Chapter 43
"Well, I'm bound to say we seem to have fallen on our feet right off,"
Mrs. Gainsborough said. "I shall quite enjoy myself here; I can see that already."
The acquaintance with Hector Ozanne ripened into friends.h.i.+p, and from friends.h.i.+p his pa.s.sion for Lily became obvious, not that really it had ever been anything else, Sylvia thought; the question was whether it should be allowed to continue. Sylvia asked Ozanne his intentions. He declared his desperate affection, exclaimed against the iniquity of not being able to marry on account of a mother from whom he derived his entire income, stammered, and was silent.
"I suppose you'd like me and Mrs. Gainsborough to clear out of this?"
Sylvia suggested.
No, he would like nothing of the kind; he greatly preferred that they should all stay where they were as they were, save only that of course they must pay no rent in future and that he must be allowed to maintain entirely the upkeep of the apartment. He wished it to be essentially their own and he had no intention of intruding there except as a guest.
From time to time no doubt Lily would like to see something of the French countryside and of the _plages_, and no doubt equally Sylvia would not be lonely in Paris with Mrs. Gainsborough. He believed that Lily loved him. She was, of course, like all English girls, cold, but for his part he admired such coldness, in fact he admired everything English. He knew that his happiness depended upon Sylvia, and he begged her to be kind.
Hector Ozanne was the only son of a rich manufacturer who had died about five years ago. The business had for some time been a limited company of which Madame Ozanne held the greater number of shares. Hector himself was now twenty-five and would within a year be found a wife by his mother; until then he would be allowed to choose a mistress by himself.
He was kind-hearted, simple, and immensely devoted to Lily. She liked lunching and dining with him, and would like still better dressing herself at his expense; she certainly cared for him as much now as his future wife would care for him on the wedding-day. There seemed no reason to oppose the intimacy. If it should happen that Hector should fail to treat Lily properly, Sylvia would know how to deal with him, or rather with his mother. Amen.
July was burning fiercely and Hector was unwilling to lose delightful days with Lily; they drove away together one morning in a big motor-car, which Mrs. Gainsborough blessed with as much fervor as she would have blessed a hired brougham at a suburban wedding. She and Sylvia were left together either to visit some _plage_ or amuse themselves in Paris.
"Paris I think, you uncommendable mammoth, you phosphor-eyed hippopotamus, Paris I _think_."
"Well, I should like to see a bit of life, I must say. We've led a very quiet existence so far. I don't want to go back to England and tell my friend Mrs. Marsham that I've seen nothing. She's a most enterprising woman herself. I don't think you ever saw her, did you? Before she was going to have her youngest she had a regular pa.s.sion to ride on a camel.
She used to dream of camels all night long, and at last, being as I said a very enterprising woman and being afraid when her youngest was born he might be a humpback through her dreaming of camels all the time, she couldn't stand it no longer and one Monday morning, which is a sixpenny day, she went off to the Zoo by herself, being seven months gone at the time, and took six rides on the camel right off the reel, as they say."
"That must have been the last straw," Sylvia said.
"Have I told you this story before, then?"
Sylvia shook her head.
"Well, that's a queer thing. I was just about to say that when she'd finished her rides she went to look at the giraffes, and one of them got hold of her straw hat in his mouth and nearly tore it off her head. She hollered out, and the keeper asked her if she couldn't read the notice that visitors was requested not to feed these animals. This annoyed Mrs.
Marsham very much, and she told the keeper he wasn't fit to manage performing fleas, let alone giraffes, which annoyed _him_ very much.
It's a pity you never met her. I sent her a post-card the other day, as vulgar a one as I
Sylvia did so far gratify Mrs. Gainsborough's desire to impress Mrs.
Marsham as to take her to one or two Montmartre ballrooms; but she declared they did not come up to her expectations, and decided that she should have to fall back on her own imagination to thrill Mrs. Marsham.
"As most travelers do," Sylvia added.
They also went together to several plays, at which Sylvia laughed very heartily, much to Mrs. Gainsborough's chagrin.
"I'm bothered if I know what you're laughing at," she said, finally. "I can't understand a word of what they're saying."
"Just as well you can't," Sylvia told her.
"Now there's a tantalizing hussy for you. But I can guess, you great tomboy."
Whereupon Mrs. Gainsborough laughed as heartily as anybody in the audience at her own particular thoughts. She attracted a good deal of attention by this, because she often laughed at them without reference to what was happening on the stage. When Sylvia dug her in the ribs to make her keep quiet, she protested that, if she could only tell the audience what she was thinking, they would not bother any more about the stage.
"A penny for your thoughts, they say. I reckon mine are worth the price of a seat in the circle, anyway."
It was after this performance that Sylvia and Mrs. Gainsborough went to the Cafe de la Chouette, which was frequented mostly by the performers, poets, and composers of the music-hall world. The place was crowded, and they were forced to sit at a table already occupied by one of those figures that only in Paris seem to have the right to live on an equality with the rest of mankind, merely on account of their eccentric appearance. He was probably not more than forty years old, but his gauntness made him look older. He wore blue-and-white checked trousers, a tail coat from which he or somebody else had clipped off the tails, a red velvet waistcoat, and a yachting-cap. His eyes were cavernous, his cheeks were rouged rather than flushed with fever. He carried a leather bag slung round his middle filled with waste paper, from which he occasionally took out a piece and wrote upon it a few words. He was drinking an unrecognizable liqueur.
