Chapter 37
Meanwhile the poor old Quartet is done in. We two can't sustain a program alone."
Airdale gloomily a.s.sented, but thought it would be well to continue for a week or so, in case Claude and Lily came back.
"I notice you take it for granted that I'll be willing to continue busking with them," Sylvia said.
That evening Airdale and she went out as usual; but the loss of the other two seemed somehow to have robbed the entertainment of its romantic distinction, and Sylvia was dismayed to find with what a shameful timidity she now took herself and her guitar into saloon-bars; she felt like a beggar and was humiliated by Jack's apologetic manner, and still more by her own instinctive support of such cringing to the benevolence of potmen and barmaids.
One evening, after about a week of these distasteful peregrinations, the two mountebanks came out of a public house in Fulham Road where they had been forced to endure a more than usually intolerable patronage.
Sylvia vowed she would not perform again under such conditions, and they turned up Tinderbox Lane to wander home. This thoroughfare, only used by pedestrians, was very still, and trees planted down the middle of the pavement gave to the mild March evening an effluence of spring. Sylvia began to strum upon her guitar the tune that Arthur Madden and she sang together from the windows at Hampstead on the night she met him first; her companion soon caught hold of the air, and they strolled slowly along, dreaming, she looking downward of the past, he of the future with his eyes fixed on the chimneys of the high flats that encircled the little houses and long gardens of Tinderbox Lane. They were pa.s.sing a wall on their right in which numbered doors were set at intervals. From one of these a tall figure emerged and stopped a moment to say good-by to somebody standing in the entrance. The two musicians with a simultaneous instinct for an audience that might appreciate them stopped and addressed their song to the parting pair, a tall old gentleman with drooping gray whiskers, very much m.u.f.fled up, and an exceedingly stout woman of ripe middle age.
"Bravo!" said the old gentleman, in a tremulous voice, as he tapped his cane on the pavement. "Polly, this is devilish appropriate. By gad! it makes me feel inclined to dance again, Polly," and the old gentleman forthwith postured with his thin legs like a cardboard antic at the end of a string. The fat woman standing in the doorway came out into the lamplight, and clasping her hands in alarm, begged him not to take cold, but the old gentleman would not stop until Polly had made a pretense of dancing a few steps with him, after which he again piped, "Bravo," vowed he must have a whisky, and invited Sylvia and Jack to come inside and join them.
"Dashwood is my name, Major-General Dashwood, and this is Mrs.
Gainsborough."
"Come along," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "The captain--"
"She will call me Captain," said the general, with a chuckle. "Obstinate gal! Knew me first when I was a captain, thirty-six years ago, and has never called me anything since. What a woman, though!"
"He's very gay to-night. We've been celebrating our anniversary," Mrs.
Gainsborough explained, while the four of them walked along a gravel path toward a small square creeper-covered house at the end of a very long garden.
"We met first at the Argyll Rooms in March, 1867, and in September, 1869, Mulberry Cottage was finished. I planted those mulberry-trees myself, and they'll outlive us both," said the general.
"Now don't let's have any more dismals," Mrs. Gainsborough begged.
"We've had quite enough to-night, talking over old times."
Mulberry Cottage was very comfortable inside, full of mid-Victorian furniture and ornaments that suited its owner, who, Sylvia now perceived by the orange lamplight, was even fatter than she had seemed at first.
Her hair, worn in a chignon, was black, her face was rosy and large, almost monumental, with a plinth of chins.
The general so much enjoyed having a fresh
"Bob, you ought to go. You know I don't like to argue before strangers, but your sister will be getting anxious. Miss Dashwood's quite alone,"
she explained to her guests. "I wonder if you'd mind walking back with him?" she whispered to Sylvia. "He lives in Redcliffe Gardens. That's close to you, isn't it?"
"If we can have music all the way, by gad! of course," said the general, standing up so straight that Sylvia was afraid he would b.u.mp his head on the ceiling.
"Now, Bob dear, don't get too excited and do keep your m.u.f.fler well wrapped round your throat."
The general insisted on having one more gla.s.s for the sake of old times, and there was a short delay in the garden, because he stuck his cane fast in the ground to show the size of the mulberry-trees when he planted them, but ultimately they said good night to Mrs. Gainsborough, upon whom Sylvia promised to call next day, and set out for Redcliffe Gardens to the sound of guitars.
General Dashwood turned round from time to time to shake his cane at pa.s.sers-by that presumed to stare at the unusual sight of an old gentleman, respectable in his dress and demeanor, escorted down Fulham Road by two musicians.
"Do you see anything so d.a.m.ned odd in our appearance?" he asked Sylvia.
