Chapter 70
"My scene," she said.
"What scene?"
"Arthur, don't be stupid. The set for my show."
"You're not going to let a youth like that paint a set for you? You're mad. What experience has he had?"
"None. That's exactly why I chose him. I'm providing the experience."
"Have you known him long?" Arthur demanded. "You can't have known him very long. He must have been at school when you left England."
"Don't be jealous," said Sylvia.
"Jealous? Of him? Huh!"
Mrs. Madden had changed more than Sylvia expected. Arthur had seemed so little altered that she was surprised to see his mother with white hair, for she could scarcely be fifty-five yet. The drawing-room of the little house in Dulwich recalled vividly the drawing-room of the house in Hampstead; nor had Mrs. Madden bought herself a new piano with the fifty pounds that was cabled back to her from Sulphurville. It suddenly occurred to Sylvia that this was the first time she had seen her since she ran away with Arthur, fifteen years ago, and she felt that she ought to apologize for that behavior now; but, after all, Mrs. Madden had run away herself once upon a time with her father's groom and could scarcely have been greatly astonished at Arthur's elopement.
"You have forgiven me for carrying him off from Hampstead?" she asked, with a smile.
Mrs. Madden laughed gently. "Yes, I was frightened at the time. But in the end it did Arthur good, I think. It's been such a pleasure to me to hear how successful he's been lately." She looked at Sylvia with an expression of marked sympathy.
After supper Mrs. Madden came up to Sylvia's room and, taking her hand, said, in her soft voice, "Arthur has told me all about you two."
Sylvia flushed and pulled her hand away. "He's no business to tell you anything about me," she said, hotly.
"You mustn't be angry, Sylvia. He made it quite clear that you hadn't quite made up your mind yet. Poor boy," she added, with a sigh.
Sylvia, when she understood that Arthur had not said anything about their past, had a strong desire to tell Mrs. Madden that she had lived with him for a year. She resented the way she had said "poor boy." She checked the impulse and a.s.sured her that if Arthur had spoken of their marriage he had had no right to do so. It really was most improbable that she should marry him; oh, but most improbable.
"You always spoke very severely about love when you were a little girl.
Do you remember? You must forgive a mother, but I must tell you that I believe Arthur's happiness depends upon your marrying him. He talks of nothing else and makes such plans for the future."
"He makes too many plans," Sylvia said, severely.
"Ah, there soon comes a time when one ceases to make plans," Mrs. Madden sighed. "One is reduced to expedients. But now that you're a woman, and I can easily believe that you're the clever woman Arthur says you are, for you gave every sign of it when you were young--now that you're a woman, I do hope you'll be a merciful woman. It's such a temptation--you must forgive my plain speaking--it's such a temptation to keep a man like Arthur hanging on. You must have noticed how young he is still--to all intents and purposes quite a boy; and believe me he has the same romantic adoration for you and your wonderfulness as he had when he was seventeen. Don't, I beg of you, treat such devotion too lightly."
Sylvia could not keep silent under this unjustified imputation of heartlessness, and broke out:
"I'm sure you'll admit that Arthur has given quite a wrong idea of me when I tell you that we lived together for a year; and you must remember that I've been married already and know what it means. Arthur has no right to complain of me."
"Oh, Sylvia, I'm sorry!" Mrs. Madden almost whispered. "Oh dear! how could Arthur do such a thing?"
"Because I made him, of course. Now you must forgive _me_ if I say something that hurts your feelings, but I must say it. When you ran away with your husband, you must have made him do it. You _must_ have done."
"Good gracious me!" Mrs. Madden exclaimed. "I
Sylvia was sorry for stirring up in Mrs. Madden's placid mind old storms. It was painful to see this faded gentlewoman in the little suburban bedroom, blus.h.i.+ng nervously at the unlady-like behavior of long ago. Presently Mrs. Madden pulled herself up and said, with a certain decision:
"Yes, but I did marry him."
"Yes, but you hadn't been married already. You hadn't knocked round half the globe for twenty-eight years. It's no good my pretending to be shocked at myself. I don't care a bit what anybody thinks about me, and, anyway, it's done now."
"Surely you'd be happier if you married Arthur after--after that," Mrs.
Madden suggested.
"But I'm not in the least unhappy. I can't say whether I shall marry Arthur until I've given my performance. I can't say what effect either success or failure will have on me. My whole mind is concentrated in the Pierian Hall next October."
"I'm afraid I cant understand this modern way of looking at things."
"But there's nothing modern about my point of view, Mrs. Madden.