Mrs. Gainsborough was rather nervous of sitting down beside so strange a creature, but Sylvia insisted. The man made no gesture at their approach, but turned his eyes upon them with the impa.s.sivity of a cat.
"Look here, Sylvia, in two twos he's going to give me an attack of the horrors," Mrs. Gainsborough whispered. "He's staring at me and twitching his nose like a hungry child at a jam roll. It's no good you telling me to give over. I can't help it. Look at his eyes. More like coal-cellars than eyes. I've never been able to abide being stared at since I sat down beside a wax-work at Louis Tussaud's and asked it where the ladies'
cloak-room was."
"He amuses me," Sylvia said. "What are you going to have?"
"Well, I _was_ going to have a grenadier, but really if that skelington opposite is going to look at me all night, I think I'll take something stronger."
"Try a cuira.s.sier," Sylvia suggested.
"Whatever's that?"
"It's the same relation to a curacao that a grenadier is to a grenadine."
"What I should really like is a nice little drop of whisky with a little tiddley bit of lemon; but there, I've noticed if you ask for whisky in Paris it causes a regular commotion. The waiter holds the bottle as if it was going to bite him, and the proprietor winks at him he's pouring out too much, and I can't abide those blue siphons. Sells they call them, and sells they are."
"I shall order you a bock in a moment," Sylvia threatened.
"Now don't be unkind just because I made a slight complaint about being stared at. Perhaps they won't make such a bother if I _do_ have a little whisky. But there, I can't resist it. It's got a regular taste of London, whisky has."
The man at the table leaned over suddenly and asked, in a tense voice:
"Scotch or Irish?"
"Oh, good land! what a turn you gave me! I couldn't have jumped more,"
Mrs. Gainsborough exclaimed, "not if one of the lions in Trafalgar Square had said pip-ip as I pa.s.sed!"
"You didn't think I was English, did you?" said the stranger. "I forget it myself sometimes. I'm a terrible warning to the world. I'm a pose that's become a reality."
"Pose?" Mrs. Gainsborough echoed. "Oh, I didn't understand you for the moment. You mean you're an artist's model?"
The stranger turned his eyes upon Sylvia, and, whether from sympathy or curiosity, she made friends with him, so that when they were ready to go home the eccentric Englishman, whom every one called Milord and who did not offer any alternative name to his new friends, said he would walk with them a bit of the way, much to Mrs. Gainsborough's embarra.s.sment.
"I'm the first of the English decadents," he proclaimed to Sylvia.
"Twenty years ago I came to Paris to study art. I hadn't a penny to spend on drugs. I hadn't enough money to lead a life of sin. There's a tragedy! For five years I starved myself instead. I thought I should make myself interesting. I did. I became a figure. I learned the raptures of hunger. Nothing surpa.s.ses them--opium, morphine, ether, cocaine, hemp. What are they beside hunger? Have you got any coco with you? Just a little pinch? No? Never mind. I don't really like it. Not really. Some people like it, though. Who's the old woman with you? A procuress? Last night I had a dream in which I proved the non-existence of G.o.d by the least common multiple. I can't exactly remember how I did it now. That's why I was so worried this evening; I can't remember if the figures were two, four, sixteen, and thirty-eight. I worked it out last night in my dream. I obtained a view of the universe as a geometrical abstraction. It's perfectly simple, but I cannot get it right now. There's a crack in my ceiling which indicates the way. Unless I can walk along that crack I can't reach the center of the universe, and of course it's hopeless to try to obtain a view of the universe as a geometrical abstraction if one can't reach the center. I take it you agree with me on that point. That point! Wait a minute. I'm almost there. That point. Don't let me forget. That point. That is the point.
Ah!"
The abstraction eluded him and he groaned aloud.
"The more I listen to him," said Mrs. Gainsborough, "the more certain sure I am he ought to see a doctor."
"I must say good night," the stranger murmured, sadly. "I see that I must start again at the beginning of that crack in my ceiling. I was lucky to find the room that had such a crack, though in a way it's rather a nuisance. It branches off so, and I very often lose the direction. There's one particular branch that always leads away from the point. I'm afraid to do anything about it in the morning. Of course, I might put up a notice to say, _this is the wrong way_; but supposing it were really the right way? It's a great responsibility to own such a crack. Sometimes I almost go mad with the burden of responsibility. Why, by playing about with that ceiling when my brain isn't perfectly clear I might upset the whole universe! We'll meet again one night at the Chouette. I think I'll cross the boulevard now. There's no traffic, and I have to take a certain course not to confuse my line of thought."
The eccentric stranger left them and, crossing the road in a series of diagonal tacks, disappeared.
"Coco," said Sylvia.
"Cocoa?" echoed Mrs. Gainsborough. "Brandy, more like."