Chapter 59
"Obviously Valentine," said Sylvia. "But look here, why not Sylvius for the boy and Rose for the girl? 'Rose Airdale, all were thine!'"
When several more telegrams had been exchanged to enable Olive, in Warwicks.h.i.+re, to be quite sure that Jack, by this time in Aberdeen, had got the names right, Sylvius and Rose were decided upon, though Mr.
Fanshawe advocated Audrey for the girl with such pertinacity that he even went as far as to argue with his daughter on the steps of the font.
Indeed, as Sylvia said afterward, if the clergyman had not been so deaf, Rose would probably be Audrey at this moment.
On the afternoon of the christening Sylvia received a telegram.
"Too late," she said, with a laugh, as she tore it open. "He can't change his mind now."
But the telegram was signed "Beardmore" and asked Sylvia to come at once to London because Mrs. Gainsborough was very ill.
When she arrived at Mulberry Cottage, on a fine morning in early June, Mrs. Beardmore, whom Sylvia had never seen, was gravely accompanying two other elderly women to the garden door.
"She's not dead?" Sylvia cried.
The three friends shook their heads and sighed.
"Not yet, poor soul," said the thinnest, bursting into tears.
This must be Mrs. Ewings.
"I'm just going to send another doctor," said the most majestic, which must be Mrs. Marsham.
Mrs. Beardmore said nothing, but she sniffed and led the way toward the house. Mrs. Marsham and Mrs. Ewings went off together.
Inside the darkened room, but not so dark in the June suns.h.i.+ne as to obscure entirely the picture of Captain Dashwood in whiskers that hung upon the wall by her bed, Mrs. Gainsborough lay breathing heavily. The nurse made a gesture of silence and came out tiptoe from the room.
Down-stairs in the parlor Sylvia listened to Mrs. Beardmore's story of the illness.
"I heard nothing till three days ago, when the woman who comes in of a morning ascertained from Mrs. Gainsborough the wish she had for me to visit her. The Misses Hargreaves, with who I reside, was exceptionally kind and insisted upon me taking the tram from Kew that very moment. I communicated with Mrs. Marsham and Mrs. Ewings, but they, both having lodgers, was unable to evacuate their business, and Mrs. Gainsborough was excessively anxious as you should be communicated with on the telegraph, which I did accordingly. We have two nurses night and day, and the doctor is all that can be desired, all that can be desired, notwithstanding whatever Mrs. Marsham may say to the contrary; Mrs.
Marsham, who I've known for some years, has that habit of contradicting everybody else something outrageous. Mrs. Ewings and me was both entirely satisfied with Doctor Barker. I'm very glad you've come, Miss Scarlett, and Mrs. Gainsborough will be very glad you've come. If you'll permit the liberty of the observation, Mrs. Gainsborough is very fond of you. As soon as she wakes up I shall have to get back to Kew, not wis.h.i.+ng to trespa.s.s too much on the kindness of the two Misses Hargreaves to who I act as housekeeper. It's her heart that's the trouble. Double pneumonia through pottering in the garden. That's what the doctor diag--yes, that's what the doctor says, and though Mrs.
Marsham contradicted him, taking the words out of his mouth and throwing them back in his face, and saying it was nothing of the kind but going to the King's funeral, I believe he's right."
Mrs. Beardmore went back to Kew. Mrs. Gainsborough, who had been in a comatose state all the afternoon, began to wander in her mind about an hour before sunset.
"It's very dark. High time the curtain went up. The house will be getting impatient in a minute. It's not to be supposed they'll wait all night. Certainly not."
Sylvia drew the curtains back, and the room was flooded with gold.
"That's better. Much better. The country smells beautiful, don't it, this morning? The glory die-johns are a treat this year, but the captain he always likes a camellia or a gardenia. Well, if they start in building over your nursery, pa.... Certainly not, certainly not. They'll build over everything. Now don't talk about dying, Bob. Don't let's be dismal on our anniversary. Certainly not."
She suddenly recognized Sylvia and her mind cleared.
"Oh,
The nurse came forward and begged her not to talk too much.
"You can't stop me talking. There was a clergyman came through Mrs.
Ewings's getting in a state about me, and he talked till I was sick and tired of the sound of his voice. Talked away, he did, about the death of Our Lord and being nailed to the cross. It made me very dismal. 'Here, when did all this occur?' I asked. 'Nineteen hundred and ten years ago,'
he said. 'Oh well,' I said, 'it all occurred such a long time ago and it's all so sad, let's hope it never occurred at all.'"
The nurse said firmly that if Mrs. Gainsborough would not stop talking she should have to make Sylvia go out of the room.
"There's a tyrant," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "Well, just sit by me quietly and hold my hand."
The sun set behind the housetops. Mrs. Gainsborough's hand was cold when twilight came.
