing at once so effusively for not calling him by his right name that the poor little Dormouse had no courage to contest the real point at issue, which had nothing to do with his name. When the manager had to exercise a finer tactfulness, as with obdurate actresses, he was wont to soften his remarks by adding that nothing "derogatory" had been intended; this seemed to mollify everybody, probably, Sylvia thought, because it was such a long word. The Hatter's name was Charles Fitzherbert. The producer, Mr. Wade Fortescue, by the length of his ears, by the way in which his electrical hair propelled itself into a peak on either side of his head, and by his wild, artistic eye, was really rather like the March Hare outwardly; his behavior was not less like. Mr. Fortescue's att.i.tude toward "A Honeymoon in Europe" was one that Beethoven might have taken up on being invited to orchestrate "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay." The author did not go so far as to resent this att.i.tude, but on many occasions he was evidently pained by it, notwithstanding Mr. Fitzherbert's a.s.surances that Mr. Fortescue had intended nothing "derogatory."
Sylvia's part was that of a French chambermaid. The author had drawn it faithfully to his experience of Paris in the course of several week-ends. As his conception coincided with that of the general public in supposing a French chambermaid to be a cross between a street-walker and a tight-rope walker, it seemed probable that the part would be a success; although Mr. Fortescue wanted to mix the strain still further by introducing the blood of a comic ventriloquist.
"You must roll your 'r's' more, Miss Scarlett," he a.s.sured her. "That line will go for nothing as you said it."
"I said it as a French chambermaid would say it," Sylvia insisted.
"If I might venture--" the Dormouse began.
"One minute, please, Mr. Treherne," interrupted the Mad Hatter. "What Mr. Fortescue wants, Miss Scarlett, is exaggeration--a leetle exaggeration. I believe that is what you want, Mr. Fortescue?"
"I don't want a caricature," snapped the March Hare. "The play is farcical enough as it is. What I want to impart is realism. I want Miss Scarlett to say the line as a French girl would say it."
"Precisely," said the Hatter. "That's precisely what I was trying to explain to Miss Scarlett. You're a bit hasty, old chap, you know, and I think you frightened her a little. That's all right, Miss Scarlett, there's nothing to be frightened about. Mr. Fortescue intended nothing derogatory."
"I'm not in the least frightened," said Sylvia, indignantly.
"If I might make a suggestion, I think that--" the Dormouse began.
"One minute please, please, Mr. Burns, one minute--Ah, dear me, Mr. Hearne, I was confusing you with the poet. Nothing derogatory in that, eh?" he laughed jovially.
"May I ask a question?" said Sylvia, and asked it before Mr. Fitzherbert could interrupt again. "Why do all English authors draw all Frenchwomen as cocottes and all French authors draw all English women as governesses? The answer's obvious."
The Mad Hatter and the March Hare were so much taken aback by this attack from Alice that the Dormouse was able to emit an entire sentence.
"I should like to say that Miss Scarlett's rendering of the accent gives me great satisfaction. I have no fault to find. I shall be much obliged, Miss Scarlett, if you will correct my French whenever necessary. I am fully sensible of its deficiencies."
Mr. Marchmont Hearne blinked after this challenge and breathed rather heavily.
"I've had a good deal of experience," said Mr. Fortescue, grimly, "but I never yet found that it improved a play to allow the performers of minor roles, essentially minor roles, to write their parts in at rehearsal."
Mr. Fitzherbert was in a quandary for a moment whether he should smoothe the rufflings of the author or of the actress or of the producer, but deciding that the author could be more profitable to his career in the end, he took him up-stage and tried to whisper away Mr. Fortescue's bad temper. In the end Sylvia was allowed to roll her "r's" at her own pace.
"I'm glad you stood up to him, dear," said an elderly actress like a pink cabbage rose fading at the tips of the petals, who had been sitting throughout the rehearsal so nearly on the scene that she was continually being addressed in mistake by people who really were "on." The author, who had once or twice smiled at her pleasantly, was evidently under the delusion that she was interested in his play.
