Sylvia & Michael Part 1

Sylvia & Michael.

by Compton Mackenzie.

CHAPTER I

By the time that Sylvia reached Paris she no longer blamed anybody but herself for what had happened. Everything had come about through her own greed in trying simultaneously to s.n.a.t.c.h from life artistic success and domestic bliss: she had never made a serious attempt to choose between them, and now she had lost both; for she could not expect to run away like this and succeed elsewhere to the same degree or even in the same way as in London. No doubt all her friends would deplore the step she had taken and think it madness to ruin her career; but after so much advertis.e.m.e.nt of her marriage, after the way she had revealed her most intimate thoughts to Olive, after the confidence she had shown in Arthur's devotion, there was nothing else but to run away. Yet now that the engagement had been definitely broken she felt no bitterness toward Arthur: the surprising factor was that he should have waited so long.

Moreover, behind all her outraged pride, behind her regret for losing so much, deep in her mind burned a flickering intuition that she had really lost very little, and that out of this new adventure would spring a new self worthier to demand success, and more finely tempered to withstand life's onset. Even when she was sitting beneath the mulberry-tree in the first turmoil of the shock, she had felt a faint gladness that she was not going to live in Mulberry Cottage with Arthur. Already on this May morning of Paris with the chestnuts in their flowery prime she could fling behind her all the sneers and all the pity for her jilting; and though she had scarcely any money she was almost glad of her poverty, glad to be plunged once again into the vortex of existence with all the strength and all the buoyancy that time had given her. She thought of the months after she left Philip. This was a different Sylvia now, and not even yet come to what Sylvia might be. It was splendid to hear already the noise of waters round her, from which she should emerge stronger and more buoyant than she had ever imagined herself before.

Immediately upon her arrival--for with the little money she had there was not a day to be lost--Sylvia went in this mood to visit her old agent; like all parasites, he seemed to know in advance that there was little blood to suck. She told him briefly what she had been doing, let him suppose that there was a man in the case, and asked what work he could find for her.

The agent shook his head; without money it was difficult, nay, impossible to attempt in Paris anything like she had been doing in London. No doubt she had made a great success, but a success in London was no guaranty of a success in Paris, indeed rather the contrary. It was a pity she had not listened to him when she had the money to spend on a proper _reclame_.

"_Bref, il n'y a rien a faire, chere madame._"

There was surely the chance of an engagement for cabaret work? The agent looked at Sylvia; and she could have struck him for the way he was so evidently pondering her age and measuring it against her looks. In the end he decided that she was still attractive enough and he examined his books. She still sang, of course, and no doubt still enjoyed dancing?

Well, they wanted French girls in Petersburg at the Trocadero cabaret.

It would work out at four hundred and fifty francs a month, to which, of course, the commission on champagne would add considerably. She would have to remain on duty till 3 A.M., and the management reserved the right to dispense with her services if she was not a success.

"_Comme artiste ou comme grue?_" Sylvia demanded.

The agent laughed and shrugged his shoulders; he was afraid that there was nothing else remotely suitable. Sylvia signed the contract, and so little money was left in her purse that from Paris to Petersburg she traveled third cla.s.s, an unpleasant experience.

The change from the Pierian Hall to the place where she was now singing could scarcely have been greater. For an audience individual, quiet, attentive, was subst.i.tuted a noisy gathering of people that was not an audience at all. It had been difficult enough in old days to sing to parties drinking round a number of tables; but here to the noise of drinking was added the noise of eating, the clatter of plates, and the shouting of waiters. In a way Sylvia was glad, because she did not want anybody to listen to the song she was singing; she preferred to come on the small stage as impersonally as an instrument in the music of the restaurant orchestra, and retire to give way to another singer without the least attention being paid either to her exit or her successor's entrance.

Sylvia wished that the rest of the evening could have pa.s.sed away as impersonally; she found it terribly hard to endure again, after so long, the sensation of being for sale, of being pulled into a seat beside drunken officers, of being ogled by elderly German Jews, of being treated as an equal by waiters, of feeling upon her the eyes of the manager as he reckoned her net value in champagne. There were moments when she despaired of her ability to hold out and when she was on the verge of cabling to England for money to come home. But pride kept her back and sustained her; luckily she had to do nothing at present except talk in order to induce her patrons to buy champagne by the dozen. She knew that it could not last, that sooner or later she should acquire the general reputation of being no good for anything except to sit and chatter at a table and make a man spend money on wine for nothing, and that then she should have to go because n.o.body would invite her to his table. She was grateful that it was Russia and not America or France or England, where a quicker return for money spent would have been expected.

