The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett Part 13

"No, I really can't. It's absurd. I don't want this kind of people here. Besides, I must work."

"You sha'n't work," Sylvia cried, in a fury, and she swept all his books and papers on the floor.

"I certainly sha'n't come now," he said, in the prim voice that was so maddening.

"Did you mean to come before I upset your books?"

"Yes, I probably should have come," he answered.

"All right. I'm so sorry. I'll pick everything up," and she plunged down on the floor. "There you are," she said when everything was put back in its place. "Now will you come?"

"No, my dear. I told you I wouldn't after you upset my things."

"Philip," she cried, her eyes bright with rage, "you're making me begin to hate you sometimes."

Then she left him and went back to her guests, to whom she explained that her husband had a headache and was lying down. The ladies were disappointed, but consoled themselves by recommending a number of remedies which Miss Horne insisted that Sylvia should write down. When tea was finished, Miss Hobart said that their first visit to Green Lanes had been most enjoyable and that there was only one thing they would like to do before going home, which would be to visit the church. Sylvia jumped at an excuse for not showing them over the house, and they set out immediately through the garden to walk to the little church that stood in a graveyard gra.s.s-grown like the green lanes of the hamlet whose dead were buried there. The sun was westering, and in the golden air they lowered their voices for a thrush that was singing his vespers upon a moldering wooden cross.

"n.o.body ever comes here," Sylvia said. "Hardly anybody comes to church ever. The people don't like Mr. Dorward's services. They say he can't be heard."

Suddenly the vicar himself appeared, and seemed greatly pleased to see Sylvia and her visitors; she felt a little guilty, because, though she was great friends with Mr. Dorward, she had never been inside the church, nor had he ever hinted he would like her to come. It would seem so unkind for her to come like this for the first time with strangers, as if the church which she knew he deeply loved was nothing but a tea-time entertainment. There was no trace of reproachfulness in his manner, as he showed Miss Horne and Miss Hobart the vestments and a little image of the Virgin in peach-blow glaze that he moved caressingly into the sunlight, as a child might fondle reverently a favorite doll. He spoke of his plans for restoration and unrolled the design of a famous architect, adding with a smile for Sylvia that the lay rector disapproved of it thoroughly. They left him arranging the candlesticks on the altar, a half-pathetic, half-humorous figure that seemed to be playing a solitary game.

"And you say n.o.body goes to his church!" Miss Horne exclaimed. "But he's most polite and charming."

"Scarcely anybody goes," Sylvia said.

"Emmie," said Miss Horne, standing upright and flashing forth an eagle's glance. "We will attend his service."

"That is a very good idea of yours, Adelaide," Miss Hobart replied.

Then they got into the governess-car with much determination, and with friendly waves of the hand to Sylvia set out back to Oaktown.

When Miss Horne and Miss Hobart had left, Sylvia went up-stairs to have it out with Philip. At this rate there would very soon be a crisis in their married life. She was a little disconcerted by his getting up the moment she entered his room and coming to meet her with an apology.

"Dearest Sylvia, you can call me what you will; I shall deserve the worst. I can't understand my behavior this afternoon. I think I must have been working so hard that my nerves are hopelessly jangled. I very nearly followed you into the churchyard to make myself most humbly pleasant, but I saw Dorward go 'round almost immediately afterward, and I could not have met him in the mood I was in without being unpardonably rude."

He waited for her with an arm stretched out in reconciliation, but Sylvia hesitated.

"It's all very well to hurt my feelings like that because you happened to be feeling in a bad temper," she said, "and then think you've only got to make a pleasant little speech to put everything right again. Besides, it isn't only to-day; it's day after day since we've been married. I feel like Gulliver when he was being tied up by the Lilliputians. I can't find any one big rope that's destroying my freedom, but somehow or other my freedom is being destroyed. Did you marry me casually, as people buy birds, to put me in a cage?"

"My dear, I married you because I loved you. You know I fought against the idea of marrying you for a long time, but I loved you too much."

"Are you afraid of my loyalty?" she demanded. "Do you think I go to Oaktown to be made love to?"

"Sylvia!" he protested.

"I go there because I'm bored, bored, endlessly, hopelessly, paralyzingly bored. It's my own fault. I never ought to have married you. I can't think why I did, but at least it wasn't for any mercenary reason. You're not to believe that. Philip, I do like you, but why will you always upset me?"

