Chapter 36
Say something, Lily; do say something, or I shall scream."
"I don't think we ought to have eaten those plums at dinner. They weren't really ripe," Lily said.
"Well, anyhow, that solves the problem of the moment. Put your things on. You'd better come out and walk them off."
They were playing in Eastbourne that week, where a sudden hot spell had prolonged the season farther into September than usual; a new company of entertainers known as "The Highwaymen" was attracting audiences almost as large as in the prime of summer. Sylvia and Lily paused to watch them from the tamarisks below the Marina.
Suddenly Sylvia gave an exclamation.
"I do believe that's Claude Raglan who's singing now. Do you remember, Lily, I told you about the Pink Pierrots? I'm sure it is."
Presently the singer came round with the bag and a packet of his picture post-cards. Sylvia asked if he had a photograph of Claude Raglan. When he produced one she dug him in the ribs, and cried:
"Claudie, you consumptive a.s.s, don't you recognize me? Sylvia."
He was delighted to see her again, and willingly accepted an invitation to supper after the show, if he might bring a friend with him.
"Jack Airdale--an awfully decent fellow. Quite a good voice, too, though I think from the point of view of the show it's a mistake to have a high barytone when they've already got a tenor. However, he does a good deal of accompanying. In fact, he's a much better accompanist than he is singer."
"I suppose you've got more girls than ever in love with you, now you wear a mask?" said Sylvia.
Claude seemed doubtful whether to take this remark as a compliment to his voice or as an insult to his face. Finally he took it as a joke and laughed.
"Just the same, I see," he said. "Always chaffing a fellow."
Claude Raglan and Jack Airdale came to supper in due course. Sylvia liked Jack; he was a round-faced young man in the early twenties, with longish light hair that flopped all over his face when he became excited. Sylvia and he were good friends immediately and made a great deal of noise over supper, while Claude and Lily looked at each other.
"How's the consumption, Claudie?" Sylvia asked.
Claude sighed with a soulful glance at Lily's delicate form.
"Don't imagine she's sympathizing with you," Sylvia cried. "She's only thinking about plums."
"He's grown out of it," Airdale said. "Look at the length of his neck."
"I have to wear these high collars. My throat...." Claude began.
"Oh, shut up with your ailments," Sylvia interrupted.
"Hear, hear," Airdale shouted. "Down with ailments," and he threw a cus.h.i.+on at Claude.
"I wish you wouldn't behave like a clown," said Claude, smoothing his ruffled hair and looking to see if Lily was joining in the laugh against him.
Presently the conversation turned upon the prospects of the two girls for next winter, about which Sylvia was very pessimistic.
"Why don't we join together and run a street show--Pierrot, Pierrette, Harlequin, and Columbine?" Airdale suggested. "I'll swear there's money in it."
"About enough to pay for our coffins," said Claude. "Sing out of doors in the winter? My dear Jack, you're mad."
Sylvia thought the idea was splendid, and had sketched out Lily's Columbine dress before Lily herself had realized that the conversation had taken a twist.
"Light-blue crepe de Chine with bunches of cornflowers for Columbine.
Pierrette in dark blue with bunches of forget-me-nots, Pierrot in light blue. Silver and dark-blue lozenges for Harlequin."
"Paregoric lozenges would suit
"Shall we?" Claude muttered.
"And if the show goes," Airdale went on, "we might vary our costumes.
For instance, we might be Baccha.n.a.ls in pink fles.h.i.+ngs and vine leaves."
"Vine leaves," Claude e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Vine Street more likely."
"Don't laugh, old boy, with that lung of yours," said Airdale, earnestly.
In the end, before the company left Eastbourne, it was decided, notwithstanding Claude's lugubrious prophecies, to launch the enterprise; when the tour broke up in December Sylvia had made dresses both for Lily and for herself as she had first planned them with an eye only for what became Lily. Claude's hypochondria was appeased by letting him wear a big patchwork cloak over his harlequin's dress in which white lozenges had been subst.i.tuted for silver ones, owing to lack of money.