When Sylvia first arrived at Petersburg, she had stayed in solitary misery at a small German hotel that lacked even the merit of being clean. After she had been performing a week, one of her fellow-artistes recommended her to a _pension_ kept by an Englishwoman, the widow of a _chancelier_ at the French Emba.s.sy; it was a long way from the cabaret, beyond the racecourse, but there was the tram, and one would always find somebody to pay for the droshky home.

Sylvia visited the _pension_, which was a tumble-down house in a very large garden of the rankest vegetation, a queer embrangled place; but the first impression of the guests appealed to her, and she moved into it the same afternoon. Mere Gontran, the owner, was one of those expatriated women that lose their own nationality and acquire instead a new nationality compounded of their own, their husband's, and the country they inhabit. She was about fifty-five years old, nearly six feet in height, excessively lean, with a neck like a turkey's, a weather-beaten veinous complexion, very square shoulders, and thin, colorless hair done up in a kind of starfish at the back. Her eyes were very bright, of an intense blue, and she had a habit of wearing odd stockings, which, like her hair, were always coming down, chiefly because she used her garters to keep her sleeves above her elbows. One of the twin pa.s.sions of her life was animals; but she also had three sons, loutish young men who ate or smoked cigarettes all day and could hardly speak a word of English or French. Their mother, on the contrary, though she had come to Petersburg as a governess thirty-five years ago, and had lived there ever since, could speak hardly any Russian and only very bad French. Mere Gontran's animals were really more accomplished linguists than she, if it was true, as she a.s.serted, that a collie she possessed could say "good-by," "adieu," and "proschai." Sylvia suggested that the Russian salute had really been a sneeze, but Mere Gontran defied her to explain away the English or the French, and was angry at any doubts being cast on what she had heard with her own ears. In addition to Samuel, the talking collie, there was a senile bulldog called James, who on a pillow of his own slept beside Mere Gontran in her bed, which was in a hut two hundred yards away from the house, at the other end of the garden. High up round the walls were hung boxes for nine cats; into these they ascended by ladders, and none of them ever attempted to sleep anywhere but in his own box, an example to the rest of the _pension_. There were numerous other animals about the place, the most conspicuous of which were a pony and a goat that spent most of their time in the kitchen with the only servant, a stunted Tartar who went muttering about the house and slept in a cupboard under the stairs.

Mere Gontran's other great pa.s.sion was spiritualism; but Sylvia did not have much opportunity to test her truthfulness in this direction, because at first she was more interested in the guests at the _pension_, accepting Mere Gontran as one accepts a queer fact for future investigation at the right moment.

The outstanding boarder in Sylvia's eyes was a French aviator called Carrier, who had come to give lessons and exhibitions of his skill in Petersburg. He was a great bluff creature with a loud voice and what at first seemed a boastful manner, until one realized that his brag was a kind of game which he was playing with fate. Underneath it all there lay a deep melancholy and a sense of always being very near to death; but since he would have considered the least hint of this a disgraceful play of cowardice, he was careful to cover what he might do with what he had done, which was, even allowing for brag, a great deal. It was only when Sylvia took the trouble to make friends with him that he revealed to her his fierce ambition to finish with flying as soon as possible, and with the money he had made to buy a little farm in the country.

"_Tu sais, la terre vaut mieux que le ciel_," he told her.

He was superst.i.tious, and boasted loudly of his materialism; venturing upon what was still largely an unknown element, he relied upon mascots, while preserving a profound contempt for G.o.d.

"I've not ever seen him yet," he used to say, "though I've flown higher than anybody."

His chest of drawers was covered with small talismans, some the pledges of fortune given him by ladies, others picked up in significant surroundings or conditions of mind. He wore half a dozen rings, not one of which was worth fifty francs, but all of which were endowed with protective qualities. By the scapulars and medals he carried round his neck he should have been the most pietistic of men, but however sacred their inscriptions, they counted with him as merely more portable guaranties than the hideous little monkeys and mandarins that littered his room.

"When I've finished," he told Sylvia, "I shall throw all this away. When I'm digging in the good earth, my mascot will be my spade, nothing else, _je t'a.s.sure_."

Sylvia asked him why he had ever taken up flying.

"When I was small I adored my _becane_; afterward I adored my automobile. _On arrive comme ca._ Ah, if the fools hadn't invented biplanes, how happy I should be."

Then perhaps a few moments later he would find himself in the presence of an audience, and one heard him at his boasting:

"_Bigre!_ I am sorry for the man who cannot fly. One has not lived if one has not flown. The clouds! One would say a feather-bed beneath.

To-morrow I shall loop the loop at five thousand _metres_. One might say that all Petersburg will be regarding me."