He thought for a moment and asked her presently what greater freedom she wanted, what kind of freedom.

"That's it," she went on. "I told you I couldn't find any one big rope that bound me. There isn't a single thread I can't snap with perfect ease, but it's the mult.i.tude of insignificant little threads that almost choke me."

"You told me you thought you would like to live in the country," he reminded her.

"I do, but, Philip, do remember that I really am still a child. I've got a deep voice and I can talk like a professor, but I'm still a hopeless kid. I oughtn't to have to tell you this. You ought to see it for yourself if you love me."

"Dearest Sylvia, I'm always telling you how young you are, and there's nothing that annoys you more," he said.

"Oh, Philip, Philip, you really are pathetic! When did you ever meet a young person who liked to have her youth called attention to? You're so remote from beginning to understand how to manage me, and I'm still manageable. Very soon I sha'n't be, though; and there'll be such a dismal smash-up."

"If you'd only explain exactly," he began; but she interrupted him at once.

"My dear man, if I explain and you take notes and consult them for your future behavior to me, do you think that's going to please me? It can all be said in two words. I'm human. For the love of G.o.d be human yourself."

"Look here, let's go away for a spell," said Philip, brightly.

"The cat's miaowing. Let's open the door. No, seriously, I think I should like to go away from here for a while."

"By yourself?" he asked, in a frightened voice.

"Oh no, not by myself. I'm perfectly content with you. Only don't suggest the Italian lakes and try to revive the early sweets of our eight months of married life. Don't let's have a sentimental rebuilding. It will be so much more practical to build up something quite new."

Philip really seemed to have been shaken by this conversation. Sylvia knew he had not finished his text, but he put everything aside in order not to keep her waiting; and before May was half-way through they had reached the island of Sirene. Here they stayed two months in a crumbling pension upon the cliff's edge until Sylvia was sun-dried without and within; she was enthralled by the evidences of imperial Rome, and her only regret was that she did not meet an eccentric Englishman who was reputed to have found, when digging a cistern, at least one of the lost books of Elephantis, which he read in olive-groves by the light of the moon. However, she met several other eccentrics of different nationalities and was pleased to find that Philip's humanism was, with Sirene as a background, strong enough to lend him an appearance of humanity. They planned, like all other visitors to Sirene, to build a big villa there; they listened like all other visitors to the Italian and foreign inhabitants' depreciation of every villa but the one in which they lived, either because they liked it or because they wanted to let it or because they wished new-comers to fall into snares laid for themselves when they were new-comers.

At last they tore themselves from Sirenean dreams and schemes, chiefly because Sylvia had accepted an invitation to stay at Arbour End. They lingered for a while at Naples on the way home, where Sylvia looked about her with Petronian eyes, so much so, indeed, that a guide mistook what was merely academic curiosity for something more practical. It cost Philip fifty liras and nearly all the Italian he knew to get rid of the pertinacious and ingenious fellow.

Arbour End had not changed at all in a year. Sylvia, when she thought of Green Lanes, laughed a little bitterly at herself (but not so bitterly as she would have laughed before the benevolent sunshine of Sirene) for ever supposing that she and Philip could create anything like it. Gladys and Enid, though they were now fifteen, had not yet lengthened their frocks; their mother could not yet bring herself to contemplate the disappearance of those slim black legs.

"But we shall have to next term," Gladys said, "because Miss Ashley's written home about them."

"And that stuck-up thing Gwendyr Jones said they were positively disgusting," Enid went on.

"Yes," added Gladys, "and I told her they weren't half as disgusting as her ankles. And they aren't, are they, Sylvia?"

"Some of the girls call her marrow-bones," said Enid.

Sylvia would have preferred to avoid any intimate talks with Mrs. Worsley, but it was scarcely to be expected that she would succeed, and one night, looking ridiculously young with her fair hair hanging down her back, she came to Sylvia's bedroom, and sitting down at the end of her bed, began: "Well, are you glad you got married?"

At any rate, Sylvia thought, she had the tact not to ask if she was glad she had taken her advice.

"I'm not so sorry as I was," Sylvia told her.

"Ah, didn't I warn you against the first year? You'll see that I was right."

