Chapter 57
"My dear man, don't you fret about my withering. I've got a little crystal flask of the finest undiluted strychnine. I believe strychnine quickens the action of the heart. Verdict. Death from attempted galvanization of the cardiac muscles. No flowers by request. Boomph! as Mrs. Gainsborough would say. Ring off. The last time I wrote myself an epitaph it led me into matrimony. _Absit omen_."
Airdale was distressed by Sylvia's joking about her death, and begged her to stop.
"Then don't ask me any more about the future in general. And now let's go and be Epicurean at Verrey's."
After Jack Airdale the only other old friend that Sylvia took any trouble to find was Olive Fanshawe. She was away on tour when Sylvia returned to England, but she came back to London in June, was still unmarried, and had been promised a small part in the Vanity production that autumn. Sylvia found that Olive had recaptured her romantic ideals and was delighted with her proposal that they should live together at Mulberry Cottage. Olive took very seriously her small part at the Vanity, of which the most distinguished line was: "Girls, have you seen the Duke of Mayfair? He's awfully handsome." Sylvia was not very encouraging to Olive's opportunities of being able to give an original reading of such a line, but she listened patiently to her variations in which each word was overaccentuated in turn. Luckily there was also a melodious quintet consisting of the juvenile lead and four beauties of whom Olive was to be one; this, it seemed, promised to be a hit, and indeed it was.
The most interesting event for the Vanity world that autumn, apart from the individual successes and failures in the new production, was the return of Lord and Lady Clarehaven to London, and not merely their return, but their re-entry into the Bohemian society from which Lady Clarehaven had so completely severed herself.
"I know it's perfectly ridiculous of me," said Olive, "but, Sylvia, do you know, I'm quite nervous at the idea of meeting her again."
A most cordial note had arrived from Dorothy inviting Olive to lunch with her in Curzon Street.
"Write back and tell her you're living with me," Sylvia advised.
"That'll choke off some of the friendliness."
But to Sylvia's boundless surprise a messenger-boy arrived with an urgent invitation for her to come too.
"Curiouser and curiouser," she murmured. "What does it mean? She surely can't be tired of being a countess already. I'm completely stumped.
However, of course we'll put on our clean bibs and go. Don't look so frightened. Olive, if conversation hangs fire at lunch, we'll tickle the footmen."
"I really feel quite faint," said Olive. "My heart's going pitter-pat.
Isn't it silly of me?"
Lunch, to which Arthur Lonsdale had also been invited, did nothing to enlighten Sylvia about the Clarehavens' change of att.i.tude. Dorothy, more beautiful than ever and pleasant enough superficially, seemed withal faintly resentful; Clarehaven was in exuberant spirits and evidently enjoying London tremendously. The only sign of tension, well not exactly tension, but slight disaccord, and that was too strong a word, was once when Clarehaven, having been exceptionally rowdy, glanced at Dorothy a swift look of defiance for checking him.
"She's grown as prim as a parlor-maid," said Lonsdale to Sylvia when, after lunch, they had a chance of talking together. "You ought to have seen her on the ancestral acres. My mother, who presides over our place like a Queen Turnip, is without importance beside Dolly, absolutely without importance. It got on Tony's nerves, that's about the truth of it. He never could stand the land. It has the same effect on him as the sea has on some people. Black vomit, coma, and death--what?"
"Dorothy, of course, played the countess in real life
"Star! My dear girl, she was a comet. And the dowager loved her. They used to drive round in a barouche and administer gruel to the village without anesthetics."
"I suppose they kept them for Clarehaven," Sylvia laughed.
"That's it. Of course, I shouted when I saw the state of affairs, having first of all been called in to recover old Lady Clarehaven's reason when she heard that her only child was going to wed a Vanity girl. But they loved her. Every frump in the county adored her. It's Tony who insisted on this move to London. He stood it in Devons.h.i.+re for two and a half years, but the lights of the wicked city--soft music, please--called him, and they've come back. Dolly's fed up to the wide about it. I say, we are a pair of gossips. What's your news?"
"I met Maurice Avery, in Morocco."
"What, Mossy Avery! Not really? Disguised as a slipper, I suppose. Rum bird. He got awfully keen on a little girl at the Orient and tootled her all over town for a while, but I haven't seen him for months. I used to know him rather well at the 'Varsity: he was one of the esthetic push. I say, what's become of Lily?"
"Married to a croupier? Not, really. By Jove! what a time I had over her with Michael Fane's people. His sister, an awfully good sort, put me through a fearful catechism."
