The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett Part 24

He fell back dead.

Sylvia left money for the funeral; there was nothing more to be done. In the morning twilight she went down the foul stairs and back to the carriage that seemed now to smell of death.

When she arrived at the station a great commotion was taking place on the platform, and Mrs. Gainsborough appeared, surrounded by a gesticulating crowd of porters, officials, and pa.s.sengers.

"Sylvia! Well, I'm glad you've got here at last. She's gone. He's whisked her away. And can I explain what I want to these Spanish idiots? No. I've shouted as hard as I could, and they won't understand. They won't understand me. They don't want to understand, that's my opinion."

With which Mrs. Gainsborough sailed off again along the platform, followed by the crowd, which, in addition to arguing with her occasionally, detached from itself small groups to argue furiously with one another about her incomprehensible desire. Sylvia extricated their luggage from the compartment, for the train to go to Algeciras without them; then she extricated Mrs. Gainsborough from the general noise and confusion that was now being added to by loud whistles from the impatient train.

"I was sitting in one corner and Concertina was sitting in the other," Mrs. Gainsborough explained to Sylvia. "I'd just bobbed down to pick up me gla.s.ses when I saw that Shoushou beckoning to her, though for the moment I thought it was the porter. Concertina went as white as paper. 'Here,' I hollered, 'what are you doing?' and with that I got up from me place and tripped over your luggage and came down b.u.mp on the foot-warmer. When I got up she was gone. Depend upon it, he'd been watching out for her at the station. As soon as I could get out of the carriage I started hollering, and every one in the station came running round to see what was the matter. I tried to tell them about Shoushou, and they pretended--for don't you tell me I can't make myself understood if people want to understand--they pretended they thought I was asking whether I was in the right train. When I hollered 'Shoushou,' they all started to holler 'Shoushou' as well and nod their heads and point to the train. I got that aggravated, I could have killed them. And then what do you think they did? Insulting I call it. Why, they all began to laugh and beckon to me, and I, thinking that at last they'd found out me meaning, went and followed them like a silly juggins, and where do you think they took me? To the moojeries! what we call the ladies' cloak-room. Well, that did make me annoyed, and I started in to tell them what I thought of such behavior. 'I don't want the moojeries,' I shouted. Then I tried to explain by ill.u.s.trating my meaning. I took hold of some young fellow and said 'Shoushou,' and then I caught hold of a hussy that was laughing, intending to make her Concertina, but the silly little b.i.t.c.h--really it's enough to make any one a bit unrefined--she thought I was going to hit her and started in to scream the station-roof down. After that you came along, but of course it was too late."

Sylvia was very much upset by the death of Rodrigo and the loss of Concetta, but she could not help laughing over Mrs. Gainsborough's woes.

"It's all very well for you to sit there and laugh, you great tomboy, but it's your own fault. If you'd have let me bring Mr. Linthic.u.m, this wouldn't have happened. What could I do? I felt like a missionary among a lot of cannibals."

In the end Sylvia was glad to avail herself of the widower's help, but after two days even he had to admit himself beaten.

"And if he says they can't be found," said Mrs. Gainsborough, "depend upon it they can't be found--not by anybody. That man's as persistent as a beggar. When he came up to me this morning and cleared his throat and shook his head, well, then I knew we might as well give up hope."

Sylvia stayed on for a while in Granada because she did not like to admit defeat, but the sadness of Rodrigo's death and the disappointment over Concetta had spoiled the place for her. Here was another of these incomplete achievements that made life so bitter. She had thought for a brief s.p.a.ce that the solitary and frightened child would provide the aim that she had so ardently desired. Concetta had responded so sweetly to her protection, had chattered with such delight of going to England and of becoming English; now she had been dragged back. El destino! Rodrigo's death did not affect her so much as the loss of that fair, slim child. His short life had been complete; he was spared forever from disillusionment, and by existing in her memory eternally young and joyous and wise he had spared his Senorita also the pain of disillusionment, just as when he was alive he had always a.s.sumed the little bothers upon his shoulders, the little bothers of every-day existence. His was a perfect episode, but Concetta disturbed her with vain regrets and speculations. Yet in a way Concetta had helped her, for she knew now that she held in her heart an inviolate treasure of love. Never again could anything happen like those three months after she left Philip; never again could she treat any one with the scorn she had treated Michael; never again could she take such a cynical att.i.tude toward any one as that she had taken toward Lily. All these disappointments added a little gold tried by fire to the treasure in her heart, and firmly she must believe that it was being stored to some purpose soon to be showered prodigally, ah, how prodigally, upon somebody.

That evening Sylvia had made up her mind to return to England at once, but after she had gone to bed she was awakened by Mrs. Gainsborough's coming into her room and in a choked voice asking for help. When the light was turned on, Sylvia saw that she was enmeshed in a mosquito-net and looking in her nightgown like a large turbot.

"I knew it would happen," Mrs. Gainsborough panted. "Every night I've said to myself, 'It's bound to happen,' and it has. I was dreaming how that Shoushou was chasing me with a b.u.t.terfly-net, and look at me! Don't tell me dreams don't sometimes come true. Now don't stand there in fits of laughter. I can't get out of it, you unfeeling thing. I've swallowed about a pint of Keating's. I hope I sha'n't come out in spots. Come and help me out. I daren't move a finger, or I shall start off sneezing again. And every time I sneeze I get deeper in. It's something chronic."