"But I was not sorry in the way you prophesied. I've never had any bothers with the country. Philip's sister was rather a bore, always wondering about his clothes for the year after next; but we made a treaty, and she's been excluded from The Old Farm--wait a bit, only till next October. By Jove! I say, the treaty'll have to be renewed. I don't believe even memories of Sirene would enable me to deal with Gertrude this winter. No, what worries me most in marriage is not other people, but our two selves. I hate writing Sylvia Iredale instead of Sylvia Scarlett. Quite unreasonable of me, but most worries are unreasonable. I don't want to be owned. I'm a book to Philip; he bought me for my binding and never intended to read me, even if he could. I don't mean to say I was beautiful, but I was what an American girl at Hornton House used to call cunning; the pattern was unusual, and he couldn't resist it. But now that he's bought me, he expects me to stay quite happily on a shelf in a gla.s.s case; one day he may perhaps try to read me, but at present, so long as I'm taken out and dusted--our holiday at Sirene was a dusting--he thinks that's enough. But the worm that flies in the heart of the storm has got in, Victoria, and is making a much more unusual pattern across my inside--I say, I think it's about time to drop this metaphor, don't you?"

"I don't think I quite understand all you're saying," said Victoria Worsley.

Sylvia brought her hand from beneath the bedclothes and took her friend's.

"Does it matter?"

"Oh, but I like to understand what people are saying," Mrs. Worsley insisted. "That's why we never go abroad for our holidays. But, Sylvia, about being owned, which is where I stopped understanding. Lennie doesn't own me."

"No, you own him, but I don't own Philip."

"I expect you will, my dear, after you've been married a little longer."

"You think I shall acquire him in monthly instalments. I should find at the end the cost too much in repairs, like Fred Organ."

"Who's he?"

"Hube's brother, the cabman. Don't you remember?"

"Oh, of course, how silly of me! I thought it might be an Italian you met at Sirene. You've made me feel quite sad, Sylvia. I always want everybody to be happy," she sighed. "I am happy--perfectly happy--in spite of being married."

"n.o.body's happy because of being married," Sylvia enunciated, rather sententiously.

"What nonsense you talk, and you're only just eighteen!"

"That's why I talk nonsense," Sylvia said, "but all the same it's very true nonsense. You and Lennie couldn't have ever been anything but happy."

"Darling Lennie, I think it must be because he's so stupid. I wonder if he's smoking in bed. He always does if I leave him to go and talk to anybody. Good night, dear."

Sylvia returned to her book, wondering more than ever how she could have supposed a year ago that she could follow Victoria Worsley along the pathway of her simple and happy life.

The whole family from Arbour End came to London for the ten days before term began, and Sylvia stayed with them at a hotel. Gladys and Enid had to get their new frocks, and certain gaps in Hercules's education had to be filled up, such as visiting the Zoo and the Tower of London and the Great Wheel at Earl's Court. Sylvia and the twins searched in vain for the Hall of a Thousand and One Marvels, but they found Mabel selling Turkish Delight by herself at a small stall in another part of the Exhibition. Sylvia thought the best way of showing her penitence for the heartless way she had treated her was to buy as much Turkish Delight as could possibly be carried away, since she probably received a percentage on the takings. Mabel seemed to bear no resentment, but she was rather shy, because she mistook the twins for Sylvia's sisters-in-law and therefore avoided the only topic upon which she could talk freely, which was men. They left the florid and accommodating creature with a callow youth who was leaning familiarly across the counter and smacking with a cane his banana-colored boots; then they ate as much Turkish Delight as they could and divided the rest among some ducks and the Kaffirs in the kraal.

Sylvia also visited Hornton House and explained to Miss Ashley why she had demanded the banishment of Gertrude from Green Lanes.

"Poor Gertrude, she was very much upset," Miss Ashley said.

Sylvia, softened by the memories of a so happy year that her old school evoked, made up her mind not to carry on the war against Gertrude. She felt, too, a greater charity toward Philip, who, after all, had been the cause of her being given that so happy year, and she went back to Hampshire with the firm intention of encouraging this new mood that the last four months had created in her. Philip was waiting on the platform and was so glad to see her again that he drove even more absent-mindedly than usual, until she took the reins from him and whipped up the horse with a quite positive antic.i.p.ation of home.