There were two young acrobatic jugglers staying at the _pension_, who performed some extremely dangerous acts, but who performed them with such ease that they seemed like nothing, especially as the acrobats themselves were ladylike to a ludicrous degree.

"Oh, Bobbie, say, wouldn't it be fine to fly? Would you be terribly frightened? I should. Oh, I should be frightened."

"Don't you ever feel s-sick?" Bobbie asked the aviator.

For these two young men Carrier reserved his most hair-raising tales, which always ended in Willie's saying to Bobbie:

"Oh, Bobbie, I s-s-imply can't listen to any more. So now! Oh, it does make me feel so funny! Doesn't it you, Bobbie?"

Then arm in arm, giggling like two girls, they used to trip out of hearing, and Carrier would spit in bewilderment. Once he invited Bobbie to accompany him on a flight, at which Willie screamed, flung his arms round Bobbie's neck and created a scene. Yet that same evening they both balanced themselves with lamps on a high ladder, until the audience actually stopped eating for a moment and held its breath.

Sylvia found the long hours of the cabaret very fatiguing; even in old days she had never thought the life anything but the most cruel exaction made by the rich man for his pleasure. She was determined to survive the strain that was being put upon her, but she had moments of depression during which she saw herself going under with the female slaves round her. Her fatigue was increased by having to take the long tram-ride to the cabaret, when the smell of her fellow-pa.s.sengers was a torture; she could not afford, however, to pay the fare of a droshky twice in one day, and she did not always find somebody to pay for her drive home. The contract with the management stipulated that she should be released from her nightly task at three o'clock; but she was very often kept until five o'clock when the champagne was flowing and when it would have been criminal in the eyes of the management to break up a profitable party.

She found that the four hundred and fifty francs a month was not enough to keep her in Petersburg; it had sounded a reasonably large salary in Paris, but it barely paid the board at Mere Gontran's; she was, therefore, dependent for everything above this on the commission of about five francs she received on each bottle of champagne opened under her patronage. Fortunately it seemed to give pleasure to the wild frequenters of this cabaret when a bottle was knocked over on the floor; yet with every device it was not always possible to escape drinking too much.

One day at the beginning of July, Sylvia discussed the future with Carrier, and he advised her to surrender and return to England; he even offered to lend her the money for the fare. It was a hot day, and she had a bad headache; she called it a headache, but it was less local than that: her whole body ached beneath a weight of despair. Sylvia had taken Carrier into her confidence about her broken marriage and explained why it was impossible to return to England yet awhile; he contested all her arguments, and in the mood that she was in she gave way to him. They spoke in French, and arguments always seemed more incontestable in a language that refused to allow anything in the nature of a vague explanation; besides, her own body was responding against her will to the logic of surrender.

"Pride is all very well," said Carrier. "I am proud of being the greatest aviator of the moment, but if I fall and smash myself to pulp, what becomes of my pride? It's impossible for you to lead the life you are leading now without debasing yourself, and then where will your pride be? Listen to me. You have been at the cabaret very little over a month, and already it is telling upon you. It is very good that you are able even for so long to keep men at a distance, but are you keeping them at a distance? For me it is the same thing logically if you drink with men or--" He shrugged his shoulders. "You sell your freedom in either case. _N'est pas que j'ai raison, ma pet.i.te Sylvie?_ For me it would be a greater pride to return to England and walk with my head in the air and laugh at the world. Besides, you have a _je ne sais quoi_ that will prevent the world from laughing, but if you continue you will have nothing. When I fall and smash myself to pulp, I sha'n't care about the world's laughter. Nor will you."

Indeed he was right, Sylvia thought. That first impulse of defiance seemed already like a piece of petulance, the gesture of a spoiled child.

"And you will let me, as a good _copain_, lend you the money for your fare back?"

"No," Sylvia said. "I think I can just manage to earn it by going once more to-night to the cabaret. I've arranged to meet some count with an unp.r.o.nounceable name, who will probably open at least twenty-four bottles. I get my week's salary to-night also. I shall have, with what I have saved, enough to travel back as I came, third cla.s.s. It has been a thoroughly third-cla.s.s adventure, _mon vieux_. A thousand thanks for your kindness, but I must pay my pride the little solace of earning enough to get me home again."

Carrier shrugged his shoulders.

"It must be as you feel. That I understand. But it gives me much pleasure that you are going to be wise. I wish you _de la veine_ to-night."

He pressed upon her a mascot to charm fortune into attendance; it was a little red devil with his tongue sticking out.

