Chapter 34
Now that the unpleasant scene was over, he seemed anxious for her sympathy.
"I'm sorry this miserable business has occurred, but you understand, don't you, that it's been just as bad for me as for you?"
"Do you want me to apologize?" Sylvia demanded, in her brutal way.
"No, of course not. Only I thought perhaps you might have shown a little more appreciation of my feelings."
"Ah, Philip, if you want that, you'll have to let me really go wrong with Dorward."
"Personally I consider that last remark of yours in very bad taste; but I know we have different standards of humor."
Sylvia found Dorward in the church, engaged in an argument with Ca.s.sandra about the arrangement of the chrysanthemums for Michaelmas.
"I will not have them like this," he was saying.
"But we always putts them fan-shaped like that."
"Take them away," he shouted, and, since Ca.s.sandra still hesitated, he flung the flowers all over the church.
The short conversation that followed always remained a.s.sociated in Sylvia's mind with Ca.s.sandra's grunts and her large base elevated above the pews, while she browsed hither and thither, bending over to pick up the scattered chrysanthemums.
"Mr. Dorward, I want to ask you something very serious."
He looked at her sharply, almost suspiciously.
"Does it make you very much happier to have faith?"
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," he said, brus.h.i.+ng petals from his ca.s.sock.
"But would it make me?"
"I expect so--I expect so," he said, still brus.h.i.+ng and trying with that shy curtness to avoid the contact of reality.
"Well, how can I get faith?"
"You must pray, dear lady, you must pray."
"You'll have to pray for me," Sylvia said.
"Always do. Always pray for you. Never less than three prayers every day. Ma.s.s once a week."
Sylvia felt a lump in her throat; it seemed to her that this friend, accounted mad by the world, had paid her the tenderest and most exquisite courtesy she had ever known.
"Come along now, Ca.s.sandra," cried the vicar, clapping his hands impatiently to cover his embarra.s.sment. "Where are the flowers? Where are the flowers, you miserable old woman?"
Ca.s.sandra came up to him, breathing heavily with exertion. "You know, Mr. Dorward, you're enough to try the patience of an angel on a tomb; you are indeed."
Sylvia left them arguing all over again about the chrysanthemums. That afternoon she went away from Green Lanes to London.
Three months later, she obtained an engagement in a musical comedy company on tour and sent back to Philip the last shred of clothing that she had had through him, with a letter and ten pounds in bank-notes:
You _must_ divorce me now. I've not been able to earn enough to pay you back more than this for your bad bargain. I don't think I've given any more pleasure to the men who have paid less for me than you did, if that's any consolation.
SYLVIA SCARLETT.
CHAPTER VIII
Sylvia stood before the looking-gla.s.s in the Birmingham lodgings and made a speech to herself:
"Humph! You look older, my dear. You look more than nineteen and a half.
You're rather glad, though, aren't you, to have finished with the last three months? You feel degraded, don't you? What's that you say? You don't feel degraded any more by what you've done now than by what you did when you were married? You consider the net result of the last three months has simply been to prove what you'd suspected for a long time--the wrong you did yourself in marrying Philip Iredale? Wait a minute; don't go so fast; there's something wrong with your moral sense.
You know perfectly well your contention is impossible; or do you accuse every woman who marries to have a position and a home of being a prost.i.tute? Ah, but you didn't marry Philip for either of those reasons, you say? Yes, you did--you married him to make something like Arbour End."
Tears welled up in Sylvia's eyes. She thought she had driven Arbour End from her mind forever.
"Come, come, we don't want any tears. What are you crying for? You
Here you are, a jolly little _cabetine_ with a complete contempt for men. You're not yet twenty; you're not likely to fall in love, for you must admit that after those three months the word sounds more than usually idiotic. From what I've seen of you I should say that for the future you'll be very well able to look after yourself; you might even become a famous actress. Ah, that makes you smile, eh?"