Sylvia learned from Philip that the visit of Miss Horne and Miss Hobart had influenced other lives than their own, for it seemed that Miss Horne's announcement of their attendance in future at Mr. Dorward's empty church had been fully carried out. Not a Sunday pa.s.sed but that they drove up in the governess-car to Ma.s.s, so Philip said with a wry face for the word; what was more, they stayed to lunch with the vicar, presided at the Sunday-school, and attended the evening service, which had been put forward half an hour to suit their supper.

"They absolutely rule Green Lanes ecclesiastically," Philip said. "And some of the mercenary b.u.mpkins and b.o.o.bies 'round here have taken to going to church for what they can get out of the two old ladies. I'm glad to say, however, that the farmers and their families haven't come 'round yet."

Sylvia said she was glad for Mr. Dorward's sake, and she wondered why Philip made such a fuss about the form of a service in the reality of which, whatever way it was presented, he had no belief.

"I suppose you're right," he agreed. "Perhaps what I'm really afraid of is that our fanatical vicar will really convert the parish to his childish religion. Upon my soul, I believe Miss Horne has her eye upon me. I know she's been holding forth upon my iniquitous position as lay rector, and these confounded Radicals will s.n.a.t.c.h hold of anything to create prejudice against landowners."

"Why don't you make friends with Mr. Dorward?" Sylvia suggested. "You could surely put aside your religious differences and talk about the cla.s.sics."

"I dare say I'm bigoted in my own way," Philip answered. "But I can't stand a priest, just as some people can't stand cats or snakes. It's a positively physical repulsion that I can't get over. No, I'm afraid I must leave Dorward to you, Sylvia. I don't think there's much danger of your falling a victim to man-millinery. It'll take all your strength of mind, however, to resist the malice of these two old witches, and I wager you'll be excommunicated from the society of Tintown in next to no time."

Sylvia found that Philip had by no means magnified the activities of Miss Horne and Miss Hobart, and for the first time on a Sunday morning at Green Lanes a thin black stream of worshipers flowed past the windows of The Old Farm after service. It was more than curiosity could bear; without saying a word to anybody Sylvia attended the evening service herself. The church was very small, and her entrance would have attracted much more attention than it did if Ernie, who was holding the thurible for Mr. Dorward to put in the incense, had not given at that moment a mighty sneeze, scattering incense and charcoal upon the altar steps and frightening the woman at the harmonium into a violent discord, from which the choir was rescued by Miss Horne's unmoved and harsh soprano that positively twisted back the craning necks of the congregation into their accustomed apathy. Sylvia wondered whether fear, conversion, or extra wages had induced Ernie to put on that romantic costume which gave him the appearance of a rustic table covered with a tea-cloth, as he waited while the priest tried to evoke a few threads of smoke from the ruin caused by his sneeze. Sylvia was so much occupied in watching Ernie that she did not notice the rest of the congregation had sat down. Mr. Dorward must have seen her, for he had thrown off the heavy vestment he was wearing and was advancing apparently to say how d'ye do. No, he seemed to think better of it, and had turned aside to read from a large book, but what he read neither Sylvia nor the congregation had any idea. She decided that all this standing up and kneeling and sitting down again was too confusing for a novice, and during the rest of the service she remained seated, which was at once the most comfortable and the least conspicuous att.i.tude. Sylvia had intended to slip out before the service was over, as she did not want Miss Horne and Miss Hobart to exult over her imaginary conversion, but the finale came sooner than she expected in a fierce hymnal outburst during which Mr. Dorward hurriedly divested himself and reached the vestianel. Miss Horne had scarcely thumped the last beat on the choir-boy's head in front of her, the echoes of the last amen had scarcely died away, before the female s.e.xton, an old woman called Ca.s.sandra Batt, was turning out the oil-lamps and the little congregation had gathered 'round the vicar in the west door to hear Miss Horne's estimate of its behavior. There was no chance for Sylvia to escape.

"Ernest," said Miss Horne, "what did you sneeze for during the Magnificat? Father Dorward never got through with censing the altar, you bad boy."

"The stoff got all up me nose," said Ernie. "Oi couldn't help meself."

"Next time you want to sneeze," said Miss Hobart, kindly, "press your top lip below the nose, and you'll keep it back."

"I got too much to do," Ernie muttered, "and too much to think on."

