Chapter 50
"I thought while I was about it that I would have the tiles laid right up to the ceiling," Valentine went on, pensively. "And you see, the ceiling is made of looking-gla.s.s. When the water is very hot, _ca fait drole, tu sais, on ne se voit plus_."
It was the first time she had used the second person singular; the bath-room had created in Valentine something that almost resembled humanity.
"Yes," Sylvia agreed. "I suppose that is the best way of making the ceiling useful."
"_C'est pour la vie_," Valentine contentedly sighed.
"But if he were to marry?" Sylvia ventured.
"It would make no difference," Valentine answered. "I have saved money and with a bath-room like this one can always get a good rent.
Everything in the apartment is mine, and the apartment is mine, too."
"_Alors, tu es contente?_" said Sylvia.
"_Oui, je suis contente_," said Valentine.
"_Elle est jolie, ta salle de bain_."
"_Oui, elle est jolie comme un amour_," Valentine a.s.sented, with a sweet maternal smile.
They talked of the bath-room for a while when they came back to the boudoir; Sylvia was conscious of displaying the politeness with which one descends from the nursery at an afternoon call.
"_Enfin_," said Sylvia, "_Je file_."
"_Tu pars tout de suite de Ma.r.s.eilles?_"
"_Oui, je pars ce soir_."
She had not really intended to leave Ma.r.s.eilles that evening, but there seemed no reason to stay.
"_C'est dommage que tu n'as pas vu Louis_."
"_Il s'appelle Louis?_"
"_Oui, il s'appelle Louis. Il est a Lyon pour ses affaires_."
"_Alors, au revoir, Valentine_."
"_Au revoir, Sylvie_."
They hesitated, both of them, to see which would offer her cheek first; in the end they managed to be simultaneous.
"Even the farewell was a stalemate," Sylvia said to herself on the way down-stairs.
She wondered, while she was walking back to her hotel, what was going to be the pa.s.sion of her own life. One always started out with a dim conception of perfect love, however one might scoff at it openly in self-protection, but evidently it by no means followed that love for a man, let alone perfect love, would ever arrive. Lily had succeeded in inspiring at least one man with love for her, but she had found her own pa.s.sion in roulette with Camacho tacked to it, inherited like a husband's servant, familiar with any caprice, but jealous and irritable.
Valentine had found her grand pa.s.sion in a bath-room that satisfied even her profoundest maternal instincts. Dorothy had loved a coronet with such fervor that she had been able to abandon everything that could smirch it. Sylvia's own mother had certainly found at thirty-four her grand pa.s.sion, but Sylvia felt that it would be preferable to fall in love with a bath-room now than wait ten years for a Henry.
Sylvia reached the hotel, packed up her things, and set out to Paris without any definite plans in her head for the future, and just because she had no definite plans and nothing to keep her from sleeping, she could not sleep and tossed about on the _wagon-lit_ half the night.
"It's not as if I hadn't got money. I'm amazingly lucky. It's really fantastic luck to find somebody like poor old Carlos to set me up for five years of luxurious independence. I suppose if I were wise I should buy a house in London--and yet I don't want to go back to London. The trouble with me is that, though I like to be independent, I don't like to be alone. Yet with Michael.... But what's the use of thinking about him? Do I actually miss him? No, certainly not. He's nothing more to me than something I might have had, but failed to secure. I'm regretting a missed experience. If one loses somebody like that, it leaves a sense of incompletion. How often does one feel
But I must have somebody."
When Sylvia reached Paris she visited two trunks that were in a repository. Among other things she took out the volume of Adlington's _Apuleius_.
"Yes, there's no doubt I'm still an a.s.s," she said. "And since the Argentine really a golden a.s.s; but oh, when, when, when shall I eat the rose-leaves and turn into Sylvia again? One might make a joke about that, as the White Knight said, something about Golden and Silver and Argentine."
Thinking of jokes reminded Sylvia of Mr. Pluepott, and thinking of Alice through the looking-gla.s.s brought back the Vicar. What a long way off they seemed.
"I can't let go of everybody," she cried. So she telegraphed and wrote urgently to Mrs. Gainsborough, begging her to join her in Paris. While she was waiting for a reply, she discussed projects for the future with her agent, who, when he found that she had some money, was anxious for her to invest a certain amount in the necessary _reclame_ and appear at the Folies Bergeres.
"But I don't want to make a success by singing French songs with an English accent," Sylvia protested. "I'd as soon make a success by singing without a roof to my mouth. You discouraged me from doing something I really wanted to do. All I want now is an excuse for roaming."
"What about a tour in Spain?" the agent suggested. "I can't get you more than ten francs a night, though, if you only want to sing. Still, Spain's much cheaper than America."
"_Mon cher ami, j'ai besoin du travail pour me distraire_. Ten francs is the wage of a slave, but pocket-money, if one is not a slave."
"_Vous avez de la veine, vous_."
"_Vraiment?_"
"_Mais oui_."
"_Peut-etre quelqu'un m'a plaque_."
He tried to look grave and sympathetic.
"_Salaud_," she mocked. "_Crois-tu que je t'en dirais. Bigre! je creverais plutot_."
She had dropped into familiarity of speech with him, but he, still hopeful of persuading her to intrust a profitable _reclame_ to him, continued to treat her formally. Sylvia realized the _arriere pensee_ and laughed at him.
"_Je ne suis pas encore en grande vedette, tu sais_."
He a.s.sured her that such a triumph would ultimately come to her, and she scoffed.
"_Mon vieux, si je n'avais pas de la galette, je pourrais crever de faim devant ta porte. Ce que tu me dis, c'est du chic_."
"Well, will you go to Spain?"
The contract was signed.
A day or two later, when she was beginning to give up hope of getting an answer from Mrs. Gainsborough, the old lady herself turned up at the hotel, looking not a minute older.
"You darling and daring old plesiosaurus," cried Sylvia, seizing her by the hand and twirling her round the vestibule.
"Yes, I am pleased to see you and no mistake," said Mrs. Gainsborough.
"But what a tyrant! Well, really, I was in me bed when your telegram came and that boy he knocked like a tiger. Knock--knock! all the time I was trying to slip on me petticoat, which through me being in a regular fl.u.s.ter I put on wrong way up and got me feet all wound up with the strings. Knock--knock! 'Whatever do you think you're doing?' I said when at last I was fairly decent and went to open the door. 'Telegram,' he says, as saucy as bra.s.s. 'Telegram?' I said. 'I thought by the row you was making that you was building St. Paul's Cathedral.' 'Wait for the answer?' he said. 'Answer?' I said. 'Certainly not.' Well, there was I with your telegram in one hand and me petticoat slipping down in the other. Then on the top of that came your letter, and I couldn't resist a sight of you, my dearie. Fancy that Lily waltzing off like that. And with a Portuguese. She'll get Portuguese before he's finished with her.
Portuguese is what she'll be. And the journey! Well, really, I don't know how I managed. I kept on saying, 'France,' the same as if I was asking a policeman the way to Oxford Circus, and they bundled me about like... well, really, everybody was most kind. Still when I got to France, it wasn't much use going on shouting 'France' to everybody.
However, I met a nice young fellow in the train, and he very thoughtfully a.s.sisted me into a cab and... well, I am glad to see you."