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

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СКАЧАТЬ Prince Paul isn't a soldier. You remember I told you that Prince George and Prince Paul, the two elder sons of the family, were both very handsome? Well, Prince George is in the army, but Prince Paul isn't. They both made love to me," she added, with a stifled giggle.

      Sylvia lay silent.

      "Are you shocked?"

      "Neither shocked nor surprised," said Sylvia, coldly. "The nobility of Russia seem to think of nothing else but making love."

      "Paul gave me a book once. I've got it here with me in my box. It's called The Memories of a German Singer. Would you like to read it?"

      "That book!" Sylvia exclaimed, scornfully. "Why, it's the filthiest book I ever read."

      "You are shocked, then," the governess whispered. "I thought you'd be more broad-minded. I sha'n't tell you now about Prince Paul. He makes love divinely. He said it was so thrilling to make love to somebody like me who looked so proper. I'm dreadfully afraid that when I get back I shall find he's gone to fight. It's awful to think how dull it will be without George or Paul. Haven't you had any interesting love-affairs?"

      "Good God!" exclaimed Sylvia, angrily. "Do you think there's anything to be proud of in having love-affairs like yours? Do you think there's anything fine in letting yourself be treated like a servant by a lascivious boy? You make me feel sick. How dare you assume that I should be interested in your—oh, I have no word to call it that can be even spoken in a whisper."

      "You are proper," the governess murmured, resentfully. "I thought girls on the stage were more broad-minded."

      "Is this muttering going to continue all night?" an angry voice demanded. Farther along the ward could be heard the sound of a bed rattling with indignation.

      The nun pushed back her screen, and the candle-light illumined Madame Benzer sitting up on her ample haunches.

      "One must not talk," said the nun, reproachfully. "One disturbs the patients. Besides, it is against the rules to talk after the lights are put out."

      "Well, please move me away from here," Sylvia asked, "because if mademoiselle stays here I shall have to talk."

      "I'm sure I'd much rather not stay in this bed," declared Miss Savage in an injured voice. "And I was only whispering. There was no noise until mademoiselle began to talk quite loudly."

      "Is this discussion worth while?" Sylvia asked, wearily.

      "Am I ever to be allowed to get to sleep?" Madame Benzer demanded.

      "I should like to sleep, too," protested the masseuse. "If I'm to get strong enough to resume work in November, I need all the sleep I can get. I'm not like a child that can sleep through anything."

      "I'm not asleep," cried Claudinette, shrilly. "And I'm very content that I'm not asleep. I adore to hear people talking in the night."

      The nun begged for general silence, and the ward was stilled. Sylvia lay awake in a rage, listening to Madame Benzer and the masseuse while they turned over and over with sighs and groans and much creaking of their beds. At last, however, all except herself fell asleep; their united breathing seemed like the breathing of a large and placid beast. Behind the screens in that dim golden mist the pages of the nun's breviary whispered now instead of Miss Savage; the lamp before the image of the Virgin sometimes flickered and cast upon the insipid face subtle shadows that gave humanity to what by daylight looked like a large pale-blue fondant.

      "Or should I say 'divinity'?" Sylvia asked herself.

      She lay on her side staring at the image, which was the conventional representation of Our Lady of Lourdes with eyes upraised and hands clasped to heaven. Contemplated thus, the tawdry figure really acquired a supplicatory grace, and in the night, the imagination, dwelling upon this form, began to identify itself with the attitude and to follow those upraised eyes toward an unearthly quest. Sylvia turned over on her other side with a perfectly conscious will not to be influenced externally by what she felt was an unworthy appeal. But when she had turned over she could not stay averted from the image; a restless curiosity to know if it was still upon its bracket seized her, and she turned back to her contemplation.

      "How ridiculous all those stories are of supernatural winkings and blinkings!" she thought. "Why, I could very easily imagine the most acrobatic behavior by that pathetic little blue figure. And yet it has expressed the aspirations of millions of wounded hearts."

      The thought was overwhelming: the imagination of what this figure reduplicated innumerably all over the earth had stood for descended upon Sylvia from the heart of the darkness about her, and she shuddered with awe.

      "If I scoff at that," she thought, "I scoff at human tears. And why shouldn't I scoff at human tears? Because I should be scoffing at my own tears. And why not at my own?"

      "You dare not," the darkness sighed.

      Sylvia crept out of bed and, bending over the governess, waked her with soft reassurances, as one wakes a child.

      "Forgive me," she whispered, "for the way I spoke. But, oh, do believe me when I tell you that love like that is terrible. I understand the dullness of your profession, and if you like I will take you with me on my gipsy life when we leave the hospital. You can amuse yourself with seeing the world; but if you want love, you must demand it with your head high. Every little governess who behaves like you creates another harlot."

      "Did you wake me up to insult me?" demanded Miss Savage.

      "No, my dear, you don't understand me. I'm not thinking of what you make yourself. You will pay for that. I'm thinking of some baby now at its mother's breast, for whose damnation you will be responsible by giving another proof to man of woman's weakness, by having kindled in him another lust."

      "I think you'd do better to bother about your own soul instead of mine," said Miss Savage. "Please let me go to sleep again. When I wanted to talk, you pretended to be shocked. I asked you if you were a Catholic, and you told me you were nothing. I particularly avoided hurting your susceptibilities. The least you can do is to be polite in return."

      Sylvia went back to bed, and, thinking over what the governess had said, decided that, after all, she was right: she ought to bother with her own soul first.

      Three weeks later Sylvia was told that she was now fit to leave the hospital. The nuns charged her very little for their care; but when she walked out of the door she had only about eighty rubles in the world. With rather a heavy heart she drove to Mère Gontran's pension.

CHAPTER II

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      THE pension was strangely silent when Sylvia returned to it; the panic of war had stripped it bare of guests. Although she had known that Carrier and the English acrobats were gone and had more or less made up her mind that most of the girls would also be gone, this complete abandonment was tristful. Mère Gontran's influence had always pervaded the pension; even before her illness Sylvia had been affected by that odd personality and had often been haunted by the unusualness of the whole place; but the disconcerting atmosphere had always been quickly and easily neutralized by the jolly mountebanks and Bohemians with whose point of view and jokes and noise she had been familiar all her life. Sylvia and the other guests had so often laughed together СКАЧАТЬ