Sylvia & Michael Part 14

The priest shook his head, and there was a smile at the back of his eyes.

"If you fail?"

"I sha'n't fail."

"Is G.o.d already put on one side?"

"I shall pray," said Sylvia.

"Yes, I think that is almost better than relying too much upon the human will."

Two things struck Sylvia when she had left the church and was walking back to the hotel: the first was that the priest had really said very little in response to that long outpouring of her history, and the second was that here in this street it did not seem nearly as easy to solve the problem of Queenie's soul as it had seemed in the church. Yet, when she came to think over the priest's words, she could not imagine how he could have spoken differently.

"I suppose I expected to be congratulated as one is congratulated upon a successful performance," she said to herself. "That's the worst of a histrionic career like mine: one can't get rid of the footlights even in the confessional. As a matter of fact, I ought to be grateful that he accepted the spirit of my confession without haggling over the form, as from his point of view he might have done most justifiably. Perhaps he was tired and didn't want to start an argument. And yet no, I don't think it was that. He came down like a hammer on the main objection to me--my pride. He was really wonderfully unecclesiastical. It's a funny thing, but I seem to be much less spiritually exalted than I ought to be after such a reconciliation. I seem to have lost for the moment that first fine careless rapture of conversion. Does that mean that the whole business was an emotional blunder and that I'm feeling disappointed? No, I don't feel disappointed: I feel practical. I suppose my friend the priest wouldn't accept the comparison, but it reminds me of how I felt when, after I had first conceived the idea of my Improvisations, I had to set about doing them. Everything has its drudgery: love produces household cares; art, endless work; religion, religious duties. The moment of attraction, the moment of inspiration, the moment of conversion--if they could only endure! Perhaps heaven is the infinite prolongation of such moments.

"And then there's Queenie. It's not much use my leading her to the font as one leads a horse to water, because, though I should regard it as Infant Baptism, the priest would not. Yet I don't see why he shouldn't instruct her like a child. Poor priest! He could hardly have expected such problems as myself and Queenie when he was so anxious to get rid of that old woman who was pestering him. I think I won't bother about Queenie for a bit, until I have practised a little subordination of myself first. She's got to acquire a soul of her own; it's no use my presenting her with a piece of mine."

Queenie had been back from the hairdresser's for a long time when Sylvia reached the hotel, and was wondering what had become of her friend.

"You've been out alone," she said, reproachfully. "Your headache is better, I think. Yes?"

"My headache?" Sylvia repeated. "Yes, it's much better. I've been indulging in spiritual aspirin."

"I'm glad it's better, because it is our first night at the Pet.i.t Maxim to-night. I wonder if I will be having much applause."

"So it is," Sylvia said. "I'd forgotten my approaching triumph with the waiters; it's not likely that there'll be any audience when I appear. At nine P.M. sharp the program of the Pet.i.t Maxim opened with Miss Sylvia Scarlett's three songs. The gifted young lady--I've reached the age when it's a greater compliment to be called young than beautiful--played and sang with much _verve_. Several waiters ceased from dusting the empty tables to listen, and at the close her exit was hailed by a loud flourish of _serviettes_. The solitary visitor who clapped his hands explained afterward that he was trying to secure some attention to himself, and that thirst, not enthusiasm, had dictated his action."

"How you were always going on, Sylvia," said Queenie. "n.o.body was ever going to understand you when you talk so quick as that."

"Miss Sylvia Scarlett's first song was an old English ballad set to the music of Handel's 'Dead March.'"

"If we were ever going to have any dinner, we must go and eat now,"

Queenie interrupted.

"Yes, I don't want to miss the sunset with my last song."

"But what does it matter, if you are paid to sing, if you sing first or last?"

"The brightest star, my dear, cannot shine by daylight."

"But you are stupid, Sylvia. It is no more daylight at nine o'clock."

"Yes, I am very stupid," Sylvia agreed, and, catching hold of Queenie's arms, she looked deep into her eyes. "Believe me, you little fairy thing, that I should be much more angry if you were put first on a program than because I am."

