Chapter 47
"But you were going away without a word to me?" Sylvia could not refrain from tormenting herself with this question.
"Oh no, I was coming to say good-by, but you don't understand how closely he watches me."
The thought of Camacho's jealous antics recurred to Lily with the imminence of his return; she begged Sylvia, now that all her questions were answered, to escape. It was too late; there was a sound of footsteps upon the stairs and the noise of angry voices above deep gobbles of protested innocence from the black servant.
The entrance reminded Sylvia of "Il Barbiere di Siviglia," for when Camacho came leaping into the room, as thin and active as a gra.s.shopper, the priest was holding his coattails with one hand and with the other making the most operatic gestures of despair, like Don Basilio. In the doorway the black servant continued to gobble at everybody in turn, including the Almighty, to witness the clarity of her conscience.
"What language do you speak?" Sylvia asked, sharply, while Camacho was struggling to free himself from the restraint of the priest.
"I speak Englis.h.!.+ Gaddam! h.e.l.l! Five hundred h.e.l.ls!" the croupier shouted. "And I have sweared a swore that you will not interrupt between me myself and my Lili."
Camacho raised his arm to shake his fist, and the priest caught hold of it, which made Camacho turn round and open on him with Portuguese expletives.
"When you've quite done cracking Brazil nuts with your teeth, perhaps you'll listen to me," Sylvia began.
"No, you hear me, no, no, no, no, no, no!" Camacho shouted. "And I will not hear you. I have heard you enough. You shall not take her away.
_Putain!_"
"If you want to be polite in French," Sylvia said. "Come along!
_"Ce marloupatte pale et mince_ _Se nommait simplement Navet,_ _Mais il vivait ainsi qu'un prince,_ _Il aimait les femmes qu'on rince._
_Tu comprends? Mais moi, je ne suis pas une femme qu'on rince."_
It was certainly improbable, Sylvia thought, that the croupier had understood much of Richepin's verse, but the effect of the little recitation was excellent because it made him choke. Lily now intervened, and when Sylvia beheld her soothing the inarticulate Camacho by stroking his head, she abandoned the last faint inclination to break off this match and called upon the priest to marry them at once. No doubt the priest would have been willing to begin the ceremony if he had been able to understand a word of what Sylvia said, but he evidently thought she was appealing to him against Camacho's violence, and with a view to affording the ultimate a.s.sistance of which he was capable he crossed himself and turned up his eyes to heaven.
"What an awful noise there is!" Sylvia cried, and, looking round her with a sudden realization of its volume, she perceived that the negress in the doorway had been reinforced by what was presumably the cook--another negress who was joining in her fellow-servant's protestations. At the same time the priest was talking incessantly in rapid Portuguese; Camacho was probably swearing in the same language; and Lily was making a noise that was exactly half-way between a dove cooing and an ostler grooming a horse.
"Look here, Mr. Camacho," Sylvia began.
"Oh, don't speak to him, Sylvia," Lily implored. "He can't be spoken to when he's like this. It's a kind of illness, really."
Sylvia paid no attention to her, but continued to address the croupier.
"If you'll listen to me, Mr. Camacho, instead of behaving like an exasperated toy terrier, you'll find that we both want the same thing."
"You shall not have her," the croupier chattered. "I will shoot everybody before you shall have her."
"I don't want her," Sylvia screamed. "I've come here to be a bridesmaid or a G.o.dmother or any other human accessory to a wedding you like to mention. Take her, my dear man, she's yours."
At last Sylvia was able to persuade him that she was not to be regarded as an enemy of his matrimonial intentions, and after a final burst of rage directed against the negresses, whom he ejected from the room, as a housemaid turns a mattress, he made a speech:
"I am to marry Lily. We go to Portugal, where I am not to be a croupier, but a gentleman. I excuse my furage. You grant excusals, yes? It is a decomprehence."
"He's apologizing," Lily explained in the kind of way one
"She's actually proud of him," Sylvia thought. "But, of course, to her he represents gold and diamonds."
The priest, who had grasped that the strain was being relaxed, began to exude smiles and to rub his hands; he sniffed the prospect of a fee so richly that one seemed to hear the notes crackle like pork. Camacho produced the wedding-ring that was even more outshone than wedding-rings usually are by the diamonds of betrothal.
"But I can't be married in my dressing-gown," Lily protested.
Sylvia felt inclined to say it was the most suitable garment, except a nightgown, that she could have chosen, but in the end, after another discussion, it was decided that the ecclesiastical ceremony should be performed to-morrow in church and that to-day should be devoted to the civil rite. Sylvia promised not to say a word about the departure to Europe.
Three days later Sylvia went on board the steamer to make her farewells.
She gave Lily a delicate little pistol for a wedding-present; from Lily, in memory of her marriage, she received a box of chocolates.
It was impossible not to feel lonely, when Lily had gone: in three and a half years they had been much together. For a while Sylvia tried to content herself with the company of the girls in the _pension d'artistes_, to which she had been forced to go because the flat was too expensive for her to live in now. Her illness had swallowed up any money she had saved, and the manager took advantage of it to lower her salary.