Sylvia dabbed her face with the powder-puff and went down-stairs to dinner. Her two companions had not yet begun; for this was the first meal at which they would all sit down together, and an atmosphere of politeness hung over life at present. Lily Haden and Dorothy Lonsdale had joined the "Miss Elsie of Chelsea" company at the same time as Sylvia, and were making their first appearance on any stage, having known each other in the dullness of West Kensington. For a fortnight they had clung together, but, having been given an address for rooms in Birmingham that required a third person's contribution, they had invited Sylvia to join them. Lily was a tall, slim girl with very fair, golden hair, who had an air of romantic mystery that was due to indolence of mind and body. Dorothy also was fair, with a ma.s.s of light-brown hair, a perfect complexion, profile, and figure, and, what finally gave her a really distinguished beauty in such a setting, brown eyes instead of blue. Lily's languorous grace of manner and body was so remarkable that in a room it was difficult to choose between her and Dorothy, but behind the footlights there was no comparison; there Dorothy had everybody's glances, and Lily's less definite features went for nothing.
Each girl was prompt to take Sylvia into her confidence about the other.
Thus from Lily she learned that Dorothy's real name was Norah Caffyn; that she was the eldest of a very large family; that Lily had known her at school; that she had been engaged to a journalist who was disapproved of by her family; that she had offered to break with Wilfred Curlew, if she were allowed to go on the stage; and that she had taken the name of Lonsdale from the road where she lived, and Dorothy from the sister next to her.
"I suppose in the same way as she used to take her dolls?" Sylvia suggested.
Lily looked embarra.s.sed. She was evidently not sure whether a joke was intended, and when Sylvia encouraged her to suppose it was, she laughed a little timidly, being rather doubtful if it were not a pun.
"Her sister was awfully annoyed about it, because she hasn't got a second name. She's the only one in the family who hasn't."
Lily also told Sylvia something about herself, how her mother had lately died and how she could not get on with her sister, who had married an actor and was called Doris. Her mother had been a reciter, and there had always been lots of theatrical people at their house, so it had been easy for her to get an introduction to Mr. Walter Keal, who had the touring rights of all John Richards's great Vanity Theater productions.
From Dorothy Sylvia learned that she had known Lily at school, but not for long, as Mrs. Haden never paid her daughters' fees; that Mr. Haden had always been supposed to live in Burmah, but that people who knew Mrs. Haden declared he had never existed; and finally that Lily had been "awfully nice" to herself and helped her to get an introduction to Mr.
Walter Keal.
The a.s.sociation of Sylvia with the two girls begun at Birmingham was not interrupted until the end of the tour. Lily and Dorothy depended upon it, Lily because Sylvia saved her the trouble of thinking for herself, Dorothy because she found in Sylvia some one who could deflect all the difficulties of life on tour and leave her free to occupy herself with her own prosperity and her own comforts. Dorothy possessed a selfishness that almost attained to the dignity of ambition, though never quite, as her conceit would not allow her to state an object in her career, for fear of failure; her method was invariably to seize the best of any situation that came along, whether it was a bed, a chair, a potato, or a man; this method with ordinary good luck would insure success through life. Lily was too lazy to minister to Dorothy's selfishness; moreover, she often managed in taking the nearest and easiest to rob Dorothy of the best.
Sylvia was perfectly aware of their respective characters, but she was always willing to give herself any amount of trouble to preserve beauty around her; Lily and Dorothy were not really more troublesome than two cats would have been; in fact, rather less, because at any rate they could carry themselves, if not their bags.
Life on tour went its course with the world divided into three categories--the members of the company, the public expressing its personality in different audiences, and for the actors saloon-bars and the drinks they were stood, for the actresses admirers and the presents they were worth. Sometimes when the saloon-bars and the admirers were alike unprofitable, the members of the company mixed among themselves whether in a walk round a new town or at tea in rooms where a landlady possessed hospitable virtues. Sylvia had a special gift for getting the best out of landladies, and the men of the company came more often to tea with herself and her friends than with the other ladies. They came, indeed, too often to please Dorothy, who disapproved of Lily's easy-going acceptance of the sort of love that is made because at the moment there is nothing else to do. She spoke to Sylvia about this, who agreed with her, but thought that with Lily it was inevitable.
"But not with boys in the company," Dorothy urged, disdainfully. "It makes us all so cheap. I don't want to put on side, but, after all, we are a little different from the other girls."
Sylvia found this belief universal in the chorus. She could not think of any girl who had not at one time or another taken her aside and claimed for herself, and by the politeness owed to present company for Sylvia, this "little difference."