The cabaret Pet.i.t Maxim aimed at expressing in miniature the essence of all the best cabarets in Paris, just as Bucharest aimed at expressing in miniature the essence of Paris. The result, though pleasant and comfortable enough, was in either case as little like Paris as a scene from one of its own light operas is like Vienna. What Bucharest and the Pet.i.t Maxim did both manage to effect, however, was an excellent resemblance to one of those light operas. Sylvia in the course of her wanderings had once cla.s.sified the capitals she had visited as metropolitan, cosmopolitan, and neapolitan. Bucharest belonged very definitely to the last group; it stood up like a substantially built exhibition in the middle of a ring of industrial suburbs which by their real squalor heightened the illusion of its unreality. The cupolas of shining bronze and the tiled domes shimmering in the sun like peac.o.c.ks'

tails dazzled the onlooker with an illusion of barbaric splendor; but the city never escaped from the self-consciousness of an exhibition, which was heightened by the pale blue and silver uniforms of the officers, the splendid equipages for hire, and the policemen dressed in chocolate like _commissionnaires_, and accentuated by the inhabitants'

pride in the expensiveness and "naughtiness" of their side-shows, of which not the least expensive and "naughty" were the hotels. One might conceive the promoter of the exhibition taking one aside and asking if one did not think he had been successful in giving Paris to the Balkans, and one might conceive his disappointment on being told that, magnificent though it all looked, it was no more Paris than Offenbach was Moliere.

At the time when Sylvia visited Bucharest the sense of being one of the chorus in a light opera was intensified by the dramatic plot that was provided by the European war. Factions always grew more picturesque with every mile away from England, the mother of parliaments, where they ceased to be picturesque three hundred years ago when the chief Punchinello's head tumbled into the basket at Whitehall. The comedy of kingship had been prolonged for another century and a half in France, and in France they were a century and a half nearer to the picturesque and already two or three hundred miles away from England. In Italy the picturesqueness grew still more striking with such anachronisms as the Camorra and the Mafia. But it was not until the Balkans that factions could be said to be vital in the good old way. Serbia had shown not so long ago what could still be done with a thoroughly theatrical regal murder; and now here was Rumania jigging to the manipulation of the French faction and the German faction, with just enough possibility of all the plots and counterplots ending seriously by plunging the country into war on one side or the other to give a background of real drama to the operatic form.

At the Pet.i.t Maxim the Montagues and Capulets came to blows nightly.

Everything here was either Ententophile or Germanophile: there were pro-German waiters, pro-German tables, pro-German tunes, for the benefit of the Germans and pro-Germans who occupied one half of the cabaret and applauded the Austrian performers. Equally there was the Ententist complement. If the first violin was pro-French and played sharp for an Austrian singer, the cornet was pro-German ready to break time to disconcert a French dancer. On the whole, as was natural in what is called "a center of amus.e.m.e.nt," the pro-French element predominated, and, though it was possible to sing the "_Ma.r.s.eillaise_" at the cost of a few broken gla.s.ses, the solitary occasion when "_Deutschland uber Alles_" was attempted ended in several broken heads, a smashed chandelier, and six weeks in bed for an Austrian contralto whose face was scratched with a comb by a French _artiste_ under the influence of ether and patriotism.

Nor was this atmosphere of plot and faction confined to general demonstrations of friendliness or hostility. Bucharest was too small a city to allow deep ramifications to either party; the gossip of the court on the day before became the gossip of the cabaret on the evening after; scarcely one successful conveyance of war material from Germany to Turkey but was openly discussed at the Pet.i.t Maxim. Intrigues and flirtations with the great powers increased the self-esteem of Rumania, who took on the air of a coquettish school-girl that finds herself surrounded by the admiration of half a dozen elderly rakes. Her dowry and good looks seemed both so secure that any little looseness of behavior would always be overlooked by the man she chose to marry in the end.

Sylvia could not help teasing some of the young officers that frequented the Pet.i.t Maxim. They changed their exquisite operatic uniforms so many times in the day: they accepted with such sublime effrontery the salute of the goose step from a squad of magnificent peasants dressed up as soldiers; they painted and powdered their faces, wore pink velvet bands round their _kepis_ under nodding _panaches_; and not one but could display upon his breast the ribbon of the bloodless campaign against Bulgaria of two years before. When they came jangling into the cabaret, one felt that the destinies of Europe were attached to their sword-belts, as comfort hangs upon the tinkling of a housekeeper's _chatelaine_.