When she protested the manager told her he would be willing to pay the original salary, if she would go to So Paulo. Though Sylvia understood that the management was trying to get the best of a bargain, she was too listless to care much and she agreed to go. The voyage there was like a nightmare. The boat was full of gaudy negroes who sang endlessly their mysterious songs; the smell was vile; the food was worse; c.o.c.kroaches swarmed. So Paulo was a squalid reproduction of Rio de Janeiro, and the women who sang in the cabaret were all seamed with ten years' longer vagabondage than those at Rio. The men of So Paulo treated them with the insolence of the half-breeds they all seemed. On the third night a big man with teeth like an ancient fence and a diamond in his s.h.i.+rt-front like a crystal stopper leaned over from a box and shouted to Sylvia to come up and join him when she had finished her songs; he said other things that made her shake with anger. When she left the scene, the grand pimp, who was politely known as the manager, congratulated Sylvia upon her luck: she had caught the fancy of the richest patron.
"You don't suppose I'm going to see that _goujat_ in his box?" she growled.
The grand pimp was in despair. Did she wish to drive away their richest patron? He would probably open a dozen bottles of champagne. He might... the grand pimp waved his arms to express mental inability to express all the splendors within her grasp. Presently the impatient suitor came behind the scene to know the reason of Sylvia's delay. He grasped her by the wrist and tried to drag her up to his box. She seized the only weapon in reach--a hand-gla.s.s--and smashed it against his face. The suitor roared; the grand pimp squealed; Sylvia escaped to the stage, which was almost flush with the main dancing-hall. She forced her way through the orchestra, kicking the instruments right and left, and fell into the arms of a man more resplendent than the rest, but a _rastaquouere_ of more Parisian cut, who in a dago-American accent promised to plug the first guy that tried to touch her.
Sylvia felt like Carmen on the arm of the Toreador when she and her protector walked out of the cabaret. He was a youngish man, wearing a blue serge suit and high-heeled shoes half buckskin, half patent-leather, tied with white silk laces, so excessively American in shape that one looked twice to be sure he was not wearing them on the wrong feet. His trousers, after exhausting the ordinary number of b.u.t.tons in front, prolonged themselves into a kind of corselet that drew attention to the slimness of his waist. He wore a frilled white s.h.i.+rt sown with blue hearts and a white silk tie with a large diamond pin. The back of his neck was shaved, which gave his curly black hair the look of a wig. He was the Latin dandy after being operated upon in an American barber shop, and his name was Carlos Morera.
Sylvia noted his appearance in such detail, because the appearance of anybody after that monster in the box would have come as a relief and a diversion. Morera had led her to a bar that opened out of the cabaret, and after placing two automatic pistols on the counter he ordered champagne c.o.c.ktails for them both.
"He won't come after you in here. Dat stiff don't feel he would like to meet Carlos Morera. Say, do you know why? Why, because Carlos Morera's ready to plug any stiff dat don't happen to suit his fancy right away.
Dat's me, Carlos Morera. I'm pretty rich, I am. I'm a gentleman, I am.
But dat ain't going to stop me using those"; he indicated the pistols.
"Drink up and let's have another. Don't you want to drink? See here, then." He poured Sylvia's c.o.c.ktail on the floor. "Nothing won't stop Carlos Morera if he wants to call another round of drinks. Two more champagne c.o.c.ktails!"
"Is this going to be my Manuel?" Sylvia asked herself. She felt at the moment inclined to let him be anything rather than go back to the concert and face that man in the box.
"You're looking some white," Morera commented. "I believe he scared you.
I believe I ought to have shot him. Say, you sit here and drink up. I t'ink I'll go back and shoot him now. I sha'n't be gone long."
"Sit still, you fire-eater," cried Sylvia, catching hold of his arm.
"Say, dat's good. Fire-eater! Yes, I believe I'd eat fire if it came to it. I believe you could make me laugh. I'm going to Buenos Aires to-morrow. Why don't you come along of me? This So Paulo is a b.u.m Brazilian town. You want to see the Argentine. I'll show you lots of life."
"Look here," said Sylvia. "I don't mind coming with you to make you laugh and to laugh myself, but that's all. Understand?"
"Dat's all right," Carlos agreed. "I'm a funny kind of a fellow, I am.
As soon as I found I could buy any girl I wanted, I didn't seem to want them no more. 'Sides, I've got seven already. You come along of me. I'm good company, I am. Everybody dat goes along of me laughs and has good fun. Hear that?"
He jingled the money in his pocket with a joyful reverence, as if he were ringing a sanctus-bell. "Now, you come back with me into the cabaret."
Sylvia hesitated.
"Don't you worry. n.o.body won't dare to look at you when you're with me."
Morera put her arm in his, and back they walked into the cabaret again, more than ever like Carmen with her Toreador. The grand pimp, seeing that Sylvia was safely protected, came forward with obeisances and apologies.
"See here. Bring two bottles of champagne," Morera commanded.
The grand pimp beckoned authoritatively to a waiter, but Morera stood up in a fury.