"Yes, I was delighted with the way you stood up to them," continued Miss Nancy Tremayne. "My part's wretched, dear. All feeding! Still, if I'm allowed to slam the door when I go off in the third act, I may get a hand. Have you ever been to New York before? I like it myself, and you can live quite cheaply if you know the ropes. Of course, I'm drawing a very good salary, because they wanted me. I said I couldn't come for a penny under one hundred dollars, and I really didn't want to come at all. However, he would have me, and between you and me, I'm really rather glad to have the chance of saving a little money. The managers are getting very stingy in England. Don't tell anybody what I'm getting, will you, dear? One doesn't like to create jealousy at the commencement of a tour. It seems to be quite a nice crowd, though the girls look a little old, don't you think? Amy Melhuish, who's playing the ingenue, must be at least thirty. It's wonderful how some women have the nerve to go on. I gave up playing ingenues as soon as I was over twenty-eight, and that's four years ago now, or very nearly. Oh dear, how time flies!"
Sylvia thought that, if Miss Tremayne was only twenty-eight four years ago, time must have crawled.
"They're sending us out in the Minneworra. The usual economy, but really in a way it's nicer, because it's all one cla.s.s. Yes, I'm glad you stood up to them, dear. Fortescue's been impossible ever since he produced one of those filthy Strindberg plays last summer for the Unknown Plays Committee. I hate this continental muck. Degenerate, I say it is. In my opinion Ibsen has spoiled the drama in England. What do you think of Charlie Fitzherbert? He's such a nice man. Always ready to smooth over any little difficulties. When Mr. Vernon said to me that Charlie would be coming with us, I felt quite safe."
"Morally?" Sylvia asked.
"Oh, go on! You know what I mean. Comfortable, and not likely to be stranded. Well, I'm always a little doubtful about American productions. I suppose I'm conservative. I like old-fas.h.i.+oned ways."
Which was not surprising, Sylvia thought.
"Miss Tremayne, I can't hear myself speak. Are you on in this scene?" demanded the producer.
"I really don't know. My next cue is--"
"I don't think Miss Tremayne comes on till Act Three," said the author.
"We sha'n't get there for another two hours," the producer growled.
Miss Tremayne moved her chair back three feet, and turned to finish her conversation with Sylvia.
"What I was going to say when I was interrupted, dear, was that, if you're a bad sailor, you ought to make a point of making friends with the purser. Unfortunately I don't know the purser on the Minneworra, but the purser on the Minnetoota was quite a friend of mine, and gave me a beautiful deck-cabin. The other girls were very jealous."
"d.a.m.n it, Miss Tremayne, didn't I ask you not to go on talking?" the producer shouted.
"Nice gentlemanly way of asking anybody not to whisper a few words of advice, isn't it?" said Miss Tremayne, with a scathing glance at Mr. Fortescue as she moved her chair quite six feet farther away from the scene.
"Now, of course, we're in a draught," she grumbled to Sylvia. "But I always say that producers never have any consideration for anybody but themselves."
By the time the S.S. Minneworra reached New York Sylvia had come to the conclusion that the representatives of the legitimate drama differed only from the chorus of a musical comedy in taking their temperaments and exits more seriously. Sylvia's earlier experience had led her to suppose that the quant.i.ty of make-up and proximity to the footlights were the most important things in art.
Whatever hopes of individual ability to s.h.i.+ne the company might have cherished before it reached New York were quickly dispelled by the two American stars, up to whom and not with whom they were expected to twinkle. Mr. Diomed Olver and Miss Marcia Neville regarded the rest of the company as Jupiter and Venus might regard the Milky Way. Miss Tremayne's exit upon a slammed door was forbidden the first time she tried it, because it would distract the attention of the audience from Miss Neville, who at that moment would be sustaining a dimple, which she called holding a situation. This dimple, which was famous from Boston to San Francisco, from Buffalo to New Orleans, had, when Miss Neville first swam into the ken of a manager's telescope, been easy enough to sustain. Of late years a slight tendency toward stoutness had made it necessary to a.s.sist the dimple with the forefinger and internal suction; the slamming of a door might disturb so nice an operation, and an appeal, which came oddly from Miss Neville, was made to Miss Tremayne's sense of natural acting.