"His sister?" repeated Sylvia.
"You know what Michael's doing now? Greatest scream on earth. He's a monk. Some special kind of a monk that sounds like omelette, but isn't.
Nothing to be done about it. I buzzed down to see him last year, and he was awfully fed up. I asked him if he couldn't stop monking for a bit and come out for a spin on my new forty-five Shooting Star. He wasn't in uniform, so there's no reason why he shouldn't have come."
"He's in England, now, then?" Sylvia asked.
"No, he got fed up with everybody buzzing down to see what he looked like as a monk, and he's gone off to Chartreuse or Benedictine or somewhere--I know it's the name of a liqueur--somewhere abroad. I wanted him to become a partner in our business, and promised we'd put a jolly little runabout on the market called The Jovial Monk, but he wouldn't.
Look here, we'd better join the others. Dolly's got her eye on me. I say," he chuckled, in a whisper, "I suppose you know she's a connection of mine?"
"Yes, by carriage."
Lonsdale asked what she meant, and Sylvia told him the origin of Dorothy's name.
"Oh, I say, that's topping. What's her real name?"
"No, no," Sylvia said. "I've been sufficiently spiteful."
"Probably Buggins, really. I say, Cousin Dorothy," he went on, in a louder voice. "What about bridge to-morrow night after the Empire?"
Lady Clarehaven flashed a look at Sylvia, who could not resist shaking her head and earning thereby another sharper flash. When Sylvia talked over the Clarehavens with Olive, she found that Olive had been quite oblivious of anything unusual in the sudden move to town.
"Of course, Dorothy and I can never be what we were to each other; but I thought they seemed so happy together. I'm so glad it's been such a success."
"Well, has it?" said Sylvia, doubtfully.
"Oh yes, my dear! How can you imagine anything else?"
With the deepening of winter Olive fell ill and the doctors prescribed the Mediterranean for her. The malady was nothing to worry about; it was nothing more than fatigue; and if she were to rest now and if possible not work before the following autumn, there was every reason to expect that she would be perfectly cured.
Sylvia jumped at an excuse to go abroad again and suggested a visit to Sirene. The doctor, on being a.s.sured that Sirene was in the Mediterranean, decided that it was exactly the place best suited to Olive's state of health. Like most English doctors, he regarded the Mediterranean as a little larger than the Serpentine, with a characteristic climate throughout. Olive, however, was much opposed to leaving London, and when Sylvia began to get annoyed with her obstinacy, she confessed that the real reason for wis.h.i.+ng to stay was Jack.
"Naturally, I wanted to tell you at once, my dear. But Jack wouldn't let me, until he could see his way clear to our being married. He was quite odd about you, for you know how fond he is of you--he thinks there's n.o.body like you--but he particularly asked me not to tell you just yet."
"Of course I know the reason," Sylvia proclaimed, instantly. "The silly, scrupulous, proud a.s.s. I'll have it out with him to-morrow at lunch.
Dearest Olive, I'm so happy that I like your curly-headed actor."
"Oh, but, darling Sylvia, his hair's quite straight!"
"Yes, but it's very long and gets into his eyes. It's odd hair, anyway.
And when did the flaming arrow pin your two hearts together?"
"It was that evening you played baccarat at Curzon Street--about ten days ago. You didn't think we'd known long, did you? Oh, my dear, I couldn't have kept the secret any longer."
Next day Sylvia lunched with Jack Airdale and came to the point at once.
"Look here, you detestably true-to-type, impossibly sensitive a.s.s, because I to please me lent you fifty pounds, is that any excuse for you to keep me out in the cold over you and Olive? Seriously, Jack, I do think it was mean of you."
Jack was abashed and mumbled many excuses. He had been afraid Sylvia would despise him for talking about marriage when he owed her money. He felt, anyway, that he wasn't good enough for Olive. Before Olive had known anything about it, he had been rather ashamed of himself for being in love with her; he felt he was taking advantage of Sylvia's friends.h.i.+p.
"All which excuses are utterly feeble," Sylvia p.r.o.nounced. "Now listen.
Olive's ill. She ought to go abroad. I very selfishly want a companion.
You've got to insist on her going. The fifty pounds I lent you will pay her expenses, so that debt's wiped out, and you're standing her a holiday in the Mediterranean."
Jack thought for a moment with a puzzled air.
"Don't be absurd, Sylvia. Really for the moment you took me in with your confounded arithmetic. Why, you're doubling the obligation."