"If Italy declares war, we shall declare war; for we are more Roman than they are. If Italy remains neutral, we shall remain neutral, because the Latin races must hold together," the patrons of the Entente avowed.

"Italy will not declare war, and we shall have to fight the Russians. We won Plevna for them and lost Bessarabia as a reward. As soon as Austria realizes that she must give us Transylvania we shall declare war," said the patrons of the Central Powers.

"We shall remain neutral. Our neutrality is precious to both sides,"

murmured a third set.

And, after all, Sylvia thought, the last was probably the wisest view, for it would be a shame to spoil the pretty uniforms of the officers and a crime to maim the bodies of the n.o.bler peasants they commanded.

In such an atmosphere Sylvia had to postpone any solution of the spiritual side of Queenie's problem and concentrate upon keeping her out of immediate mischief. The manager of the Pet.i.t Maxim had judged the tastes of his clients accurately, and Queenie had not been dancing at the cabaret for a fortnight when one read on the programs, QUEENIE, LA JEUNE DANSEUSE ANGLAISE ET L'ENFANT GaTeE DE BUCURESTI. Chocolates and flowers were showered upon her, and her faintest smile would uncork a bottle of champagne. But every morning at three o'clock, when the cabaret closed, Sylvia s.n.a.t.c.hed her away from all the suitors and took her home as quickly as possible to their hotel. She used to dread nightly the arrival of the moment when Queenie would refuse to go with her, but the moment did not come; and the child never once grumbled at Sylvia's sigh of relief to find themselves back in their own bedroom. In order as much as possible to distract her from the importunities of hopeful lovers, Sylvia would always aim at surrounding herself and Queenie with the political schemers, so that the evening might pa.s.s away in speculation upon the future of the war and the imminence of Rumanian intervention. She impressed upon Queenie the necessity of seeming interested in the fate of the country of which she was supposed to be a native. They were the only English girls in the cabaret; in fact, the only English actresses apparently anywhere in Bucharest. Sylvia, finding that man is much more of a political animal in the Balkans than elsewhere, took advantage of the general curiosity about England's personality to get as many bottles of champagne opened for information from her own lips as out of admiration and desire for Queenie's.

From general political discussions it was a short way to the more intimate discussions of faction's intrigue; and Sylvia became an expert on the ways and means of the swarm of German agents who corrupted Bucharest as blue-bottles taint fresh meat. She sometimes wondered if she ought not to convey some of the knowledge thus acquired to the British Legation; but she supposed, on second thoughts, that she was unlikely to know anything that the authorities therein did not already know much better, and, being averse from seeming to put herself forward for personal advantage, she did not move in the matter.

One of the chief frequenters of their company was a young lieutenant of the cavalry, called Philidor, with whom Sylvia made friends. He was an enthusiast for the cause of the Entente, and she learned from him a great deal about the point of view of a Balkan state, so that when she had known him for a time she was able to judge both Rumania as a whole and the individual extravagances and vanities of Rumanians more generously.

"I don't think you quite understand," he once said to her, "the fearful responsibility that will rest upon the Balkan statesman who decides the policy of his country in this crisis. Whatever happens, England will remain England, France will remain France, Germany will remain Germany; but in Rumania, although our sympathies are with you, our geographical position makes us the natural allies of the Germans. Suppose we march with you and something goes wrong. Nothing can prevent us from being Germanized for the rest of our history. You mustn't pay too much attention to the talk you hear about the great power of Rumania and the influence we shall have upon the course of the war. Such talk springs from a half-expressed nervousness at the position in which we find ourselves. We are trying to bolster ourselves up with the sense of our own importance in the hope that we shall have the wisdom to direct our policy rightly. We are not a great power; we are a little power; and our only chance of becoming a great power would be that Austria should break up, that Russia should crumble away, and that the whole vile country of Bulgaria should be obliterated from the surface of the earth. It is certain that Bulgaria will march with Germany; nothing can stop that except the defeat of Germany this year. Possibly Italy may come in on your side this spring, but tied as we are to her by blood, we are separated from her by miles of alien populations, and Italy cannot help us. Greece is in the same plight as we are--not quite, perhaps, because she can depend for succor upon the sea: we can't. Ah, if you could only open the Dardanelles! If you only had a statesman to see that there lies the key to certain victory in this war. But statesmen no longer exist among you great powers. You've become too big for statesmen and can only produce politicians. The only statesmen in Europe nowadays are to be found in the Balkans, because since every man here is a politician it requires a statesman to rise above the ruck. Paradox though it may seem, statesmen create states; they are not created by them. We have all our history before us in the Balkans, if we can only survive being swallowed up in this cataclysm; but I doubt if we can. To you this country of mine is like a comic opera, but to me, one of the players, it is as tragic as 'Pagliacci.'

