The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett Part 21

Lily hesitated.

"Never mind," Sylvia went on. "I know he does."

"Oh, my dear," Lily murmured, biting her lip. "Then other people might notice. Never mind. I ought to finish to-night. The boat sails the day after to-morrow."

"And what about me?" Sylvia asked.

Lily looked shamefaced for a moment, but the natural optimism of the gambler quickly rea.s.serted itself.

"I thought you wouldn't like to break your contract."

"My contract," Sylvia repeated, bitterly. "What about---- Oh, but how foolish I am. You dear unimaginative creature!"

"I'm not at all unimaginative," Lily interposed, quickly. "One of the reasons why I want to leave Brazil is because the black people here make me nervous. That's why I left our flat. I didn't know what to do. I was so frightened. I think I'm very imaginative. You got ill. What was I to do?"

She asked this like an accusation, and Sylvia knew that it would be impossible to make her see any other point of view.

"Besides, it was your fault I started to gamble. I watched you on the boat."

"But you were going away without a word to me?" Sylvia could not refrain from tormenting herself with this question.

"Oh no, I was coming to say good-by, but you don't understand how closely he watches me."

The thought of Camacho's jealous antics recurred to Lily with the imminence of his return; she begged Sylvia, now that all her questions were answered, to escape. It was too late; there was a sound of footsteps upon the stairs and the noise of angry voices above deep gobbles of protested innocence from the black servant.

The entrance reminded Sylvia of "Il Barbiere di Siviglia," for when Camacho came leaping into the room, as thin and active as a gra.s.shopper, the priest was holding his coattails with one hand and with the other making the most operatic gestures of despair, like Don Basilio. In the doorway the black servant continued to gobble at everybody in turn, including the Almighty, to witness the clarity of her conscience.

"What language do you speak?" Sylvia asked, sharply, while Camacho was struggling to free himself from the restraint of the priest.

"I speak English! Gaddam! h.e.l.l! Five hundred h.e.l.ls!" the croupier shouted. "And I have sweared a swore that you will not interrupt between me myself and my Lili."

Camacho raised his arm to shake his fist, and the priest caught hold of it, which made Camacho turn round and open on him with Portuguese expletives.

"When you've quite done cracking Brazil nuts with your teeth, perhaps you'll listen to me," Sylvia began.

"No, you hear me, no, no, no, no, no, no!" Camacho shouted. "And I will not hear you. I have heard you enough. You shall not take her away. Putain!"

"If you want to be polite in French," Sylvia said. "Come along!

"Ce marloupatte pale et mince Se nommait simplement Navet, Mais il vivait ainsi qu'un prince, Il aimait les femmes qu'on rince.

Tu comprends? Mais moi, je ne suis pas une femme qu'on rince."

It was certainly improbable, Sylvia thought, that the croupier had understood much of Richepin's verse, but the effect of the little recitation was excellent because it made him choke. Lily now intervened, and when Sylvia beheld her soothing the inarticulate Camacho by stroking his head, she abandoned the last faint inclination to break off this match and called upon the priest to marry them at once. No doubt the priest would have been willing to begin the ceremony if he had been able to understand a word of what Sylvia said, but he evidently thought she was appealing to him against Camacho's violence, and with a view to affording the ultimate a.s.sistance of which he was capable he crossed himself and turned up his eyes to heaven.

"What an awful noise there is!" Sylvia cried, and, looking round her with a sudden realization of its volume, she perceived that the negress in the doorway had been reinforced by what was presumably the cook--another negress who was joining in her fellow-servant's protestations. At the same time the priest was talking incessantly in rapid Portuguese; Camacho was probably swearing in the same language; and Lily was making a noise that was exactly half-way between a dove cooing and an ostler grooming a horse.

"Look here, Mr. Camacho," Sylvia began.

"Oh, don't speak to him, Sylvia," Lily implored. "He can't be spoken to when he's like this. It's a kind of illness, really."

Sylvia paid no attention to her, but continued to address the croupier.

"If you'll listen to me, Mr. Camacho, instead of behaving like an exasperated toy terrier, you'll find that we both want the same thing."

"You shall not have her," the croupier chattered. "I will shoot everybody before you shall have her."

"I don't want her," Sylvia screamed. "I've come here to be a bridesmaid or a G.o.dmother or any other human accessory to a wedding you like to mention. Take her, my dear man, she's yours."

At last Sylvia was able to persuade him that she was not to be regarded as an enemy of his matrimonial intentions, and after a final burst of rage directed against the negresses, whom he ejected from the room, as a housemaid turns a mattress, he made a speech: "I am to marry Lily. We go to Portugal, where I am not to be a croupier, but a gentleman. I excuse my furage. You grant excusals, yes? It is a decomprehence."

"He's apologizing," Lily explained in the kind of way one might call attention to the tricks of an intelligent puppy.