Sylvia felt that it was out of the question to stay longer at Mulberry Cottage, though Miss Dashwood, to whom the little property reverted, was very anxious for her to do so. After the funeral Sylvia joined Olive and Jack in Warwicks.h.i.+re.
They realized that she was feeling very deeply the death of Mrs.
Gainsborough, and were anxious that she should arrange to live with them in West Kensington.
Sylvia, however, said that she wished to remain friends with them, and declined the proposal.
"Do you remember what I told you once," she said to Jack, "about going back to the stage in some form or another when I was tired of things?"
Jack, who had not yet renounced his ambition for Sylvia's theatrical career, jumped at the opportunity of finding her an engagement, and when they all went back to London with the babies he rushed about the Strand to see what was going. Sylvia moved all her things from Mulberry Cottage to the Airdales' house, refusing once more Miss Dashwood's almost tearful offer to make over the cottage to her. She was sorry to withstand the old lady, who was very frail by now, but she knew that if she accepted, it would mean more dreaming about writing books and gambling at Curzon Street, and ultimately doing nothing until it was too late.
"I'm reaching the boring idle thirties. I'm twenty-seven," she told Jack and Olive. "I must sow a few more wild oats before my face is plowed with wrinkles to receive the respectable seeds of a flouris.h.i.+ng old age.
By the way, as demon-G.o.dmother I've placed one thousand pounds to the credit of Rose and Sylvius."
The parents protested, but Sylvia would take no denial.
"I've kept lots for myself," she a.s.sured them. As a matter of fact, she had nearly another 1,000 in the bank.
At the end of July Jack came in radiant to say that a piece with an English company was being sent over to New York the following month.
There was a small part for which the author required somebody whose personality seemed to recall Sylvia's. Would she read it? Sylvia said she would.
"The author was pleased, eh?" Jack asked, enthusiastically, when Sylvia came back from the trial.
"I don't really know. Whenever he tried to speak, the manager said, 'One moment, please'; it was like a boxing-match. However, as the important thing seemed to be that I should speak English with a French accent, I was engaged."
Sylvia could not help being amused at herself when she found that her first essay with legitimate drama was to be the exact converse of her first essay with the variety stage, dependent, as before, upon a kind of infirmity. Really, the only time she had been able to express herself naturally in public had been when she sang "The Raggle-taggle Gipsies"
with the Pink Pierrots, and that had been a failure. However, a tour in the States would give her a new glimpse of life, which at twenty-seven was the important consideration; and perhaps New York, more generous than other capitals, would give her life itself, or one of the only two things in life that mattered, success and love.
CHAPTER XIII
The play in which Sylvia was to appear in New York was called "A Honeymoon in Europe," and if it might be judged from the first few rehearsals, at which the performers had read their parts like half-witted board-school children, it was thin stuff. Still, it was not fair to pa.s.s a final opinion without the two American stars who were awaiting the English company in their native land.
The author, Mr. Marchmont Hearne, was a timid little man who between the business manager and producer looked and behaved very much like the Dormouse at the Mad Tea-party. The manager did not resemble the Hatter except in the broad brim of his top-hat, which in mid-Atlantic he reluctantly exchanged for a cloth cap. The company declared he was famous for his tact; certainly he managed to suppress the Dormouse at every point by shouting, "One minute, Mr. Stern, _please_," or, "Please, Mr. Burns, one minute," and apologizing at once so effusively for not calling him by his right name that the poor little Dormouse had no courage to contest the real point at issue, which had nothing to do with his name. When the manager had to exercise a finer tactfulness, as with obdurate actresses, he was wont to soften his remarks by adding that nothing "derogatory" had been intended; this seemed to mollify everybody, probably, Sylvia thought, because it was such a long word.
The Hatter's name was Charles Fitzherbert. The producer, Mr. Wade Fortescue, by the length of his ears, by the way in which his electrical hair propelled itself into a peak on either side of his head, and by his wild, artistic eye, was really rather like the March Hare outwardly; his behavior was not less like. Mr. Fortescue's att.i.tude toward "A Honeymoon in Europe" was one that Beethoven might have taken up on being invited to orchestrate "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay." The author did not go so far as to resent this att.i.tude, but on many occasions he was evidently pained by it, notwithstanding Mr. Fitzherbert's a.s.surances that Mr. Fortescue had intended nothing "derogatory."
Sylvia's part was that of a French chambermaid. The author had drawn it faithfully to his experience of Paris in the course of several week-ends. As his conception coincided with that of the general public in supposing a French chambermaid to be a cross between a street-walker and a tight-rope walker, it seemed probable that the part would be a success; although Mr. Fortescue wanted to mix the strain still further by introducing the blood of a comic ventriloquist.
"You must roll your 'r's' more, Miss Scarlett," he a.s.sured her. "That line will go for nothing as you said it."