"You are right in a way to mock at our aristocracy, though much of that aristocracy is not truly Rumanian, but b.a.s.t.a.r.d Greek; yet we have such a wonderful peasantry, and an idealist like myself dreads the effect of this war. All our plans of emanc.i.p.ation, all our schemes for destroying the power of the great landowners," and in a whisper he added, "all our hopes of a republic are doomed to failure. I tell you, my dear, it's tragic opera, not comic opera."

"But if you are a republican, why do you wear the uniform of a crack cavalry regiment?" Sylvia asked.

"Oh, I've thought that out," Philidor replied. "I belong to a good family. If I proclaimed my opinions openly, I should merely be put on one side. Aristocratic rule is more powerful in Rumania than anywhere in Europe except Prussia. The aristocrats have literally all the capital of the country in their hands; our peasants are serfs. As an avowed republican I could do nothing to spread the opinions that I believe to be the salvation of my country and the preservation of her true independence; we are a young state--not a state at all, in fact, but a limited liability company with a director imported from the chief European firm of king-exporters--and we have still to realize our soul as by fire."

"The soul of a country," Sylvia murmured. "It's only the aggregate of the human souls that make it, but each soul could be the microcosm of the universe."

"True, true," Philidor agreed. "And the soul of Rumania is the soul of a girl who's just out, or of a boy in his first year at college. Hence all the prettiness and all the complacent naughtiness and all the imitation of older and more worldly people and all the tyranny and contempt for the rights of the poor, the want of consideration for servants really.

Though I must be young like the rest and dress myself up and lead the life of my friends, I am always hoping to influence them gradually, very gradually. Perhaps if I were truly a great soul I should fling over all this pretense; but I know my own limitations, and all I pray is that when the man arises who is worthy to lead Rumania toward liberty and justice I shall have the wit to recognize him and the courage to follow his lead."

"But you said just now," Sylvia reminded him, "that all the European statesmen were to be found in the Balkans."

"I still say that, but our statesmen--we have only two--dare not in the presence of this war think of anything except the safety of the country. Republicanism would be of little use to a Rumania absorbed either into the Dual Monarchy or into the Czardom of Russia or ravaged by the h.e.l.lish Bulgarians. I tell you that we see precipices before our steps whichever way we turn for the path; but because we are young we dress ourselves up and gamble and sing and dance and swagger and boast; we are young, my dear girl--very, very young, perhaps not old enough for our death to be anything but pathetic."

"You're in a very pessimistic mood to-night," Sylvia said.

"Who could be anything but gloomy when he looks round a room like this?

A crowd of French, Rumanian, and Austrian cocottes dancing to 'Tipperary' in this infernal tinkling din--forgive my frankness, but you know I don't include _you_ in the _galere_--while over there I see a cousin of my own, a member of one of our greatest families, haggling with a dirty German agent over the price of sending another six aeroplanes to Turkey disguised as agricultural implements; and over there I see a man, who I had always hoped was an honest editor, selling his pen to the fat little German baron that will subst.i.tute poison for ink and bank-notes for honest opinions; and over there are three brother officers with three girls on their knees singing the words of 'Tipperary' with as much intelligence as apes, while they brag to their companions of how in six weeks they will be marching to save France."

"They don't miss much by not understanding the words," Sylvia said, with a smile.

"I don't understand how a woman like you can tolerate or endure this life," Philidor exclaimed, fanatically. "Why don't you take that pretty little sister of yours out of it and back to England? I don't understand how you can stay here with your country at war."

"That's too long a story to tell you now," Sylvia said. "But between ourselves she's not really my sister."