"She's actually proud of him," Sylvia thought. "But, of course, to her he represents gold and diamonds."

The priest, who had grasped that the strain was being relaxed, began to exude smiles and to rub his hands; he sniffed the prospect of a fee so richly that one seemed to hear the notes crackle like pork. Camacho produced the wedding-ring that was even more outshone than wedding-rings usually are by the diamonds of betrothal.

"But I can't be married in my dressing-gown," Lily protested.

Sylvia felt inclined to say it was the most suitable garment, except a nightgown, that she could have chosen, but in the end, after another discussion, it was decided that the ecclesiastical ceremony should be performed to-morrow in church and that to-day should be devoted to the civil rite. Sylvia promised not to say a word about the departure to Europe.

Three days later Sylvia went on board the steamer to make her farewells. She gave Lily a delicate little pistol for a wedding-present; from Lily, in memory of her marriage, she received a box of chocolates.

It was impossible not to feel lonely, when Lily had gone: in three and a half years they had been much together. For a while Sylvia tried to content herself with the company of the girls in the pension d'artistes, to which she had been forced to go because the flat was too expensive for her to live in now. Her illness had swallowed up any money she had saved, and the manager took advantage of it to lower her salary. When she protested the manager told her he would be willing to pay the original salary, if she would go to So Paulo. Though Sylvia understood that the management was trying to get the best of a bargain, she was too listless to care much and she agreed to go. The voyage there was like a nightmare. The boat was full of gaudy negroes who sang endlessly their mysterious songs; the smell was vile; the food was worse; c.o.c.kroaches swarmed. So Paulo was a squalid reproduction of Rio de Janeiro, and the women who sang in the cabaret were all seamed with ten years' longer vagabondage than those at Rio. The men of So Paulo treated them with the insolence of the half-breeds they all seemed. On the third night a big man with teeth like an ancient fence and a diamond in his shirt-front like a crystal stopper leaned over from a box and shouted to Sylvia to come up and join him when she had finished her songs; he said other things that made her shake with anger. When she left the scene, the grand pimp, who was politely known as the manager, congratulated Sylvia upon her luck: she had caught the fancy of the richest patron.

"You don't suppose I'm going to see that goujat in his box?" she growled.

The grand pimp was in despair. Did she wish to drive away their richest patron? He would probably open a dozen bottles of champagne. He might ... the grand pimp waved his arms to express mental inability to express all the splendors within her grasp. Presently the impatient suitor came behind the scene to know the reason of Sylvia's delay. He grasped her by the wrist and tried to drag her up to his box. She seized the only weapon in reach--a hand-gla.s.s--and smashed it against his face. The suitor roared; the grand pimp squealed; Sylvia escaped to the stage, which was almost flush with the main dancing-hall. She forced her way through the orchestra, kicking the instruments right and left, and fell into the arms of a man more resplendent than the rest, but a rastaquouere of more Parisian cut, who in a dago-American accent promised to plug the first guy that tried to touch her.

Sylvia felt like Carmen on the arm of the Toreador when she and her protector walked out of the cabaret. He was a youngish man, wearing a blue serge suit and high-heeled shoes half buckskin, half patent-leather, tied with white silk laces, so excessively American in shape that one looked twice to be sure he was not wearing them on the wrong feet. His trousers, after exhausting the ordinary number of b.u.t.tons in front, prolonged themselves into a kind of corselet that drew attention to the slimness of his waist. He wore a frilled white shirt sown with blue hearts and a white silk tie with a large diamond pin. The back of his neck was shaved, which gave his curly black hair the look of a wig. He was the Latin dandy after being operated upon in an American barber shop, and his name was Carlos Morera.

Sylvia noted his appearance in such detail, because the appearance of anybody after that monster in the box would have come as a relief and a diversion. Morera had led her to a bar that opened out of the cabaret, and after placing two automatic pistols on the counter he ordered champagne c.o.c.ktails for them both.

"He won't come after you in here. Dat stiff don't feel he would like to meet Carlos Morera. Say, do you know why? Why, because Carlos Morera's ready to plug any stiff dat don't happen to suit his fancy right away. Dat's me, Carlos Morera. I'm pretty rich, I am. I'm a gentleman, I am. But dat ain't going to stop me using those"; he indicated the pistols. "Drink up and let's have another. Don't you want to drink? See here, then." He poured Sylvia's c.o.c.ktail on the floor. "Nothing won't stop Carlos Morera if he wants to call another round of drinks. Two more champagne c.o.c.ktails!"

"Is this going to be my Manuel?" Sylvia asked herself. She felt at the moment inclined to let him be anything rather than go back to the concert and face that man in the box.

"You're looking some white," Morera commented. "I believe he scared you. I believe I ought to have shot him. Say, you sit here and drink up. I t'ink I'll go back and shoot him now. I sha'n't be gone long."