Mr. Olver did not bother to conceal his intention of never moving from the center of the stage, where he maintained himself with the noisy skill of a gyroscope.
"See here," he explained to members of the company who tried to compete with his stellar supremacy. "The public pays to see Diomed Olver and Marcia Neville; they don't care a d.a.m.ned cent for anything else in creation. Got me? That's good. Now we'll go along together fine."
Mr. Charles Fitzherbert a.s.sisted no more at rehearsals, but occupied himself entirely with the box-office. Mr. Wade Fortescue was very fierce about 2 A.M. in the bar of his hotel, but very mild at rehearsals. Mr. Marchmont Hearne hibernated during this period, and when he appeared very shyly at the opening performance in Brooklyn the company greeted him with the surprised cordiality that is displayed to some one who has broken his leg and emerges weeks later from hospital without a limp.
New York made a deep and instant impression on Sylvia. No city that she had seen was so uncompromising; so sure of its flamboyant personality; so completely an ingenious, spoiled, and precocious child; so lovable for its extravagance and mischief. To her the impression was of some Gargantuan boy in his nursery building up tall towers to knock them down, running his clockwork-engines for fun through the streets of his toy city, scattering in corners quant.i.ties of toy bricks in readiness for a new fit of destructive construction, scooping up his tin inhabitants at the end of a day's play to put them helter-skelter into their box, eking out the most novel electrical toys of that Christmas with the battered old trams of the Christmas before, cheris.h.i.+ng old houses with a child's queer conservatism, devoting a large stretch of bright carpet to a park, and robbing his grandmother's mantelpiece of her treasures to put inside his more permanent structures. After seeing New York she sympathized very much with the remark she had heard made by a young New-Yorker on board the Minneworra, which at the time she had thought a mere callow piece of rudeness.
A grave doctor from Toledo, Ohio, almost as grave as if he were from the original Toledo, had expressed a hope to Sylvia that she would not accept New York as representative of the United States. She must travel to the West. New York had no family life. If Miss Scarlett wished to see family life, he should be glad to show it to her in Toledo. For confirmation of his criticism he had appealed to a young man standing at his elbow.
"Well," the young man had replied, "I've never been fifty miles west of New York in my life, and I hope I never shall. When I want to travel I cross over to Europe for a month."
The Toledo doctor had afterward spoken severely to Sylvia on the subject of this young New-Yorker, citing him as a dangerous element in the national welfare. Now, after seeing the Gargantuan boy's nursery, she understood the spirit that wanted to enjoy his nursery and not be bothered to go for polite walks with maiden aunts in the country; equally, no doubt, in Toledo she should appreciate the point of view of the doctor and recognize the need for the bone that would support the vast bulk of the growing child.
Sylvia had noticed that as she grew older impressions became less vivid; her later and wider experience of London was already dim beside those first years with her father and Monkley. It had been the same during her travels. Already even the Alhambra was no longer quite clearly imprinted upon her mind, and each year it had been growing less and less easy to be astonished. But this arrival in New York had been like an arrival in childhood, as surprising, as exciting, as terrifying, as stimulating. New York was like a rejuvenating potion in the magic influence of which the memories of past years dissolved. Partly, no doubt, this effect might be ascribed to the invigorating air, and partly, Sylvia thought, to the anxiously receptive condition of herself now within sight of thirty; but neither
Sylvia had already made acquaintance with the crude material of America in Carlos Morera. New York was Carlos Morera much more refined and more matured, sweetened by its own civilization, which, having severed itself from other civilizations like the Anglo-Saxon or Latin, was already most convincingly a civilization of its own, bearing the veritable stamp of greatness. Sometimes Sylvia would be faced even in New York by a childishness that scarcely differed from the childishness of Carlos Morera. One evening, for instance, two of the men in the company who knew her tastes invited her to come with them to Murden's all-night saloon off Sixth Avenue. They had been told it was a sight worth seeing. Sylvia, with visions of something like the dancing-saloon in Buenos Aires, was anxious to make the experiment. It sounded exciting when she heard that the place was kept going by "graft." After the performance she and her companions went to Jack's for supper; thence they walked along Sixth Avenue to Murden's. It was only about two o'clock when they entered by a side door into a room exactly like the bar parlor of an English public house, where they sat rather drearily drinking some inferior beer, until one of Sylvia's companions suggested that they had arrived too near the hours of legal closing. They left Murden's and visited a Chinese restaurant in Broadway with a cabaret attached. The prices, the entertainment, the food, and the company were in a descending scale; the prices were much the highest. Two hours later they went back to Murden's; the parlor was not less dreary; the beer was still abominable. However, just as they had decided that this could not be the right place, an enormous man slightly drunk entered under the escort of two ladies of the town. Perceiving that Sylvia and her companions had risen, the new-comer waved them back into their chairs and called for drinks all round.