There's nothing modern about the egotism of an artist. Arthur is as free as I am. He has his own career to think about. He does think about it a great deal. He's radically much more interested in that than in marrying me. The main point is that he's free at present. From the moment I promise to marry him and he accepts that promise he won't be free. Nor shall I. It wouldn't be fair on either of us to make that promise now, because I must know what October is going to bring forth."
"Well, I call it very modern. When I was young we looked at marriage as the most important event in a girl's life."
"But you didn't, dear Mrs. Madden. You, or rather your contemporaries, regarded marriage as a path to freedom--social freedom, that is. Your case was exceptional. You fell pa.s.sionately in love with a man beneath you, as the world counts it. You married him, and what was the result?
You were cut off by your relations as utterly as if you had become the concubine of a Hottentot."
"Oh, Sylvia dear, what an uncomfortable comparison!"
"Marriage to your contemporaries was a social observance. I'm not religious, but I regard marriage as so sacred that, because I've been divorced and because, so far as I know, my husband is still alive, I have something like religious qualms about marrying again. It takes a cynic to be an idealist; the sentimentalist gets left at the first fence. It's just because I'm fond of Arthur in a perfectly normal way when I'm not immersed in my ambition that I even contemplate the _notion_ of marrying him. I've got a perfectly normal wish to have children and a funny little house of my own. So far as I know at present, I should like Arthur to be the father of my children. But it's got to be an equal business. Personally I think that the Turks are wiser about women than we are; I think the majority of women are only fit for the harem and I'm not sure that the majority wouldn't be much happier under such conditions. The incurable vanity of man, however, has removed us from our seclusion to admire his antics, and it's too late to start shutting us up in a box now. Woman never thought of equality with man until he put the notion into her head."
"I think perhaps supper may be ready," Mrs. Madden said. "It all sounds very convincing as you speak, but I can't help feeling that you'd be happier if you wouldn't take everything to pieces to look at the works.
Things hardly ever go so well again afterward. Oh dear, I wish you hadn't lived together first."
"It breaks the ice of the wedding-cake, doesn't it?" said Sylvia.
"And I wish you wouldn't make such bitter remarks. You don't really mean what you say. I'm sure supper must be ready."
"Oh, but I do," Sylvia insisted, as they pa.s.sed out into the narrow little pa.s.sage and down the narrow stairs into the little dining-room.
Nevertheless, in Sylvia's mind there was a kindliness toward this little house, almost a tenderness, and far away at the back of her imagination was the vision of herself established in just such another little house.
"But even the Albert Memorial would look all right from the wrong end of a telescope," she said to herself.
One thing was brought home very vividly during her stay in Dulwich, which was the difference between what she had deceived herself into thinking was that first maternal affection she had felt for Arthur and the true maternal love of his mother. Whenever she had helped Arthur in any way, she had always been aware of enjoying the sensation of her indispensableness; it had been an emotion altogether different from this natural selfishness of the mother; it was really one that had always reflected a kind of self-conscious credit upon herself. Here in Dulwich, with this aspect of her affection for Arthur completely overshadowed, Sylvia was able to ask herself more directly if she loved him in the immemorial way of love; and though she could not arrive at a finally positive conclusion, she was strengthened in her resolve not to let him go. Arthur himself was more in love with her than he had ever been, and she thought that perhaps this was due to that sudden and disquieting withdrawal of herself; in the midst of possession he had been dispossessed, and until he could pierce her secret reasons he would inevitably remain deeply in love, even to the point of being jealous of a boy like Lucian Hope. Sylvia understood Arthur's having refused an engagement to tour as juvenile lead in a successful musical piece and his unwillingness to leave her alone in town; he was rewarded, too, for his action, because shortly afterward he obtained a good engagement in London to take the place of a singer who had retired from the cast of the Frivolity Theater. At that rate he would soon find himself at the Vanity Theater itself.
In June Sylvia went back to the Airdales', and soon afterward took rooms near them in West Kensington. It was impossible to continue indefinitely to pretend that Arthur and herself were mere theatrical acquaintances, and one day Olive asked Sylvia if she intended to marry him.
"What do you advise?" Sylvia asked. "There's a triumph, dearest Olive.
Have I ever asked your advice before?"
"I like him; Jack likes him, too, and says that he ought to get on fast now; but I don't know. Well, he's not the sort of man I expected you to marry."
"You've had an ideal for me all the time," Sylvia exclaimed. "And you've never told me."
"Oh no, I've never had anybody definite in my mind, but I think I should be able to say at once if the man you had chosen was the right one.
Don't ask me to describe him, because I couldn't do it. You used to tease me about marrying a curly-headed actor, but Arthur Madden seems to me much more of a curly-headed actor than Jack is."
"In fact, you thoroughly disapprove of poor Arthur?" Sylvia pressed.