"Sit still, you fire-eater," cried Sylvia, catching hold of his arm.

"Say, dat's good. Fire-eater! Yes, I believe I'd eat fire if it came to it. I believe you could make me laugh. I'm going to Buenos Aires to-morrow. Why don't you come along of me? This So Paulo is a b.u.m Brazilian town. You want to see the Argentine. I'll show you lots of life."

"Look here," said Sylvia. "I don't mind coming with you to make you laugh and to laugh myself, but that's all. Understand?"

"Dat's all right," Carlos agreed. "I'm a funny kind of a fellow, I am. As soon as I found I could buy any girl I wanted, I didn't seem to want them no more. 'Sides, I've got seven already. You come along of me. I'm good company, I am. Everybody dat goes along of me laughs and has good fun. Hear that?"

He jingled the money in his pocket with a joyful reverence, as if he were ringing a sanctus-bell. "Now, you come back with me into the cabaret."

Sylvia hesitated.

"Don't you worry. n.o.body won't dare to look at you when you're with me."

Morera put her arm in his, and back they walked into the cabaret again, more than ever like Carmen with her Toreador. The grand pimp, seeing that Sylvia was safely protected, came forward with obeisances and apologies.

"See here. Bring two bottles of champagne," Morera commanded.

The grand pimp beckoned authoritatively to a waiter, but Morera stood up in a fury.

"I didn't tell you to bring a waiter. I told you to bring two bottles of champagne. Bring them yourself."

The grand pimp returned very meekly with the bottles.

"Dat's more like. Draw the cork of one."

The grand pimp asked if he should put the other on ice.

"Don't you worry about the other," said Morera. "The other's only there so I can break it on your d.a.m.ned head in case I get tired of looking at you. See what I mean?"

The grand pimp professed the most perfect comprehension.

"Well, this is a b.u.m place," Morera declared, after they had sat for a while. "I believe we sha'n't get no fun here. Let's quit."

He drove her back to the pension, and the next day they took ship to La Plata for Buenos Aires.

Morera insisted on Sylvia's staying at an expensive hotel and was very anxious for her to buy plenty of new evening frocks.

"I've got a fancy," he explained, "to show you a bit of life. You hadn't seen life before you came to Argentina."

The change of air had made Sylvia feel much better, and when she had fitted herself out with new clothes, to which Morera added a variety of expensive and gaudy jewels, she felt quite ready to examine life under his guidance.

He took her to one or two theaters, to the opera, and to the casinos; then one evening he decided upon a special entertainment of which he made a secret.

"I want you to dress yourself up fine to-night," he said. "We're going to some smart ball. Put on all your jewelry. I'm going to dress up smart, too."

Sylvia had found that overdressing was the best way of returning his hospitality; this evening she determined to surpa.s.s all previous efforts.

"Heavens!" she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, when she made the final survey of herself in the looking-gla.s.s. "Do I look more like a Christmas tree or a chemist's shop?"

When she joined Morera in the lounge, she saw that he was in evening dress, with diamonds wherever it was possible to put them.

"You're fine," he said, contentedly. "Dat's the way I like to see a goil look. I guess we're going to have lots of fun to-night."

They drank a good deal of champagne at dinner, and about eleven o'clock went out to their carriage. When the coachman was given the address of the ballroom, he looked round in surprise and was sworn at for his insolence, so with a shrug of the shoulders he drove off. They left the ordinary centers of amus.e.m.e.nt behind them and entered a meaner quarter where half-breeds and negroes predominated; at last after a very long drive they pulled up before what looked like a third-rate saloon. Sylvia hesitated before she got out; it did not seem at all a suitable environment for their conspicuous attire.

"We shall have lots of fun," Morera promised. "This is the toughest dancing-saloon in Buenos Aires."

"It looks it," Sylvia agreed.

They entered a vestibule that smelt of sawdust, n.i.g.g.e.rs, and raw spirits, and went up-stairs to a crowded hall that was thick with tobacco smoke and dust. A negro band was playing ragtime in a corner; all along one side of the hall ran a bar. The dancers were a queer medley. The men were mostly of the Parisian apache type, though naturally more swarthy; the women were mostly in black dresses, with shawls of brilliantly colored silk and tawdry combs in their black hair. There were one or two women dancing in coat and skirt and hat, whose lifted petticoats and pale, dissolute faces shocked even Sylvia's masculine tolerance; there was something positively evil in their commonplace attire and abandoned motion; they were like anemic shop-girls possessed with unclean spirits.

"I believe we shall make these folks mad," said Morera, with a happy chuckle. Before Sylvia could refuse he had taken her in his arms and was dancing round the room at double time. The cracked mirrors caught their reflections as they swept round, and Sylvia realized with a shock the amount of diamonds they were wearing between them and the effect they must be having in this thieves' kitchen.

