Chapter 72
The rest of the performance was as much of a success as the beginning.
Perhaps the audience liked best Mrs. Gowndry and the woman who smuggled lace from Belgium into France. Sylvius and Rose laughed so much at the audience's laughter at Mrs. Gowndry that Sylvius announced in the ensuing lull that he wanted to go somewhere, a desire which was naturally indorsed by Rose. The audience was much amused, because it supposed that Sylvius's wish was a tribute to the profession of Mrs.
Gowndry's husband, and whatever faint doubts existed about the propriety of alluding in the Pierian Hall to a lavatory-attendant were dispersed.
Sylvia forgot altogether about the audience's tea when the curtain fell finally. It was difficult to think about anything with so many smiling people pressing round her on the stage. Several old friends came and reminded her of their existence, but there was no one who had quite such a radiant smile as Arthur Lonsdale.
"Lonnie! How nice of you to come!"
"I say, topping, I mean. What? I say, that's a most extraordinary back-cloth you've got. What on earth is it supposed to be? It reminds me of what you feel like when you're driving a car through a strange town after meeting a man you haven't seen for some time and who's just found out a good brand of fizz at the hotel where he's staying. I was afraid you'd get bitten in the back before you'd finished. I say, Mrs. Gowndry was devilish good. Some of the other lads and la.s.ses were a bit beyond me."
"And how's business?"
"Oh, very good. We've just put the neatest little ninety h. p.
torpedo-body two-seater on the market. I'll tootle you down to Brighton in it one Sunday morning. Upon my word, you'll scarcely have time to wrap yourself up before you'll have to unwrap yourself to shake hands with dear old Harry Burnly coming out to welcome you from the Britannia."
"Not married yet, Lonnie?"
"No, not yet. Braced myself up to do it the other day, dived in, and was seized with cramp at the deep end. She offered to be a sister to me and I sank like a stone. My mother's making rather a nuisance of herself about it. She keeps producing girls out of her m.u.f.f like a conjurer, whenever she comes to see me. And what girls! Heather mixture most of them, like Guggenheim's Twelfth of August. I shall come to it at last, I suppose. Mr. Arthur Lonsdale and his bride leaving St. Margaret's, Westminster, under an arch of spanners formed by grateful chauffeurs whom the brilliant and handsome young bride-groom has recommended to many t.i.tled readers of this paper. Well, so long, Sylvia; there's a delirious crowd of admirers waiting for you. Send me a line where you're living and we'll have a little dinner somewhere--"
Sylvia's success was not quite so huge as in the first intoxication of her friends' enthusiasm she had begun to fancy. However, it was unmistakably a success, and she was able to give two recitals a week through the autumn, with certainly the prospect of a good music-hall engagement for the following spring, if she cared to accept it. Most of the critics discovered that she was not as good as Yvette Guilbert. In view of Yvette Guilbert's genius, of which they were much more firmly convinced now than they would have been when Yvette Guilbert first appeared, this struck them as a fairly safe comparison; moreover, it gave their readers an impression that they understood French, which enhanced the literary value of their criticism. To strengthen this belief most of them were inclined to think that the French poems were the best part of Miss Sylvia Scarlett's performance. One or two of the latter definitely recalled some of Yvette Guilbert's early work, no doubt by the number of words they had not understood, because somebody had crackled a program or had shuffled his feet or had coughed. As for the English character studies, or, as some of them carried away by reminiscences of Yvette Guilbert into oblivion of their own language preferred to call them, _etudes_, they had a certain distinction, and in many cases betrayed signs of an almost meticulous observation, though at the same time, like everybody else doing anything at the present moment except in France, they did not have as much distinction or meticulousness as the work of forerunners in England or contemporaries abroad. Still, that was not to say that the work of Miss Sylvia Scarlett was not highly promising and of the greatest possible interest. The _timbre_ of her voice was specially worthy of notice and justified the italics in which it was printed. Finally, two critics, who were
If Sylvia fancied a lack of appreciation in the critics, all her friends were positive that they were wonderful notices for a beginner.
"Why, I think that's a splendid notice in the _Telegraph_," said Olive.
"I found it almost at once. Why, one often has to read right through the paper before one can find the notice."
"Do you mean to tell me that the most self-inebriated egotist on earth ever read right through the _Daily Telegraph_? I don't believe it. He'd have been drowned like Narcissus."
Arthur pressed for a decision about their marriage, now that Sylvia knew what she had so long wanted to know; but she was wrapped up in ideas for improving her performance and forbade Arthur to mention the subject until she raised it herself; for the present she was on with a new love twice a week. Indeed, they were fascinating to Sylvia, these audiences each with a definite personality of its own. She remembered how she had scoffed in old days at the slavish flattery of them by her fellow-actors and actresses; equally in the old days she had scoffed at love. She wished that she could feel toward Arthur as she felt now toward her audiences, which were as absorbing as children with their little clevernesses and precocities. The difference between what she was doing now and what she had done formerly when she sang French songs with an English accent was the difference between the realism of an old knotted towel that is a baby and an expensive doll that may be a baby but never ceases to be a doll. Formerly she had been a mechanical thing and had never given herself because she had possessed neither art nor truth, but merely craft and accuracy. She had thought that the personality was degraded by depending on the favor of an audience. All that old self-consciousness and false shame were gone. She and her audience communed through art as spirits may commune after death. In the absorption of studying the audience as a separate ent.i.ty, Sylvia forgot that it was made up of men and women. When she knew that any friends of hers were in front, they always remained entirely separate in her mind from the audience. Gradually, however, as the autumn advanced, several people from long ago re-entered her life and she began to lose that feeling of seclusion from the world and to realize the gradual setting up of barriers to her complete liberty of action. The first of these visitants was Miss Ashley, who in her peac.o.c.k-blue gown looked much as she had looked when Sylvia last saw her.
