Sylvia & Michael: The later adventures of Sylvia Scarlett. Compton Mackenzie

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СКАЧАТЬ eccentricity, at the tumble-down house, at the tangled garden, at the muttering handmaid, and at the animals in the kitchen, that through their careless merriment the pension had come to be no more than one of the incidents of the career they followed, something to talk of when they swirled on and lodged in another corner of the earth's surface. There would be no city in Europe at which in some cabaret one would not find a copain with whom to laugh over the remembrance of Mère Gontran's talking collie. But how many of these gay mountebanks dispersed by the panic of war would not have been affected by the Pension Gontran, had they returned to it like this, alone?

      The garden, with its rank autumnal growth, was more like a jungle than ever; the unpopulous house reasserted its very self, and there was not a crack in the stucco nor a broken tile nor a warped plank that did not now maintain a haunting significance. The Tartar servant with her unintelligible mutterings, her head and face muffled in a stained green scarf, her bent form, her feet in pattens clapping like hoofs, the animals that sniffed at her heels, and her sleeping-cupboard beneath the stairs heaped with faded rags, seemed an incarnation of the house's reality. For a moment, when Sylvia was making signs to her that she should fetch her mistress from where, buried in docks and nettles, she was performing one of her queer, solitary operations of horticulture, she was inclined to turn round and search anywhere else in Petrograd for a lodging rather than expose herself to the nighttime here. But the consciousness of her uncertain position soon scattered such fancies, and she decided that the worst of them would not be so unpleasant as to find herself at the mercy of the material horrors of a fourth-rate hotel while she was waiting for vigor to resume work: at any rate, Mère Gontran was kind-hearted and English. As Sylvia reached this conclusion, the mistress of the pension, followed by two cats, a hen, two pigeons, a goat, and a dog, came to greet her; putting the table-fork with which she had been gardening into the pocket of her overall, she warmly embraced Sylvia, which was like being flicked on the cheek by a bramble when driving.

      "Why, Sylvia, I am glad to see you again. Everybody's gone. Everything's closed. No more vodka allowed to be sold in public, though, of course, it can always be got. The war's upon us, and I'm sowing turnips under Jupiter in case we starve. All your things are quite safe. Your room hasn't been touched since you left it. I'll tell Anna to make your bed."

      Anna was not the maid-servant's real name; but one of Mère Gontran's peculiarities was, that though she could provide an individual name for every bird or beast in the place without using the same one twice, all her servants had to be called Anna in memory of her first cook of thirty years ago—a repetition that could hardly have been due to sentiment, because the first Anna, when she ran away to be married, took with her as much of her mistress's plate as she could carry.

      "Hasn't my bed been made all these weeks?" Sylvia asked, with a smile.

      "Why should it have been made?" Mère Gontran replied. "There hasn't been a single new-comer since you were taken off in the ambulance."

      Sylvia asked if the drunken officer had done much damage.

      "Oh no; it was quite easy to extinguish the fire. He burned half the tool-shed and frightened the guinea-pigs; that was all. I was quite relieved when war was declared, because otherwise the police would probably have taken away my license; but there again, if they had taken it away, it wouldn't have mattered much, for I haven't had any lodgers since; but there again I've been able to use Carrier's room for the owls, and they're much happier in a nice room than they were nailed up to the side of the house in a packing-case. If you hear them hooting in the night, don't be frightened: you must remember that owls, being night birds, can't be expected to keep quiet in the night, and when they hoot it shows they're feeling at home."

      "There's nothing in the acrobats' room?" Sylvia asked, anxiously; the partition between her and them had been thin.

      "Such a reek of scent," Mère Gontran exclaimed. "Phewff! Benjamin went in after they'd gone, and he regularly shuddered. Cats are very sensitive to perfumes, as no doubt you've observed."

      "Mère Gontran," Sylvia began. "I want to explain my position."

      "Don't do that," she interrupted. "Wait till the evening and you shall throw the cards. What's the good of anticipating trouble? If the cards are unfavorable to any immediate enterprise, settle down and help me with the garden until they're favorable again. When favorable, make the journey."

      Sylvia, however, insisted on anticipating the opinion of the cards and explained to Mère Gontran that it would be impossible for her to attempt any work for at least another six weeks on account of her weakness, and also because of her short hair, which, though it was growing rapidly with close, chestnut curls, was still remarkably short.

      Mère Gontran asked what day it had been cut, and Sylvia said she did not know, because it had been cut when she was unconscious.

      "Depend upon it they cut it when the moon was waning."

      "I hope not," said Sylvia.

      "I hope not, too. I sincerely hope not," said Mère Gontran, fervently.

      "It would be serious?" Sylvia suggested.

      "Anything might happen. Anything!"

      Mère Gontran's vivid blue eyes fixed a far horizon lowering with misfortune, and Sylvia took the opportunity of her temporary abstraction to go on with the tale of present woes.

      "Money?" Mère Gontran exclaimed. "Put it in your pocket. You were overcharged all the weeks you were with me when you were well. Deducting overcharges, I can give you six weeks' board and lodging now."

      Sylvia protested, but she would take no denial.

      "At any rate," said Sylvia, finally, "I'll avail myself of your goodness until I can communicate with people in England and get some money sent out to me."

      "Useless to communicate with anybody anywhere," said Mère Gontran. "No posts. No telegraphs. Everything stopped by the war. And that's where modern inventions have brought us. If you want to communicate with your friends in England, you'll have to communicate through the spirits."

      "Isn't that rather an uncertain method, too?" Sylvia asked.

      "Everything's uncertain," Mère Gontran proclaimed, triumphantly. "Life's uncertain. Death's uncertain. But never mind, we'll talk to Gontran about it to-night. I was talking to him last night, and I told him to be ready for another communication to-night. Now it's time to eat."

      In old days at the Pension Gontran the meals had always been irregular, though a dozen clamorous and hungry boarders had by the force of their united wills evoked the semblance of a set repast. With the departure of her guests, Mère Gontran had copied her animals in eating whenever inclination and opportunity coincided. One method of satisfying herself was to sit down at the kitchen table and rattle an empty plate at the servant, who would either grunt and shake her head (in which case Mère Gontran would produce biscuits from the pocket of her apron) or would empty some of the contents of a saucepan into the empty plate. On one occasion when they visited the kitchen there was something to eat, a fact which was appreciated not only by the dogs and cats, but also by Mère Gontran's three sons, who lounged in and sat down in a corner, talking to one another in Russian.

      "They don't know what to do," said their mother. "It hasn't been decided yet whether they're French or Russian. They went to the Embassy to see about going to France, but they were told that they were Russian; and when they went to the military authorities here, they were told that they were French. The work they were doing has stopped, and they've nothing to do except smoke cigarettes and borrow money from me for their trams. I spoke to СКАЧАТЬ