Sylvia went down to the cabaret that evening with the firm intention of its being the last occasion; her headache had grown worse all the afternoon and the gloom upon her spirit was deepening. What a fool she had been to run away with so much a.s.surance of having the courage to endure this life, what a fool she had been! For the first time the thought of suicide presented itself to her as a practical solution of everything. In her present state she could perceive not one valid argument against it. Who had attacked existence with less caution than she, and who had deserved more from it in consequence? Had she once flinched? Had she once taken the easier path? Yes, there had been Arthur; that was the first time she had given way to indecision, and how swiftly the punishment had followed. Was it really worth while to seek now to repair that mistake? Was anything worth while? Except to go suddenly out of it all, pa.s.sing as abruptly from life to death as she had pa.s.sed from one society to another, one tour to another, one country to another. She would abide by to-night's decision; if fortune put it into the head of the count with the unp.r.o.nounceable name to buy enough bottles of champagne to make up what was still wanting to her fare, she would return to England, devote herself to her work, turn again to books, watch over her G.o.dchildren, and live at Mulberry Cottage. If, on the other hand, the fare should not be made up on this night, why, then she should kill herself. To-night should be a night of h.e.l.l. How her body was burning; how vile the people smelled in this tram; how wearisome was this garish sunset. She took from her velvet bag the red devil that Carrier had given her; in this feverish atmosphere it had a certain fitness, a portentousness even; one could almost believe it really was a tribute to fate.

The cabaret was crowded that evening; never before had there been such a hurly-burly of greed and thirst. Sylvia, by good luck, was feeling thirsty; for the dust from the tram had parched her mouth, and her tongue was like cork; so much the better, because if she was going to win that champagne she must be able herself to drink. The tintamarre of plates, knives, and forks; the chickerchack as of mult.i.tudinous apes; the blare and glare would have prevented the loudest soprano in the world from sounding more than the squeak of a slate-pencil; and Sylvia sang with gestures alone, forming with her lips mute words. "I'm paid for my body, not for my voice; so let my body play the antic," she muttered, angrily.

When her turn was over, Sylvia came down and joined the two young Russians, who were waiting for her with another girl at a table on which already the bottles of champagne were standing like giant p.a.w.ns.

"_Ils ont la cuite_," the girl whispered to Sylvia. "_Alors, il faut briffer, cherie; autrement ils seront trop soules._"

This seemed good advice, because if their hosts were too drunk too soon they might get tired of the entertainment; and Sylvia proposed an adjournment to eat, though she had little enough appet.i.te. As a matter of fact, the men wanted to drink vodka when supper was proposed, and not merely to drink it themselves, but to make Sylvia and the other girl keep them company gla.s.s by gla.s.s. In Sylvia's condition to drink vodka would have been to drink liquid fire, and she managed to plead thirst with such effect that the count benevolently ordered twenty-four bottles of champagne to be brought immediately for her to quench it. The other girl was full of admiration for Sylvia's strategy; if the worst came to the worst, they would have earned seventy-five francs each and could boast of a successful evening. Sylvia, however, wanted a hundred and fifty francs for herself, and invoking the little red devil she showed a way of breaking a bottle in half by filling it with hot water, saturating a string in methylated spirits, tying the string round the bottle, setting light to it, and afterward tapping the bottle gently with a knife until it broke. The count was delighted with this trick, but thought, as Sylvia hoped he would think, that the trick would be much better if practised on an unopened bottle of champagne. In this way twenty-six bottles were broken in childish rage by the count, because the trick only worked with the help of hot water. He was by now in a state of drunken obstinacy, and, being determined to show the superiority of the human mind over matter, he ordered twenty-four more bottles of champagne, as a Roman emperor might have ordered two dozen slaves to test an empirical method of execution. By a fluke he managed to succeed with the twenty-fourth bottle, and having by now gathered round him an audience, he challenged the onlookers to repeat the trick.

Other women were anxious for their hosts to excel, particularly with such profit to themselves; soon at every table in the cabaret champagne-bottles were being cracked like eggs. The count was afraid that there might not be enough wine left to carry them through the evening, and ordered another two dozen bottles to be held in reserve for his table.

Sylvia, though she was feeling horribly ill by now, was nevertheless at peace, for she had earned her fare back to England. Unluckily, she could not quit the table and go home, because, unless she waited until three, she would not be paid her commission on the champagne. She felt herself receding from the noise of breaking gla.s.s all round her, and thought she was going to faint, but with an effort she gathered the noise round her again and tried to believe that the room still existed. She seemed to be catching hold of the great chandelier that hung from the middle of the ceiling, and fancied that it was only her will and courage to maintain her hold that was keeping the cabaret and everybody in it from destruction.

"_Tu es malade, cherie?_" the other girl was asking.