The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett Part 10

Mabel expressed an opinion that the rival favorite was a vulgar person; luckily, before Mr. Iredale arrived the quarrel had been adjusted, and when he sat down on the divan and received a cup of coffee from Sylvia, whose brown eyes twinkled merry recognition above her yashmak, the two favorites were languorously fanning the perfumed airs of their seclusion, once again in drowsy accord.

Mr. Iredale came often to the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels; he never failed to bring with him books for Sylvia and he was always eager to discuss with her what she had last read. On Sundays he used to take her out to Richmond or Kew, but he never invited her to visit him at his rooms.

"He's awfully gone on you," said Mabel. "Well, I wish you the best of luck, I'm sure, for he's a very nice fellow."

Mr. Iredale was not quite so enthusiastic over Mabel; he often questioned Sylvia about her friend's conduct and seemed much disturbed by the materialism and looseness of her att.i.tude toward life.

"It seems dreadful," he used to say to her, "that you can't find a worthier friend than that blond enormity. I hope she never introduces you to any of her men."

Sylvia a.s.sured him that Mabel was much too jealous to do anything of the sort.

"Jealous!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "How monstrous that a child like you should already be established in compet.i.tion with that. Ugh!"

June pa.s.sed away to July. Mr. Iredale told Sylvia that he ought to be in the country by now and that he could not understand himself. One day he asked her if she would like to live in the country, and became lost in meditation when she said she might. Sylvia delighted in his company and had a deep affection for this man who had so wonderfully entered into her life without once shocking her sensibility or her pride. She understood, however, that it was easy for him to behave himself, because he had all he wanted; nevertheless the companionship of a man of leisure had for herself such charm that she did not feel attracted to any deeper reflection upon moral causes; he was lucky to be what he was, but she was equally lucky to have found him for a friend.

Sometimes when he inveighed against her past a.s.sociates and what he called her unhappy bringing up, she felt impelled to defend them.

"You see, you have all you want, Philip."

Sylvia had learned with considerable difficulty to call him Philip; she could never get rid of the idea that he was much older than herself and that people who heard her call him by his Christian name would laugh. Even now she could only call him Philip when the importance of the remark was enough to hide what still seemed an unpardonable kind of pertness.

"You think I have all I want, do you?" he answered, a little bitterly. "My dear child, I'm in the most humiliating position in which a man can find himself. There is only one thing I want, but I'm afraid to make the effort to secure it: I'm afraid of being laughed at. Sylvia dear, you were wiser than you knew when you objected to calling me Philip for that very reason. I wish I could spread my canvas to a soldier's wind like you and sail into life, but I can't. I've been taught to tack, and I've never learned how to reach harbor. I suppose some people, in spite of our system of education, succeed in learning," he sighed.

"I don't understand a bit what you're talking about," she said.

"Don't you? It doesn't matter. I was really talking to myself, which is very rude. Impose a penalty."

"Admit you have everything you want," Sylvia insisted. "And don't be always running down poor Jimmy and my father and every one I've ever known."

"From their point of view I confess I have everything I want," he agreed.

On another occasion Sylvia asked him if he did not think she ought to consider religion more than she had done. Being so much in Philip's company was giving her a desire to experiment with the habits of well-regulated people, and she was perplexed to find that he paid no attention to church-going.

"Ah, there you can congratulate yourself," he said, emphatically. "Whatever was deplorable in your bringing up, at least you escaped that d.a.m.nable imposition, that fraudulent attempt to flatter man beyond his deserts."

"Oh, don't use so many long words all at once," Sylvia begged. "I like a long word now and then, because I'm collecting long words, but I can't collect them and understand what you're talking about at the same time. Do you think I ought to go to church?"

"No, no, a thousand times no," Philip replied. "You've luckily escaped from religion as a social observance. Do you feel the need for it? Have you ineffable longings?"

"I know that word," Sylvia said. "It means something that can't be said in words, doesn't it? Well, I've often had longings like that, especially in Hampstead, but no longings that had anything to do with going to church. How could they have, if they were ineffable?"

"Quite true," Philip agreed. "And therefore be grateful that you're a pagan. If ever a confounded priest gets hold of you and tries to bewitch you with his mumbo-jumbo, send for me and I'll settle him. No, no, going to church of one's own free will is either a drug (sometimes a stimulant, sometimes a narcotic) or it's mere sn.o.bbery. In either case it is a futile waste of time, because there are so many problems in this world--you're one of the most urgent--that it's criminal to avoid their solution by speculating upon the problem of the next world, which is insoluble."

