Sylvia & Michael Part 10

Sylvia was vexed by her inability to bridge the gulf between herself and Ruby; it never occurred to her that the fault lay with any one but herself, and she felt humiliated by this failure that was so crushing to her will to love; it seemed absurd that in a few minutes she should have been able to get so much nearer the heart of that Russian soldier who accosted her in Kieff than to one of her own countrywomen.

"Perhaps I've learned how to receive good-will," she told herself, "but not yet how to offer it."

It was merely to amuse herself that Sylvia approached Odette for an introduction to her famous _femme du monde_. The suggestion, while it gratified Odette's sense of importance, caused her, nevertheless, several qualms about Sylvia's fitness for presentation to Madame Corvelis.

"_Elle a des idees tres-larges, tu sais, mais--_" Odette paused. She could not bring herself to believe that Madame Corvelis's broad-mindedness was broad enough to include Sylvia. "_Pourtant_, I will ask her quite frankly. I will say to her, '_Madame_, there is an _artiste_ who wishes to meet a _femme du monde_.' _Ses idees sont tellement larges que peut-etre elle sera enchantee de faire ta connaissance._ She has been so charming to me that if I make a _gaffe_ she must forgive me. _Enfin_, she came to take tea with me _chez Eliane_, and though of course I was careful not to introduce anybody else to her, she a.s.sured me afterward that she had enjoyed herself.

_Alors, nous verrons._"

Madame Corvelis was a little French Levantine who had married a Greek of Constantinople. Odette had made her acquaintance one afternoon by helping to unhitch her petticoats, which had managed to get caught up while she was alighting from a tram. Her grat.i.tude to Odette for rescuing her from such a blushful situation was profuse and had culminated in an invitation to take tea with her "in the wretched little house she and her husband temporarily occupied in Odessa," owing to their flight from Constantinople at the rumor of war.

"What was M. Corvelis?" Sylvia asked, when she and Odette were making their way to visit _madame_.

"Oh, he was a man of business. I believe he was secretary to some large company. You must not judge them by the house they live in here; they left everything behind in Constantinople. But don't be frightened of M.

Corvelis. I a.s.sure you that for a man in his position he is very simple."

"I'll try not to be very frightened," Sylvia promised.

"And _madame_ is charming. She has the perfect manners of a woman of forty accustomed to the best society. When I think that eight years ago--don't tell anybody else this--but eight years ago, _cherie_,"

Odette exclaimed, dramatically, "_je faisais le miche autour des boulevards exterieurs! Ma cherie_, when I think of my _mauvais debut_, I can hardly believe that I am on my way to take tea with a femme _du monde_. _Enfin, on arrive!_"

Odette flung proud glances all round her; Sylvia marveled at her satisfied achievement of a life's ambition, nor did she marvel less when she was presented to Madame Corvelis, surely the most insignificant piece of respectability that had ever adorned a cocotte's dream. It was pathetic to see the way in which the great, flaunting creature worshiped this plump _bourgeoise_ with her metallic Levantine accent: anxious lest Odette's deference should seem too effusive, Sylvia found herself affecting an equally exaggerated demeanor to keep her friend in countenance, though when she looked at their hostess she nearly laughed aloud, so much did she resemble a little squat idol receiving the complimentary adoration of some splendid savage.

"I am really ashamed to receive you in this miserable little house,"

Madame Corvelis protested. "_Mais que voulez-vous?_ Everything is in Constantinople. Carpets, mirrors, china, silver. We came away like beggars. _Mais que voulez-vous?_ My husband is so nervous. He feared the worst. But of course he's nervous. _Que voulez-vous?_ The manager of one of the largest companies in the East! Well, I say manager, but of course when a company is as large as his, one ought to say secretary. 'Let us go to Odessa, Alceste,' he begged. My name is Alceste, but I've no Greek blood myself. Oh no, my father and mother were both Parisian. _Enfin_, my father came under the glamour of the East and called me Alceste. _Que voulez-vous?_"

All the time that Madame Corvelis was talking, Odette was asking Sylvia in an unbroken whisper if she did not think that _madame_ was _charmante_, _aimable_, _gentille_, and every other gracious thing she could be.

"Have you ever been to Constantinople? Have you ever seen the Bosphorus?" Madame Corvelis went on, turning to Sylvia. "What, you've never seen the most enchanting city in the world? Oh, but you must! Not now, of course. The war! It robs us all of something. Don't, please don't think that Odessa resembles Constantinople."

Sylvia promised she would not.

"_Mais non_, Odessa is nothing. Look at this house! Ah, when I think of what we've left behind in Constantinople. But M. Corvelis insisted, and he was right. At any rate, we've brought a few clothes with us, though of course when we came to this dreadful place we never thought that we shouldn't be back home in a month. It was merely a precaution. But he was right to be nervous, you see: the Turks have declared war. When I think of the poor amba.s.sador. You never saw the amba.s.sador?"

Sylvia shook her head.

"I remember he trod on my toe--by accident, of course--oh yes, it was entirely an accident. But he was so apologetic. What manners! But then I always say, if you want to see good manners you must frequent good society. What a pity you never saw the amba.s.sador!"

"_N'est-ce pas que c'est merveilleux?_" Odette demanded.

"_Merveilleux_," Sylvia agreed, fervently.

"_Encore, madame!_" Odette begged. "_Vos histoires sont tellement interessantes._"

"Ah, well, one can't live all one's life in Constantinople without picking up a few stories."

"Adhesive as burs," Sylvia thought.