"Some of these guys are looking mad already," Morera proclaimed, enthusiastically.

The dance came to an end, and they leaned back against the wall exhausted. Several men walked provocatively past, looking Sylvia and her partner slowly up and down.

"Come along of me," Morera said. "We'll promenade right around the hall."

He put her arm in his and swaggered up and down. The other dancers were gathering in knots and eyeing them menacingly. At last an enormous American slouched across the empty floor and stood in their path.

"Say, who the h.e.l.l are you, anyway?" he asked.

"Say, what the h.e.l.l's dat to you?" demanded Morera.

"Quit!" bellowed the American.

Morera fired without taking his hand from his pocket, and the American dropped.

"Hands up! Manos arriba!" cried Morera, pulling out his two pistols and covering the dancers while he backed with Sylvia toward the entrance. When they were up-stairs in the vestibule he told her to look if the carriage were at the door; when he heard that it was not he gave a loud whoop of exultation.

"I said I believed we was going to have lots of fun. We got to run now and see if any of those guys can catch us."

He seized Sylvia's arm, and they darted down the steps and out into the street. Morera looked rapidly right and left along the narrow thoroughfare. They could hear the noise of angry voices gathering in the vestibule of the saloon.

"This way and round the turning," he cried, pulling Sylvia to the left. There was only one window alight in the narrow alley up which they had turned, a dim orange stain in the darkness. Morera hammered on the door as their pursuers came running round the corner. Two or three shots were fired, but before they were within easy range the door had opened and they were inside. The old hag who had opened it protested when she saw Sylvia, but Morera commanded her in Spanish to bolt it, and she seemed afraid to disobey. Somewhere in a distant part of the house there was a sound of women's crooning; outside they could hear the shuffling of their pursuers' feet.

"Say, this is fun," Morera chuckled. "We've arrived into a burdel."

It was impossible for Sylvia to be angry with him, so frank was he in his enjoyment of the situation. The old woman, however, was very angry indeed, for the pursuers were banging upon her door and she feared a visit from the police. Her clamor was silenced with a handful of notes.

"Champagne for the girls," Morera cried.

For Sylvia the evening had already taken on the nature of a dream, and she accepted the immediate experience as only one of an inconsequent procession of events. Having attained this state of mind, she saw nothing unusual in sitting down with half a dozen women who clung to their sofas as sea-anemones to the rocks of an aquarium. She had a fleeting astonishment that they should have names, that beings so utterly indistinguishable should be called Juanilla or Belita or Tula or Lola or Maruca, but the faint shock of realizing a common humanity pa.s.sed off almost at once, and she found herself enjoying a conversation with Belita, who spoke a few words of broken French. With the circulation of the champagne the women achieved a kind of liveliness and examined Sylvia's jewels with murmurs of admiration. The ancient bawd who owned them proposed a dance, to which Morera loudly agreed. The women whispered and giggled among themselves, looking bashfully over their shoulders at Sylvia in a way that made the crone thump her stick on the floor with rage. She explained in Spanish the cause of their hesitation.

"They don't want to take off their clothes in front of you," Morera translated to Sylvia, with apologies for such modesty from women who no longer had the right to possess even their own emotions; nevertheless, he suggested that they might be excused to avoid spoiling a jolly evening.

"Good heavens! I should think so!" Sylvia agreed.

Morera gave a magnanimous wave of his arm, in which he seemed to confer upon the women the right to keep on their clothes. They clapped their hands and laughed like children. Soon to the sound of castanets they wriggled their bodies in a way that was not so much suggestive of dancing as of flea-bites. A lamp with a tin reflector jarred fretfully upon a shelf, and the floor creaked.

Suddenly Morera held up his hand for silence. The knocking on the street door was getting louder. He asked the old woman if there was any way of getting out at the back.

"Dat's all right, kid," he told Sylvia. "We can crawl over the dooryards at the back. Dat door in front ain't going to hold not more than five minutes."

He tore the elastic from a bundle of notes and scattered them in the air like leaves; the women pounced upon the largesse and were fighting with one another on the floor when Sylvia and Morera followed the old woman to the back door and out into a squalid yard.

How they ever surmounted the various walls and crossed the various yards they encountered Sylvia could never understand. All she remembered was being lifted on packing-cases and dust-bins, of slipping once and crashing into a hen-coop, of tearing her dress on some broken gla.s.s, of riding astride walls and p.r.i.c.king her face against plants, and of repeating to herself all the time, "When lilacs last in the dooryard bloomed." When at last they extricated themselves from the maze of dooryards they wandered for a long time through a maze of narrow streets. Sylvia had managed to stuff all her jewelry out of sight into her corsage, where it scratched her most uncomfortably, but any discomfort was preferable to the covetous eyes of the half-breeds that watched her from the shadows.