They hired a small piano very much like the one that belonged to the Pink Pierrots, and on Christmas Eve they set out from Finborough Road, where Claude and Jack had rooms near Mrs. Gowndry's. They came into collision with a party of carol-singers who seemed to resent their profane compet.i.tion, and, much to Jack Airdale's disappointment, they were not invited into a single house; the money taken after three hours of wandering music was one s.h.i.+lling and fivepence in coppers.
"Never mind," said Jack. "We aren't known yet. It's a pity we didn't start singing last Christmas Eve. We should have had more engagements than we should have known what to do with this year."
"We must build up the show for next year," Sylvia agreed, enthusiastically.
"I shall sing the 'Lost Chord' next year," Claude answered. "They may let me in, if I worry them outside heaven's gates, to hear that last Amen."
Jack and Sylvia were justified in their optimism, for gradually the Carnival Quartet, as they called themselves, became known in South Kensington, and they began to get engagements to appear in other parts of London. Jack taught Sylvia to vamp well enough on the guitar to accompany herself in duets with him; Claude looked handsome in his harlequin's dress, which prosperity had at last endowed with silver lozenges; Lily danced actively enough for the drawing-rooms in which they performed; Sylvia, inspired by the romantic exterior of herself and her companions, invented a mime to the music of Schumann's "Carnival"
which Jack Airdale played, or, as Claude said, maltreated.
The Quartet showed signs of increasing vitality with the approach of spring, and there was no need to think any more of touring in musical comedy, which was a relief to Sylvia. When summer came, they agreed to keep together and work the South Coast.
However, all these plans came suddenly to nothing, because one misty night early in March Harlequin and Columbine lost Pierrot and Pierrette on the way home from a party in Chelsea; a brief note from Harlequin to Pierrot, which he found when he got home, indicated that the loss should be considered permanent.
This treachery was a shock to Sylvia, and she was horrified at herself for feeling it so deeply. Ever since that day in Oxford when Lily had sobbed out her griefs, Sylvia had concentrated upon her all the capacity for affection which had begun to blossom during the time she was with Philip and which had been cut off ruthlessly with everything else that belonged to life with him. She knew that she should have foreseen the possibility, nay the probability, of this happening, but she had charmed herself with the romantic setting of their musical adventure and let all else go.
"I'm awfully sorry, Sylvia," said Jack; "I ought to have kept a better lookout on Claude."
"It's not your fault, old son. But, O G.o.d! why can't four people stay friends without muddling everything up with this accursed love?"
Jack was sympathetic, but it was useless to confide in him her feeling for Lily; he would never understand. She would seem to him so little worth while; for him the behavior of such a one meant less than the breaking of a porcelain figure.
"It did seem worth while," Sylvia said to herself, that night, "to keep that frail and lovely thing from this. It was my fault, of course, for I knew both Lily and Claude through and through. Yet what does it matter?
What a fool I am. It was absurd of me to imagine we could go on forever as we were. I don't really mind about Lily; I'm angry because my conceit has been wounded. It serves me right. But that dirty little actor won't appreciate her. He's probably sick of her easiness already. Oh, why the h.e.l.l am I not a man?"
Presently, however, Sylvia's mood of indignation burned itself out; she began to attribute the elopement of Claude and Lily to the characters they had a.s.sumed of Harlequin and Columbine, and to regard the whole affair as a scene from a play which must not be taken more deeply to heart than with the pensive melancholy that succeeds the fall of the curtain on mimic emotions. After all, what had Lily been to her more than a puppet whose actions she had always controlled for her pleasure until she was stolen from her? Without Lily she was once more at a loose end; there was the whole history of her sorrow.
"I can't think what they wanted to run away for," said Jack. Sylvia fancied the flight was the compliment both Harlequin and Columbine had paid to her authority.
"I don't find you so alarming," he said.
"No, old son, because you and I have always regarded the Quartet from a strictly professional point of view, and consequently each other.