"I could not resist coming round to tell you how greatly I enjoyed your performance," she said. "I've been so sorry that you never came to see me all these years."
Sylvia felt embarra.s.sed, because she dreaded presently an allusion to her marriage with Philip, but Miss Ashley was too wise.
"How's Hornton House!" asked Sylvia, rather timidly. It was like inquiring after the near relation of an old friend who might have died.
"Just the same. Miss Primer is still with me. Miss Hossack now has a school of her own. Miss Pinck became very ill with gouty rheumatism and had to retire. I won't ask you about yourself; you told me so much from the stage. Now that we've been able to meet again, won't you come and visit your old school sometime?"
Sylvia hesitated.
"Please," Miss Ashley insisted. "I'm not inviting you out of politeness.
It would really give me pleasure. I have never ceased to think about you all these years. Well, I won't keep you, for I'm sure you must be tired.
Do come. Tell me, Sylvia. I should so like to bring the girls one afternoon. What would be a good afternoon to come?"
"You mean, when will there be nothing in the program that--"
"We poor schoolmistresses," said Miss Ashley, with a whimsical look of deprecation.
"Come on Sat.u.r.day fortnight, and afterward I'll go back with you all to Hornton House. I'd love that."
So it was arranged.
On Wednesday of the following week it happened that there was a particularly appreciative audience, and Sylvia became so much enamoured of the laughter that she excelled herself. It was an afternoon of perfect accord, and she traced the source of it to a group somewhere in the middle of the stalls, too far back for her to recognize its composition. After the performance a pack of visiting-cards was brought to the door of her dressing-room. She read: "Mrs. Ian Campbell, Mrs.
Ralph Dennison." Who on earth were they? "Mr. Leonard Worsley"--
Sylvia flung open the door, and there they all were, Mr. and Mrs.
Worsley, Gladys and Enid, two good-looking men in the background, two children in the foreground.
"Gladys! Enid!"
"Sylvia!"
"Oh, Sylvia, you were priceless! Oh, we enjoyed ourselves no end! You don't know my husband. Ian, come and bow nicely to the pretty lady,"
cried Gladys.
"Sylvia, it was simply ripping. We laughed and laughed. Ralph, come and be introduced, and this is Stumpy, my boy," Enid cried, simultaneously.
"Fancy, he's a grandfather," the daughters exclaimed, dragging Mr.
Worsley forward. He looked younger than ever.
"Hercules is at Oxford, or of course he'd have come, too. This is Proodles," said Gladys, pointing to the little girl.
"Sylvia, why did you desert us like that?" Mrs. Worsley reproachfully asked. "When are you coming down to stay with us at Arbor End? Of course the children are married...." She broke off with half a sigh.
"Oh, but we can all squash in," Gladys shouted.
"Oh, rather," Enid agreed. "The kids can sleep in the coal-scuttles. We sha'n't notice any difference."
"Dears, it's so wonderful to see you," Sylvia gasped. "But do tell me who you all are over again. I'm so muddled."
"I'm Mrs. Ian Campbell," Gladys explained. "And this is Ian. And this is Proodles, and at home there's Groggles, who's too small for anything except pantomimes. And that's Mrs. Ralph Dennison, and that's Ralph, and that's Stumpy, and at home Enid's got a girlie called Barbara.
Mother hates being a grandmother four times over, so she's called Aunt Victoria, and of course father's still one of the children. We've both been married seven years."
Nothing had so much brought home to Sylvia the flight of time as this meeting with Gladys and Enid, who when she last saw them were only sixteen. It was incredible. And they had not forgotten her; in what seemed now a century they had not forgotten her! Sylvia told them about Miss Ashley's visit and suggested that they should come and join the party of girls from Hornton House. It would be fun, would it not? Miss Primer was still at the school.
Gladys and Enid were delighted with the plan, and on the day fixed about twenty girls invaded Sylvia's dressing-room, shepherded by Miss Primer, who was still melting with tears for Rodrigo's death in the scene. Miss Ashley had brought the carriage to drive Sylvia back, but she insisted upon going in a motor-'bus with the others and was well rewarded by Miss Primer's ecstasies of apprehension. Sylvia wandered with Gladys and Enid down well-remembered corridors, in and out of bedrooms and cla.s.s-rooms; she listened to resolutions to send Prudence and Barbara to Hornton House in a few years. For Sylvia it was almost too poignant, the thought of these families growing up all round her, while she, after so many years, was still really as much alone as she had always been. The company of all these girls with their slim black legs, their pigtails and fluffy hair tied back with big bows, the absurdly exaggerated speech and the enlaced loves of girlhood--the acc.u.mulation of it all was scarcely to be borne.
When Sylvia visited Arbor End and talked once again to Mrs. Worsley, sitting at the foot of her bed, about the wonderful lives of that so closely self-contained family, the desolation of the future came visibly nearer; it seemed imperative at whatever cost to drive it back.
Shortly before Christmas a card was brought round to Sylvia--"Mrs.
Prescott-Merivale, Hardingham Hall, Hunts."
"Who is it?" she asked her maid.
"It's a lady, miss."
"Well of course I didn't suppose a ca.s.sowary had sent up his card.
What's she like?"