"But is there another world?" she asked.

"I don't think so."

"And all those announcements in the cemetery meant nothing?"

"Nothing but human vanity--the vanity of the dead and the vanity of the living."

"Thanks," Sylvia said. "I thought that was probably the explanation."

Mabel, who had long ago admitted that Philip was just as funny as Sylvia had described him, often used to ask her what they found to talk about.

"He can't be interested in Earl's Court, and you're such a kid. I can't understand it."

"Well, we talked about religion to-day," Sylvia told her.

"Oh, that's it, is it?" Mabel said, very knowingly. "He's one of those fellows who ought to have been a clergyman, is he? I knew he reminded me of some one. He's the walking image of the clergyman where we used to live in Clapham. But you be careful, Sylvia. It's an old trick, that."

"You're quite wrong. He hates clergymen."

"Oh," Mabel exclaimed, taken aback for a moment, but quickly recovering herself. "Oh, well, people always pretend to hate what they can't get. And I dare say he wanted to be a clergyman. But don't let him try to convert you. It's an old trick to get something for nothing. And I know, my dear."

July pa.s.sed away into August, and Sylvia, buried for so many hours in the airless Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels, was flagging visibly. Philip used to spend nearly every afternoon and evening in the inner room where she worked--so many, indeed, that Mr. Woolfe protested and told her he would really have to put her back into the outer hall, because good customers were being annoyed by her admirer's glaring at them through his gla.s.ses.

Philip was very much worried by Sylvia's wan looks, and urged her more insistently to leave her job, and let him provide for her. But having vowed to herself that never again would she put herself under an obligation to anybody, she would not hear of leaving the Exhibition.

One Sunday in the middle of August Philip took Sylvia to Oxford, of which he had often talked to her. She enjoyed the day very much and delighted him by the interest she took in all the colleges they visited; but he was very much worried, so he said, by the approach of age.

"You aren't so very old," Sylvia rea.s.sured him. "Old, but not very old."

"Fifteen years older than you," he sighed.

"Still, you're not old enough to be my father," she added, encouragingly.

In the afternoon they went to St. Mary's Walks and sat upon a bench by the Cherwell. Close at hand a Sabbath bell chimed a golden monotone; Philip took Sylvia's hand and looked right into her face, as he always did when he was not wearing his gla.s.ses: "Little delightful thing, if you won't let me take you away from that inferno of Earl's Court, will you marry me? Not at once, because it wouldn't be fair to you and it wouldn't be fair to myself. I'm going to make a suggestion that will make you laugh, but it is quite a serious suggestion. I want you to go to school."

Sylvia drew back and stared at him over her shoulder.

"To school?" she echoed. "But I'm sixteen."

"Lots of girls--most girls in the position I want you to take--are still at school then. Only a year, dear child, and then if you will have me, we'll get married. I don't think you'd be bored down in Hampshire. I have thousands of books and you shall read them all. Don't get into your head that I'm asking you to marry me because I'm sorry for you--"

"There's nothing to be sorry for," Sylvia interrupted, sharply.

"I know there's not, and I want you terribly. You fascinate me to an extent I never could have thought possible for any woman. I really haven't cared much about women; they always seemed in the way. I do believe you would be happy with me. We'll travel to the East together. You shall visit j.a.pan and Turkey. I love you so much, Sylvia. Tell me, don't you love me a little?"

"I like you very much indeed," she answered, gently. "Oh, very, very, very much. Perhaps I love you. I don't think I love you, because if I loved you I think my heart would beat much faster when you asked me to marry you, and it isn't beating at all. Feel."

She put his hand upon her heart.

"It certainly doesn't seem to be unusually rapid," he agreed.

Sylvia looked at him in perplexity. His thin face was flushed, and the golden light of the afternoon gave it a warmer glow; his very blue eyes without their gla.s.ses had such a wide-open pleading expression; she was touched by his kindness.

"If you think I ought to go to school," she offered, "I will go to school."

He looked at her with a question in his eyes. She saw that he wanted to kiss her, and she pretended she thought he was dissatisfied with her answer about school.