"British?" he asked.
They nodded.
"Yes, I thought you were Britishers. I'm Under-Sheriff McMorris." With this he seated himself, hugging the two nymphs on either side of him like a Dionysius in his chariot.
"Actor folk?" he asked.
They nodded.
"Yes, I thought you were actor folk. Ever read Shakespeare? Some boy, eh? Gee! I used to be able to spout Parsha without taking breath."
Forthwith he delivered the speech about the quality of mercy.
"Wal?" he demanded at the end.
The English actors congratulated him and called for another round. Mr. McMorris turned to one of the nymphs: "Wal, honey?"
"Cut it out, you fat old slob; you're tanked!" said honey.
Mr. McMorris recited several other speeches, including the vision of the dagger from "Macbeth." From Shakespeare he pa.s.sed to Longfellow, and from Longfellow to Byron. After an hour of recitations he was persuaded by the bartender to give some of his reminiscences of criminals in New York, which he did so vividly that Sylvia began to suppose that at one time or another he really had been connected with the law. Finally about six o'clock he became pathetic and wept away most of what he had drunk.
"I'm feeling bad this morning. I gart to go and arrest a man for whom I have a considerable admiration. I gart to go down-town to Was.h.i.+ngton Square and arrest a prominent citizen at eight o'clock sharp. I guess they're waiting right now for me to come along and make that arrest. Where's my black-jack?"
He fumbled in his pocket for a leather-covered life-preserver, which he flourished truculently. Leaning upon the shoulders of the nymphs, he waved a farewell and staggered out.
Sylvia asked the bartender what he really was.
"He's Under-Sheriff McMorris. At eight o'clock he's going to arrest a prominent New York citizen for misappropriation of some fund."
That evening in the papers Sylvia read that Under-Sheriff McMorris had burst into tears when ex-Governor Somebody or other had walked down the steps of his house in Was.h.i.+ngton Square and offered himself to the custody of the law.
"I don't like to have to do this, Mr. Governor," Under-Sheriff McMorris had protested.
"You must do your duty, Mr. Under-Sheriff."
The crowd had thereupon cheered loudly, and the wife of the ex-Governor, dissolved in tears, had waved the Stars and Stripes from an upper window.
"Jug for the ex-Governor and a jag for the under-sheriff," said Sylvia. "If only the same spirit could be applied to minor arrests. That may come. It's wonderful, really, how in this mighty republic they manage to preserve any vestige of personality, but they do."
The play ran through the autumn and went on tour in January. Sylvia did not add much to her appreciation of America in the course of it, because, as was inevitable in the short visits they paid to various towns, she had to depend for intercourse upon the members of the company. She reached New York again shortly before her twenty-eighth birthday. When nearly all her fellow-players returned to England, she decided to stay behind. The first impression she had received of entering upon a new phase of life when she landed in New York had not yet deserted her, and having received an offer from the owner of what sounded, from his description, like a kind of hydropathic establishment to entertain the visitors there during the late summer and fall, she accepted. In August, therefore, she left New York and went to Sulphurville, Indiana.