"But really the best story of all," Madame Corvelis went on, "is to find myself here in this miserable little house. That's a pretty bag you have," she added to Sylvia. "A very pretty bag. Ah, _mon Dieu_, when I think of the jewelry I've left behind."

At this moment M. Corvelis came in with the cunningly detached expression of a husband who has been hustled out of the room by his wife at the sound of a bell in order to convey an impression, when he has had time to change his clothes, that he habitually dresses _en grande tenue_. It was thus that Odette described her own preparatory toilet, and she was ravished by M. Corvelis's reciprocity, whispering to Sylvia her sense of the compliment to his humble visitors.

"_Homme chic! homme du monde! homme elegant! Mais ca se voit. Dis, t'es contente?_"

Sylvia smiled and nodded.

The mold of form who had drawn such an ecstasy of self-congratulatory admiration from Odette treated the two actresses as politely as his wife had done, and asked Sylvia the same questions. When his reduplication of the first catechism was practically complete, Odette gave the signal for departure, and in a cyclone of farewells and compliments they left.

"_Elle est vraiment une femme du monde?_" Odette demanded.

"_De pied en cap_," Sylvia replied.

"_Ton sac en or lui plaisait beaucoup_," said Odette, a little enviously. "Ah, when I think of myself eight years ago," she went on, "it seems _incroyable_. I should like to invite them both to tea again _chez Eliane_. If only the other girls were like you! And last time I put too much sugar in her tea! _Non, je n'ose pas!_ One sees the opportunity to raise oneself, but one does not dare grasp it. _C'est la vie_," she sighed.

Moved by the vision of herself thwarted from advancing any higher, Odette poured out to Sylvia the story of her life--a sad, squalid story, lit up here and there by the flashes of melodramatic events and culminating in the revelation of this paradise that was denied her.

"What would you have done if you had been invited to her house in Constantinople where the carpets and the mirrors are?"

"She would never have invited me there," Odette sighed. "Here she is not known. However broad her ideas, she could not defy public opinion at home. _a la guerre comme a la guerre! Enfin, je suis fille du peuple, mais on me regarde; c'est deja quelque chose._"

The _pension_ that to Odette appeared so mean after the glories of Madame Corvelis's little house had never been so welcome to Sylvia, and it was strange to think that any one could be more impressed by that pretentious little _bourgeoise_ with her figure like apples in a string bag than by Madame Eliane, who resembled a mysterious lady in the background of a picture by Watteau.

It was in meditation upon such queer contrasts that Sylvia pa.s.sed away her time in Odessa, thus and in pondering the more terrifying profundities of the human soul in the novels of Dostoievski and Tolstoi.

She was not sorry, however, when the time came to leave; she could never exclude from her imagination the hope of some amazing event immemorially predestinate that should decide the course of the years still to come.

It would have been difficult for her to explain or justify her conviction, but it would have been impossible to reject it, and it was with an oddly superst.i.tious misgiving that she found herself traveling north again, so strong had been her original impulse to go south. If anything had been wanting to confirm this belief, her arrival in Warsaw at the beginning of February would have been enough.

Sylvia left Kieff on the return visit without any new revelation of human vileness or human virtue, and reached Warsaw to find a mad populace streaming forth at the sound of the German guns. She had positively the sensation of meeting a great dark wave that drove her back, and her interview with the distracted Jew who managed the cabaret for which she had been engaged was like one of those scenes played in a front set of a provincial drama to the sounds of feverish preparation behind the cloth.

"Don't talk to me about songs," the manager cried. "Get out! Can't you hear the guns? Everything's closed. Oh, my G.o.d! My G.o.d! Where have I put it? I had it in my hands a moment ago. Get out, I say."

"Where to?" Sylvia demanded.

"Anywhere. Listen. Don't you think they sound a little nearer even in these few minutes? Oh, the Germans! They're too strong. What are you waiting for? Can't you understand me when I say that everything's closed?"

He wiped the perspiration from his big nose with a duster that left long black streaks in its wake.

"But where shall I go?" Sylvia persisted.

"Why don't you go to Bucharest? Why in the devil's name does any one want to be anywhere but in a neutral country in these times? Go to the Rumanian consul and get your pa.s.sport _vise_ for Bucharest, and for the love of G.o.d leave me in peace! Can't you see I'm busy this evening?"

Sylvia accepted the manager's suggestion and set out to find the consul: by this time it was too late to obtain a _visa_ that night, and she was forced to sleep in Warsaw--a grim experience that remained as a memory of distant guns booming through a penetrating reek of onions. In the morning the guns were quieter, and there was a rumor that for the third time the German thrust for Warsaw had been definitely foiled. Sylvia, however, could not get over the impression of the evening before, and what the manager had suggested to rid himself of an importunate woman she accepted as a clear indication of the direction she ought to follow.

In the waiting-room of the Rumanian Consulate there was an excessively fat girl who told Sylvia that she was an accompanist anxious, like herself, to get to Bucharest. Sylvia took the occasion to ask her if she thought there was a certainty of being engaged in Bucharest, and the fat girl was fairly encouraging. She told Sylvia that she was a Bohemian from Prague who had been warned by the Russian police that she would do well to seek another country.

"And will you get an engagement?" Sylvia asked.

"Oh, well, if I don't, I may as well starve in Bucharest as in Warsaw,"

she replied.

There seemed something ludicrous in the notion of any one so fat as this starving; the accompanist seemed to divine Sylvia's thoughts, for she laughed bitterly.