"I won't promise to marry you," she said. "Because I like to keep promises and I can't say now what I shall be like in a year, can I? I'm changing all the time. Only I do like you very, very, very much. Don't forget that."

He took her hand and kissed it with the courtesy that for her was almost his greatest charm; manners seemed to Sylvia the chief difference between Philip and all the other people she had known. Once he had told her she had very bad manners, and she had lain awake half the night in her chagrin. She divined that the real reason of his wanting her to go to school was his wish to correct her manners. How little she knew about him, and yet she had been asked to marry him. His father and mother were dead, but he had a sister whom she would have to meet.

"Have you told your sister about me?" Sylvia asked.

"Not yet," he confessed. "I think I won't tell anybody about you except the lady to whose care I am going to intrust you."

Sylvia asked him how long he had made up his mind to ask her to marry him, and he told her he had been thinking about it for a long time, but that he had always been afraid at the last moment.

"Afraid I should disgrace you, I suppose?" Sylvia said.

He put on his gla.s.ses and coughed, a sure sign he was embarra.s.sed. She laughed.

"And of course there's no doubt that I should disgrace you. I probably shall now as a matter of fact. Mabel will be rather sorry," she went on, pensively. "She likes me to be there at night in case she gets frightened. She told me once that the only reason she ever went wrong was because she was frightened to sleep alone. She was married to a commercial traveler, who, of course, was just the worst person she could have married, because he was always leaving her alone. Poor Mabel!"

Philip took her hand again and said in a tone of voice which she resented as adumbrating already, however faintly, a hint of ownership: "Sylvia dear, you won't talk so freely as that in the school, will you? Promise me you won't."

"But it used to amuse you when I talked like that," she said. "You mustn't think now that you've got the right to lecture me."

"My dear child, it doesn't matter what you say to me; I understand. But some people might not."

"Well, don't say I didn't warn you," she almost sighed.

CHAPTER VI.

Miss Ashley's school for young ladies, situated in its own grounds on Campden Hill, was considered one of the best in England; a day or two after they got back from Oxford, Philip announced to Sylvia that he was glad to say Miss Ashley would take her as a pupil. She was a friend of his family; but he had sworn her to secrecy, and it had been decided between them that Sylvia should be supposed to be an orphan educated until now in France.

"Mayn't I tell the other girls that I've been an odalisque?" Sylvia asked.

"Good heavens! no!" said Philip, earnestly.

"But I was looking forward to telling them," she explained. "Because I'm sure it would amuse them."

Philip smiled indulgently and thought she would find lots of other ways of amusing them. He had told Miss Ashley, who, by the way, was an enthusiastic rationalist, that he did not want her to attend the outward shows of religion, and Miss Ashley had a.s.sented, though as a schoolmistress she was bound to see that her other pupils went to church at least once every Sunday. He had rea.s.sured her about the bad example Sylvia would set by promising to come himself and take her out every Sunday in his capacity as guardian.

"You'll be glad of that, won't you?" he asked, anxiously.

"I expect so," Sylvia said. "But of course I may find being at school such fun that I sha'n't want to leave it."

Again Philip smiled indulgently and hoped she would. Of course, it was now holiday-time, but Miss Ashley had quite agreed with him in the desirableness of Sylvia's going to Hornton House before the term began. She would be able to help her to equip herself with all the things a school-girl required. He knew, for instance, that she was short of various articles of clothing. Sylvia could take Miss Ashley completely into her confidence, but even with her he advised a certain reticence with regard to some of her adventures. She was of course a woman of infinite experience and extremely broad-minded, but many years as a schoolmistress might have made her consider some things were better left unsaid; there were some people, particularly English people, who were much upset by details. Perhaps Sylvia would spare her the details?

"You see, my dear child, you've had an extraordinary number of odd adventures for your age, and they've made you what you are, you dear. But now is the chance of setting them in their right relation to your future life. You know, I'm tremendously keen about this one year's formal education. You're just the material that can be perfected by academic methods, which with ordinary material end in mere barren decoration."

"I don't understand. I don't understand," Sylvia interrupted.

"Sorry! My hobby-horse has bolted with me and left you behind. But I won't try to explain or even to advise. I leave everything to you. After all, you are you; and I'm the last person to wish you to be any one else."