"Jane Frost," said Miss Horne, quickly turning the direction of her attack, "you must practise all this week. Suppose Father Dorward gets a new organ? You wouldn't like not to be allowed to play on it. Some of your notes to-night weren't like a musical instrument at all. The Nunc Dimittis was more like water running out of a bath. 'Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,' are the words, not in pieces, which was what it sounded like the way you played it."

Miss Jane Frost, a daughter of the woman who kept the Green Lanes shop, blushed as deeply as her anemia would let her, and promised she would do better next week.

"That's right, Jane," said Miss Hobart, whose part seemed to be the consolation of Miss Horne's victims. "I dare say the pedal is a bit obstinate."

"Oh, it's turble obstinate," said Ca.s.sandra, the s.e.xton, who, having extinguished all the lamps, now elbowed her way through the cl.u.s.tered congregation, a lighted taper in her hand. "I jumped on un once or twice this morning to make um a bit easier like, but a groaned at me like a wicked old toad. It's ile that a wants."

The congregation, on which a good deal of grease was being scattered by Ca.s.sandra's taper in her excitement, hastened to support her diagnosis.

"Oh ya.s.s, ya.s.s, 'tis ile that a wants."

"I will bring a bottle of oil up during the week," Miss Horne proclaimed. "Good night, everybody, and remember to be punctual next Sunday."

The congregation murmured its good night, and Sylvia, to whom it probably owed such a speedy dismissal, was warmly greeted by Miss Horne.

"So glad you've come, Mrs. Iredale, though I wish you'd brought the lay rector. Lay rector, indeed! Sakes alive, what will they invent next?"

"Yes, we're so glad you've come, dear," Miss Hobart added. Mr. Dorward came up in his funny quick way. When they were all walking across the churchyard, he whispered to Sylvia, in his funny quick voice: "Church fowls, church fowls, you know! Mustn't discourage them. Pious fowls! G.o.dly fowls! An example for the parish. Better attendance lately."

Then he caught up the two ladies and helped them into the vehicle, wishing them a pleasant drive and promising a nearly full moon shortly, after Medworth, very much as if the moon was really made of cheese and would be eaten for supper by Miss Horne and Miss Hobart.

When Sylvia got back to The Old Farm she amused Philip so much with her account of the service that he forgot to be angry with her for doing what at first he maintained put him in a false position.

All that autumn and winter Miss Horne and Miss Hobart wrestled with Satan for the souls of the hamlet; incidentally they wrestled with him for Sylvia's soul, but she scratched the event by ceasing to appear at all in church, and intercourse between them became less frequent; the friends of Miss Horne and Miss Hobart had to be all or nothing, and not the least divergence of belief or opinion, manners or policy, was tolerated by these two bigoted old ladies. The congregation, notwithstanding their efforts, remained stationary, much to Philip's satisfaction.

"The truth is," he said, "that the measure of their power is the pocket. Every scamp in the parish who thinks it will pay him to go to church is going to church. The others don't go at all or walk over to Medworth."

Her contemplation of the progress of religion in Green Lanes, which, however much she affected to laugh at it, could not help interesting Sylvia on account of her eccentric friend the vicar, was temporarily interrupted by a visit from Gertrude Iredale. Remembering what Miss Ashley had told her, Sylvia had insisted upon Philip's asking his sister to stay, and he had obviously been touched by her suggestion. Gertrude perhaps had also taken some advice from Miss Ashley, for she was certainly less inclined to wonder what her brother would do about his clothes the year after next. She could not, however, altogether keep to herself her criticism of the housewifery at The Old Farm, a simple business in Sylvia's eyes, which consisted of letting the cook do exactly as she liked, with what she decided were very satisfactory results.

"But it's so extravagant," Gertrude objected.

"Well, Philip doesn't grumble. We can afford to pay a little extra every week to have the house comfortably run."

"But the principle is so bad," Gertrude insisted.

"Oh, principle," said Sylvia in an airy way, which must have been galling to her sister-in-law. "I don't believe in principles. Principles are only excuses for what we want to think or what we want to do."

"Don't you believe in abstract morality?" Gertrude asked, taking off her gla.s.ses and gazing with weak and earnest eyes at Sylvia.

"I don't believe in anything abstract," Sylvia replied.

"How strange!" the other murmured. "Goodness me! if I didn't believe in abstract morality I don't know where I should be--or what I should do."