Sylvia had had glimpses of rural America in Vermont and New Hamps.h.i.+re during the tour; in such a cursory view it had not seemed to differ much from rural England. Now she was going to see rustic America, if a distinction between the two adjectives might be made. At Indianapolis she changed from the great express into a smaller train that deposited her at a railway station consisting of a tumble-down shed. n.o.body came out to welcome the train, but the colored porter insisted that this was the junction from which she would ultimately reach Sulphurville and denied firmly Sylvia's suggestion that the engine-driver had stopped here for breath. She was the only pa.s.senger who alighted, and she saw the train continue on its way with something near despair. The sun was blazing down. All around was a gra.s.shopper-haunted wilderness of Indian corn. It was the hottest, greenest, flattest, most G.o.d-forsaken spot she had ever seen. The heat was so tremendous that she ventured inside the hut for shade. The only sign of life was a bug proceeding slowly across a greasy table. Sylvia went out and wandered round to the other side. Here, fast asleep, was a man dressed in a pair of blue trousers, a neckerchief, and an enormous straw hat. As the trousers reached to his armpits, he was really fully dressed, and Sylvia was able to recognize him as a human being from an ill.u.s.trated edition she possessed of Huckleberry Finn; at the same time, she thought it wiser to let him sleep and returned to the front of the shed. To her surprise, for it seemed scarcely possible that anybody could inhabit the second floor, she perceived a woman with curl-papers, in a spotted green-and-yellow bed-wrapper, looking out of what until now she had supposed to be a gap in the roof caused by decay. Sylvia asked the woman if this was the junction for Sulphurville. She nodded, but vanished from the window before there was time to ask her when the train would arrive.
Sylvia waited for an hour in the heat, and had almost given up hope of ever reaching Sulphurville when suddenly a train arrived, even smaller than the one into which she had changed at Indianapolis, but still considerably larger than any European train. The hot afternoon wore away while this new train puffed slowly deeper and deeper into rustic America until it reached Bagdad. Hitherto Sylvia had traveled in what was called a parlor-car, but at Bagdad she had to enter a fourth train that did not possess a parlor-car and that really resembled a local train in England, with oil-lamps and semi-detached compartments. At every station between Bagdad and Sulphurville crowds of country folk got in, all of whom were wearing flags and flowers in their b.u.t.tonholes and were in a state of perspiring festivity. At the last station before Sulphurville the train was invaded by the members of a local band, whose instruments fought for a place as hard as their masters. Sylvia was nearly elbowed out of her seat by an aggressive ophicleide, but an old gentleman opposite with a saxhorn behind him and a euphonium on his knees told her by way of encouragement that the soldiers didn't pa.s.s through Indiana every day.
"The last time I saw soldiers like that was during the war," he said, "and I don't allow any of us here will ever see so many soldiers again." He looked round the company defiantly, but n.o.body seemed inclined to contradict him, and he grunted with disappointment. It seemed hard that the old gentleman's day should end so tamely, but fortunately a young man in the far corner proclaimed it not merely as his opinion, but supported it from inside information, that the regiment was being marched through Indiana like this in order to get it nearer to the Mexican border.
"Shucks!" said the old gentleman, and blew his nose so violently that every one looked involuntarily at one of the bra.s.s instruments. "Shucks!" he repeated. Then he smiled at Sylvia, who, sympathizing with the happy close of his day, smiled back just as the train entered the station of Sulphurville.