Philip was humming excitedly when they drove up to Hornton House, and Sylvia was certainly much impressed by its Palladian grandeur and the garden that seemed to spread illimitably behind it. She felt rather shy of Miss Ashley herself, who was apparently still in her dressing-gown, a green-linen dressing-gown worked in front with what Sylvia considered were very bad reproductions of flowers in brownish silk. She was astonished at seeing a woman of Miss Ashley's dignity still in her dressing-gown at three o'clock in the afternoon, but she was still more astonished to see her in a rather battered straw hat, apparently ready to go shopping in Kensington High Street without changing her attire. She looked at Philip, who, however, seemed unaware of anything unusual. A carriage was waiting for them when they went out, and Philip left her with Miss Ashley, promising to dine at Hornton House that night.

The afternoon pa.s.sed away rapidly in making all sorts of purchases, even of trunks; it seemed to Sylvia that thousands of pounds must have been spent upon her outfit, and she felt a thrill of pride. Everybody behind the various counters treated Miss Ashley with great deference; Sylvia was bound to admit that, however careless she might be of her own appearance, she was splendidly able to help other people to choose jolly things. They drove back to Hornton House in a carriage that seemed full of parcels, though they only took with them what Miss Ashley considered immediately important. Tea was waiting in the garden under a great cedar-tree; and by the time tea was finished Sylvia was sure that she should like Miss Ashley and that she should not run away that night, which she had made up her mind to do unless she was absolutely contented with the prospect of her new existence. She liked her bedroom very much, and the noise that the sparrows made in the creeper outside her window. The starched maid-servant who came to help her dress for dinner rather frightened her, but she decided to be very French in order to take away the least excuse for ridicule.

Sylvia thought at dinner that the prospect of marriage had made Philip seem even older, or perhaps it was his a.s.sumption of guardianship which gave him this added seriousness.

"Of course, French she already knows," he was saying, "though it might be as well to revise her grammar a little. History she has a queer, disjointed knowledge of--it would be as well to fill in the gaps. I should like her to learn a little Latin. Then there are mathematics and what is called science. Of course, one would like her to have a general acquaintance with both, but I don't want to waste time with too much elementary stuff. It would be almost better for her to be completely ignorant of either."

"I think you will have to leave the decision to me, Philip," said Miss Ashley, in that almost too deliberately tranquil voice, which Sylvia felt might so easily become in certain circ.u.mstances exasperating. "I think you may rely on my judgment where girls are concerned."

Philip hastened to a.s.sure Miss Ashley that he was not presuming to dictate to her greater experience of education; he only wished to lay stress on the subjects that he considered would be most valuable for the life Sylvia was likely to lead.

"I have a cla.s.s," said Miss Ashley, "which is composed of older girls and of which the routine is sufficiently elastic to fit any individual case. I take that cla.s.s myself."

Sylvia half expected that Miss Ashley would suggest including Philip in it, if he went on talking any longer. Perhaps Philip himself suspected as much, for he said no more about Sylvia's education and talked instead about the gravity of the situation in South Africa.

Sylvia was vividly aware of the comfort of her bedroom and of the extraordinary freshness of it in comparison with all the other rooms she had so far inhabited. Miss Ashley faintly reminded her of her mother, not that there was the least outward resemblance except in height, for Miss Ashley's hair was gray, whereas her mother's until the day of her death had kept all its l.u.s.trous darkness. Yet both wore their hair in similar fashion, combed up high from the forehead so as to give them a majestic appearance. Her mother's eyes had been of a deep and glowing brown set in that pale face; Miss Ashley's eyes were small and gray, and her complexion had the hard rosiness of an apple. The likeness between the two women lay rather in the possession of a natural authority which warned one that disobedience would be an undertaking and defiance an impossibility. Sylvia rejoiced in the idea of being under control; it was invigorating, like the delicious torment of a cold bath. Of course she had no intention of being controlled in big things, but she was determined to submit over little things for the sheer pleasure of submitting to Miss Ashley, who was, moreover, likely to be always right. In the morning, when she came down in one of her new frocks, her hair tied back with a big brown bow, and found Miss Ashley sitting in the sunny green window of the dining-room, reading the Morning Post, she congratulated herself upon the positive pleasure that such a getting up was able to give her and upon this new sense of s.p.a.ciousness that such a beginning of the day was able to provide.

"You're looking at my dress," said Miss Ashley, pleasantly. "When you're my age you'll abandon fashion and adopt what is comfortable and becoming."