"Nothing at all," she a.s.sured him.
"Sensible gal! I've a very good mind to knock down the next scoundrel who stares at us."
Presently the general, on whom the fresh air was having an effect, took Sylvia's arm and grew confidential.
"Go on playing," he commanded Jack Airdale. "I'm only talking business.
The fact is," he said to Sylvia, "I'm worried about Polly. Hope I shall live another twenty years, but fact is, my dear, I've never really got over that wound of mine at Balaclava. Damme! I've never been the same man since."
Sylvia wondered what he could have been before.
"Naturally she's well provided for. Bob Dashwood always knew how to treat a woman. No wife, no children, you understand me? But it's the loneliness. She ought to have somebody with her. She's a wonderful woman, and she was a handsome gal. Damme! she's still handsome--what?
Fifty-five you know. By gad, yes. And I'm seventy. But it's the loneliness. Ah, dear, if the G.o.ds had been kind; but then she'd have probably been married by now."
The general blew his nose, sighed, and shook his head. Sylvia asked tenderly how long the daughter had lived.
"Never lived at all," said the general, stopping dead and opening his eyes very wide, as he looked at Sylvia. "Never was born. Never was going to be born. Hale and hearty, but too late now, damme! I've taken a fancy to you. Sensible gal! d.a.m.ned sensible. Why don't you go and live with Polly?"
In order to give Sylvia time to reflect upon her answer, the general skipped along for a moment to the tune that Jack was playing.
"Nothing between you and him?" he asked, presently, indicating Jack with his cane.
Sylvia shook her head.
"Thought not. Very well, then, why don't you go and live with Polly?
Give you time to look round a bit. Understand what you feel about playing for your bread and b.u.t.ter like this. Finest thing in the world music, if you haven't got to do it. Go and see Polly to-morrow. I spoke to her about it to-night. She'll be delighted. So shall I. Here we are in Redcliffe Gardens. d.a.m.ned big house and only myself and my sister to live in it. Live there like two needles in a haystack. Won't ask you in.
d.a.m.ned inhospitable, but no good because I shall have to go to bed at once. Perhaps you wouldn't mind pressing the bell? Left my latch-key in me sister's work-basket."
The door opened, and the general, after bidding Sylvia and Jack a courteous good night, marched up his front-door steps with as much martial rigidity as he could command.
On the way back to Finborough Road, Sylvia, who had been attracted to the general's suggestion, postponed raising the question with Jack by telling him about her adventure in Redcliffe Gardens when she threw the bag of chestnuts through the window. She did not think it fair, however, to make any other arrangement without letting him know, and before she went to see Mrs. Gainsborough the next day she announced her idea and asked him if he would be much hurt by her backing out of the busking.
"My dear girl, of course not," said Jack. "As a matter of fact, I've had rather a decent offer to tour in a show through the East. I should rather like to see India and all that. I didn't say anything about it, because I didn't want to let you down. However, if you're all right, I'm all right."
Mrs. Gainsborough by daylight appealed to Sylvia as much as ever. She told her what the general had said, and Mrs. Gainsborough begged her to come that very afternoon.
"The only thing is," Sylvia objected, "I've got a friend, a girl, who's away at present, and she might want to go on living with me."
"Let her come too," Mrs. Gainsborough cried. "The more the merrier. Good Land! What a set-out we shall have. The captain won't know himself. He's very fond of me, you know. But it would be more jolly for him to have some youngsters about. He's that young. Upon my word, you'd think he was a boy. And he's always the same. Oh, dearie me! the times we've had, you'd hardly believe. Life with him was a regular circus."
So it was arranged that Sylvia should come at once to live with Mrs.
Gainsborough in Tinderbox Lane, and Jack went off to the East.
The general used to visit them nearly every afternoon, but never in the evening.
"Depend upon it, Sylvia," Mrs. Gainsborough said, "he got into rare hot water with his sister the other night. Of course it was an exception, being our anniversary, and I dare say next March, if we're all spared, he'll be allowed another evening. It's a great pity, though, that we didn't meet first in June. So much more seasonable for jollifications.
But there, he was young and never looked forward to being old."
The general was not spared for another anniversary. Scarcely a month after Sylvia had gone to live with Mrs. Gainsborough, he died very quietly in the night. His sister came herself to break the news, a frail old lady who seemed very near to joining her brother upon the longest journey.
"She'll never be able to keep away from him," Mrs. Gainsborough sobbed.
"She'll worry and fret herself for fear he might catch cold in his coffin. And look at me! As healthy and rosy as a great radis.h.!.+"
The etiquette of the funeral caused Mrs. Gainsborough considerable perplexity.