The Plutonian Hotel, Sulphurville, had presumably been built to appease the same kind of human credulity that created the pump-rooms at Bath or Wiesbaden or Aix-les-Bains. Sylvia had observed that one of the great elemental beliefs of the human race, a belief lost in primeval fog, was that if water with an odd taste bubbled out of the earth, it must necessarily possess curative qualities; if it bubbled forth without a nasty enough taste to justify the foundation of a spa, it was a.n.a.lyzed by prominent chemists, bottled, and sold as a panacea to the great encouragement of lonely dyspeptics with nothing else to read at dinner. In the Middle Ages, and possibly in the cla.s.sic times of aesculapius, these natural springs had fortified the spiritual side of man; in late days they served to dilute his spirits. The natural springs at Sulphurville fully justified the erection of the Plutonian Hotel and the lowest depths of mortal credulity, for they had a revolting smell, an exceptionally unpleasant taste, and a high temperature. Everything that balneal ingenuity could suggest had been done, and in case the internal cure was not nasty enough as it was, the first gla.s.s of water was prescribed for six o'clock in the morning. Though it was necessary to test human faith by the most arduous and vexatious ordinances for human conduct, lest it might grow contemptuous of the cure, it was equally necessary to prevent boredom, if not of the devotees themselves, at any rate of their families. Accordingly, there was an annex of the ascetic hotel where everybody was driven to bed at eleven by the uncomfortable behavior of the servants, and where breakfast was served not later than seven; this annex possessed a concert-hall, a small theater, a gaming-saloon with not merely roulette, but many apparently childish games of chance that nevertheless richly rewarded the management. Sylvia wondered if there was any moral intention on the part of the proprietors in the way they encouraged gambling, if they wished to accentuate the chances and changes of human life and thereby secure for their clients a religious att.i.tude toward their bodily safety. Certainly at the Plutonian Hotel it was impossible to obtain anything except meals without gambling. In order to buy a cigar or a box of chocolates it was necessary to play dice with the young woman who sold them, with more or less profit to the hotel, according to one's luck. Every morning some new object was on view in the lobby to be raffled that evening. Thus on the fourth night of her stay Sylvia became the owner of a large trunk, the emptiness of which was continuous temptation.
The Plutonian was not merely a resort for gouty Easterners; it catered equally for the uric acid of the West. Sylvia liked the families from the West, particularly the girls with their flowing hair and big felt hats who rode on Kentucky ponies to see smugglers' caves in the hills, conforming invariably to the traditional aspect of the Western belle in the cinema. The boys were not so picturesque; in fact, they scarcely differed from European boys of the same age. The East supplied the exotic note among the children; candy-fed, shrill, and precocious with a queer gnomelike charm, they resembled expensive toys. These visitors to Sulphurville were much more affable with one another than their fellows in Europe would have been in similar circ.u.mstances. Sylvia had already noticed that in America stomachic subjects could inspire the dullest conversation; here at the Plutonian the stomach had taken the place of the soul, and it was scarcely an exaggeration to say that in the lounges people rose up to testify in public about their insides.
The morning after Sylvia's arrival the guests were much excited by the visit of the soldiers, who were to camp for a week on the hotel grounds and perform various maneuvers. Sylvia observed that everybody talked as if a troupe of acrobats was going to visit the hotel; n.o.body seemed to have any idea that the American army served any purpose but the entertainment of the public with gymnastic displays. That afternoon the regiment marched past the hotel to its camping-ground; the band played the "Star-spangled Banner"; all the visitors grouped upon the steps in front clapped their hands; the colonel took off his hat, waved it at the audience, and bowed like a successful author. At first Sylvia considered his behavior undignified and absurd; afterward she rather approved of its friendliness, its absence of pomp and arrogance, its essentially democratic inspiration--in a word, its familiarity.
The proprietor of the Plutonian, a leading political "boss," was so much moved by the strains of the music, the martial bearing of the men, and the opportunity of self-advertis.e.m.e.nt, that he invited the officers of the regiment to mess free in the hotel during their visit. Everybody praised Mr. O'Halloran's generosity and patriotism, the more warmly because it gave everybody an occasion to commiserate with the officers upon their absurdly small pay. Such commiseration gratified the individual's sense of superiority and made it easy for him to brag about his own success in life. Sylvia resented the business man's point of view about his national army; it was almost as patronizing as an Englishman's att.i.tude to an artist or a German's to a woman or a Frenchman's to anybody but a Frenchman. Sn.o.bbishness was only tolerable about the past. Perhaps that was the reason why the Italians were the only really democratic nation she had met so far. The Italians were aristocrats trying to become tradesmen; the rest of mankind were tradesmen striving to appear aristocrats.