"I thought it was a dressing-gown yesterday," Sylvia admitted.

"Rather an elaborate dressing-gown." Miss Ashley laughed. "I'm not so vain as all that."

Sylvia wondered what she would have said to some of Mabel's dressing-gowns. Now that she was growing used to Miss Ashley's attire, she began to think she rather liked it. This gown of peac.o.c.k-blue linen was certainly attractive, and the flowers embroidered upon its front were clearly recognizable as daisies.

During the fortnight before school reopened Sylvia gave Miss Ashley a good deal of her confidence, and found her much less shocked by her experiences than Philip had been. She told her that she felt rather ungrateful in so abruptly cutting herself off from Mabel, who had been very kind to her; but on this point Miss Ashley was firm in her agreement with Philip, and would not hear of Sylvia's making any attempt to see Mabel again.

"You are lucky, my dear, in having only one person whose friendship you are forced to give up, as it seems to you, a little harshly. Great changes are rarely made with so slight an effort of separation. I am not in favor personally of violent uprootings and replantings, and it was only because you were in such a solitary position that I consented to do what Philip asked. Your friend Mabel was, I am sure, exceedingly kind to you; but you are much too young to repay her kindness. It is the privilege of the very young to be heartless. From what you have told me, you have often been heartless about other people, so I don't think you need worry about Mabel. Besides, let me a.s.sure you that Mabel herself would be far from enjoying any a.s.sociation with you that included Hornton House."

Sylvia had no arguments to bring forward against Miss Ashley; nevertheless, she felt guilty of treating Mabel shabbily, and wished that she could have explained to her that it was not really her fault.

Miss Ashley took her once or twice to the play, which Sylvia enjoyed more than music-halls. In the library at Hornton House she found plenty of books to read, and Miss Ashley was willing to talk about them in a very interesting way. Philip came often to see her and told her how much Miss Ashley liked her and how pleased they both were to see her settling down so easily and quickly.

The night before term began the four a.s.sistant mistresses arrived; their names were Miss Pinck, Miss Primer, Miss Hossack, and Miss Lee. Sylvia was by this time sufficiently at home in Hornton House to survive the ordeal of introduction without undue embarra.s.sment, though, to Miss Ashley's amus.e.m.e.nt, she strengthened her French accent. Miss Pinck, the senior a.s.sistant mistress, was a very small woman with a sharp chin and knotted fingers, two features which contrasted noticeably with her general plumpness. She taught History and English Literature and had an odd habit, when she was speaking, of suddenly putting her hands behind her back, shooting her chin forward, and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her eyes so fiercely that the person addressed involuntarily drew back in alarm. Sylvia, to whom this gesture became very familiar, used to wonder if in the days of her vanity Miss Pinck had cultivated it to avoid displaying her fingers, so that from long practice her chin had learned to replace the forefinger in impressing a fact.

The date was 1689, Miss Pinck would say, and one almost expected to see a pencil screwed into her chin which would actually write the figures upon somebody's notebook.

Miss Primer was a thin, melancholy, and sandy-haired woman, who must have been very pretty before her face was netted with innumerable small lines that made her look as if birds had been scratching on it when she was asleep. Miss Primer took an extremely gloomy view of everything, and with the prospect of war in South Africa she arrived in a condition of exalted, almost ecstatic depression; she taught Art, which at Hornton House was no cure for pessimism. Miss Hossack, the Mathematical and Scientific mistress, did not have much to do with Sylvia; she was a robust woman with a loud voice who liked to be asked questions. Finally there was Miss Lee, who taught music and was the particular adoration of every girl in the school, including Sylvia. She was usually described as "ethereal," "angelic," or "divine." One girl with a taste for painting discovered that she was her ideal conception of St. Cecilia; this naturally roused the jealousy of rival adorers that would not be "copy-cats," until one of them discovered that Miss Lee, whose first name was Mary, had Annabel for a second name, the very mixture of the poetic and the intimate that was required. Sylvia belonged neither to the Cecilias nor to the Annabels, but she loved dear Miss Lee none the less deeply and pa.s.sed exquisite moments in trying to play the Clementi her mistress wanted her to learn.

"What a strange girl you are, Sylvia!" Miss Lee used to say. "Anybody would think you had been taught music by an accompanist. You don't seem to have any notion of a piece, but you really play accompaniments wonderfully. It's not mere vamping."