Sylvia had sung her songs and was watching the roulette, when a young lieutenant who had been playing with great seriousness turned to her and asked if she was not British.
"We got to know some British officers out in China," he told her. "We couldn't seem to understand them at first, but afterward we found out they were good boys, really. Only the trouble was we were never properly introduced at first, and that worried them some. Say, there's a fellow-countryman of yours sick in Sulphurville. I kind of found out by accident this morning, because I went into a drug-store and the storekeeper was handing out some medicine to a colored girl who was arguing with him whether she should pay for it. Seems this young Britisher's expecting his remittance. That's a G.o.d-awful place to be stranded, Sulphurville."
They chatted for a while together. Sylvia liked the simple good-fellows.h.i.+p of the young American, his inquisitiveness about her reasons for coming to sing at the Plutonian Hotel, and his frank antic.i.p.ation of any curiosity on her side by telling her all about himself and his career since he left West Point. He was amused by her account of the excitement over the pa.s.sage of the troops through the villages, and seized the occasion to moralize on the vastness of a country through one state of which a regiment could march and surprise half the inhabitants with their first view of an American soldier.
"Seems kind of queer," he said.
"But very Arcadian," Sylvia added.
When Sylvia went to bed her mind reverted to the young Englishman; at the time she had scarcely taken in the significance of what the officer had told her. Now suddenly the sense of his loneliness and suffering overwhelmed her fancy. She thought of the desolation of that railway junction where she had waited for the train to Sulphurville, of the heat and the gra.s.shoppers and the flat, endless greenery. Even that brief experience of being alone in the heart of America had frightened her. She had not taken heed of the vastness of it while she was traveling with the company, and here at the hotel definitely placed as an entertainer she had a certain security. But to be alone and penniless in Sulphurville, to be ill, moreover, and dependent on the charity of foreigners, so much the more foreign because, though they spoke the same language, they spoke it with strange differences like the people in a dream. The words were the same, but they expressed foreign ideas. Sylvia began to speculate upon the causes that had led to this young Englishman's being stranded in Sulphurville. There seemed no explanation, unless he were perhaps an actor who had been abandoned because he was too ill to travel with the company. At this idea she almost got out of bed to walk through the warm frog-haunted night to his rescue. She became sentimental about him in the dark. It seemed to her that nothing in the world was so pitiable as a sick artist; always the servant of the public's curiosity, he was now the helpless prey of it. He would be treated with the contempt that is accorded to sick animals whose utility is at an end. She visualized him in the care of a woman like the one who had leaned out of that railway shed in a spotted green-and-yellow wrapper. Yet, after all, he might not be a mountebank; there was really no reason to suppose he was anything but poor and lonely, though that was enough indeed.
"I must be getting very old," Sylvia said to herself. "Only approaching senility could excuse this prodigal effusion of what is really almost maternal l.u.s.t. I've grown out of any inclination to ask myself why I think things or why I do things. I've nothing now but an immense desire to do--do--do. I was beginning to think this desperate determination to be impressed, like a child whose father is hiding conspicuously behind the door, was due to America. It's nothing to do with America; it's myself. It's a kind of moral and mental drunkenness. I know what I'm doing. I'm entirely responsible for my actions. That's the way a drunken man argues. n.o.body is so utterly convinced of his rightness and reasonableness and judgment as a drunken man. I might argue with myself till morning that it's ridiculous to excite myself over the prospect of helping an Englishman stranded in Sulphurville, but when, worn out with self-conviction, I fall asleep, I shall wake on tiptoe, as it were. I shall be quite violently awake at once. The fact is I'm absolutely tired of observing human nature. I just want to tumble right into the middle of its confusion and forget how to criticize anybody or anything. What's the good of meeting a drunken man with generalizations about human conduct or direction or progression? He won't listen to generalizations, because drunkenness is the apotheosis of the individual. That's why drunken people are always so earnestly persuasive, so anxious to convince the unintoxicated observer that it is better to walk on all-fours than upright. Eccentricity becomes a moral pa.s.sion; every drunken man is a missionary of the peculiar. At the present moment I'm in the mental state that, did I possess an honest taste for liquor, would make me get up and uncork the brandy-bottle. It's a kind of defiant self-expression. Oh, that poor young Englishman lying alone in Sulphurville! To-morrow, to-morrow! Who knows? Perhaps I really shall find that I am necessary to somebody. Even as a child I conceived the notion of being indispensable. I want somebody to say to me: 'You! You! What should I have done without you?' I suppose every woman feels that; I suppose that is the maternal instinct. But I don't believe many women can feel it so sharply as I do, because very few women have ever been compelled by circ.u.mstances to develop their personalities so early and so fully, and then find that n.o.body wants that personality. I could cry just at the mere notion of being wanted, and surely this young Englishman, whoever he is, will want me. Oh, Sylvia, Sylvia, you're deliberately working yourself up to an adventure! And who has a better right? Tell me that. That's exactly why I praised the drunkard; he knows how to dodge self-consciousness. Why shouldn't you set out to have an adventure? You shall, my dear. And if you're disappointed? You've been disappointed before. d.a.m.n those tree-frogs! Like all croakers, they disturb oblivion. I wonder if he'd like my new trunk. And I wonder how old he is. I'm a.s.suming that he's young, but he may be a matted old tramp."
Sylvia woke next morning, as she had prefigured herself, on tiptoe; at breakfast she was sorry for all the noisy people round her, so important to her was life seeming. She set out immediately afterward to walk along the hot, dusty road to the town, elated by the notion of leaving behind her the restlessness and stark cleanliness of the big hotel. The main street of Sulphurville smelled of straw and dry grain; and if it had not been for the flies she would have found the air sweet enough after the damp exhalations of brimstone that permeated the atmosphere of the Plutonian and its surroundings. The flies, however, tainted everything; not even the drug-store was free from them. Sylvia inquired for the address of the Englishman, and the druggist looked at her sharply. She wondered if he was hoping for the settlement of his account.
"Madden's the name, ain't it?" the druggist asked.
"Madden," she repeated, mechanically. A wave of emotion flooded her mind, receded, and left it strewn with the jetsam of the past. The druggist and the drug-store faded out of her consciousness; she was in Colonial Terrace again, insisting upon Arthur's immediate departure.
"What a little beast I was!" she thought, and a desire came over her to atone for former heartlessness by her present behavior. Then abruptly she realized that the Madden of Sulphurville was not necessarily, or even probably, the Arthur Madden of Hampstead. Yet behind this half-disappointment lay the conviction that it was he. "Which accounts for my unusual excitement," Sylvia murmured. She heard herself calmly asking the storekeeper for his address.
"The Auburn Hotel," she repeated. "Thank you."
The storekeeper seemed inclined to question her further; no doubt he wished to be able to count upon his bill's being paid; but Sylvia hurried from the shop before he could speak.
The Auburn Hotel, Sulphurville, was perhaps not worse than a hotel of the same cla.s.s would have been in England, but the colored servant added just enough to the prevailing squalor to make it seem worse. When Sylvia asked to see Mr. Madden the colored servant stared at her, wiped her mouth with her ap.r.o.n, and called: "Mrs. Lebus!"
"Oh, Julie, is that you? What is it you want?" tw.a.n.ged a voice from within that sounded like a cat caught in a guitar.
"You're wanted right now, Mrs. Lebus," the servant called back.
The duet was like a parody of a 'c.o.o.n song, and Sylvia found herself humming to ragtime: "Oh, Mrs. Lebus, you're wanted, Oh yes, you're wanted, sure you're wanted, Mrs. Lebus, You're wanted, you're wanted, You're wanted--right now."
Mrs. Lebus was one of those women whose tongues are always hunting, like eager terriers. With evident reluctance she postponed the chase of an artful morsel that had taken refuge in some difficult country at the back of her mouth, and faced the problem of admitting Sylvia to the sick man's room.
"You a relative?" she asked.
Sylvia shook her head.
"Perhaps you've come about his remittance. He told me he was expecting a hundred dollars any time. You staying in Sulphurville?"