"Didn't Linthic.u.m ever inform you how to get out of a mosquito-net that collapses in the middle of the night?" Sylvia asked, when she had extricated the old lady.

"No, the conversation never happened to take a turn that way. But depend upon it, I shall ask him to-morrow. I won't be caught twice."

Sylvia suddenly felt that it would be impossible to return to England yet.

"We must go on," she told Mrs. Gainsborough. "You must have more opportunities for practising what Linthic.u.m has been preaching to you."

"What you'd like is for me to make a poppy-show of myself all over the world and drag me round the Continent like a performing bear."

"We'll go to Morocco," Sylvia cried.

"Don't shout like that. You'll set me off on the sneeze again. You're here, there, and everywhere like a demon king, I do declare. Morocco? That's where the leather comes from, isn't it? Do they have mosquito-nets there too?"

Sylvia nodded.

"Well, the first thing I shall do to-morrow is to ask Mr. Linthic.u.m what's the best way of fastening up a mosquito-net in Morocco. And now I suppose I shall wake up in the morning with a nose like a tomato. Ah, well, such is life."

Mrs. Gainsborough went back to bed, and Sylvia lay awake thinking of Morocco.

Mr. Linthic.u.m came to see them off on their second attempt to leave Granada. He cleared his throat rather more loudly than usual to compete with the noise of the railway, invited them to look him up if they ever came to Schenectady, pressed a book called Five Hundred Facts for the Waistcoat Pocket into Mrs. Gainsborough's hands, and waved them out of sight with a large bandana handkerchief.

"Well, I shall miss that man," said Mrs. Gainsborough, settling down to the journey. "He must have been a regular education for his customers, and I shall never forget his recipe for avoiding bunions when mountaineering."

"How's that done?"

"Oh, I don't remember the details. I didn't pay any attention to them, because it's not to be supposed that I'm going to career up Mont Blong at my time of life. No, I was making a reference to the tone of his voice. They may be descended from Indians, but I dare say Adam wasn't much better than a red Indian, if it comes to that."

They traveled to Cadiz for the boat to Tangier. Mrs. Gainsborough got very worried on the long spit of land over which the train pa.s.sed, and insisted on piling up all the luggage at one end of the compartment in case they fell into the sea, though she was unable to explain her motive for doing this. The result was that, when they stopped at a station before Cadiz and the door of the compartment was opened suddenly, all the luggage fell out on top of three priests that were preparing to climb in, one of whom was knocked flat. Apart from the argument that ensued the journey was uneventful.

The boat from Tangier left in the dark. At dawn Cadiz glimmered like a rosy pearl upon the horizon.

"We're in Trafalgar Bay now," said Sylvia.

But Mrs. Gainsborough, who was feeling the effects of getting up so early, said she wished it was Trafalgar Square and begged to be left in peace. After an hour's doze in the sunlight she roused herself slightly: "Where's this Trafalgar Bay you were making such a fuss about?"

"We've pa.s.sed it now," Sylvia said.

"Oh, well, I dare say it wasn't anything to look at. I'm bound to say the chocolate we had this morning does not seem to go with the sea air. They're arguing the point inside me something dreadful. I suppose this boat is safe? It seems to be jigging a good deal. Mr. Linthic.u.m said it was a good plan to put the head between the knees when you felt a bit--well, I wouldn't say seasick--but you know.... I'm bound to say I think he was wrong for once. I feel more like putting my knees up over my head. Can't you speak to the captain and tell him to go a bit more quietly? It's no good racing along like he's doing. Of course the boat jigs. I shall get aggravated in two twos. It's to be hoped Morocco will be worth it. I never got up so early to go anywhere. Was that sailor laughing at me when he walked past? It's no good my getting up to tell him what I think of him, because every time I try to get up the boat gets up with me. It keeps b.u.t.ting into me behind like a great billy-goat."

Presently Mrs. Gainsborough was unable even to protest against the motion, and could only murmur faintly to Sylvia a request to remove her veil.

"Here we are," cried Sylvia, three or four hours later. "And it's glorious!"

Mrs. Gainsborough sat up and looked at the rowboats filled with Moors, negroes, and Jews.

"But they're nearly all of them black," she gasped.

"Of course they are. What color did you expect them to be? Green like yourself?"

"But do you mean to say you've brought me to a place inhabited by blacks? Well, I never did. It's to be hoped we sha'n't be eaten alive. Mrs. Marsham! Mrs. Ewings! Mrs. Beardmore! Well, I don't say they haven't told me some good stories now and again, but--"

Mrs. Gainsborough shook her head to express the depths of insignificance to which henceforth the best stories of her friends would have to sink when she should tell about herself in Morocco.

"Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," said Mrs. Gainsborough, when they stood upon the quay. "I feel like the widow Tw.a.n.kay myself."

Sylvia remembered her ambition to visit the East, when she herself wore a yashmak in Open Sesame: here it was fulfilling perfectly her most daring hopes.

Mrs. Gainsborough was relieved to find a comparatively European hotel, and next morning after a long sleep she was ready for any adventure.

"Sylvia!" she suddenly screamed when they were being jostled in the crowded bazaar. "Look, there's a camel coming toward us! Did you ever hear such a hollering and jabbering in all your life? I'm sure I never did. Mrs. Marsham and her camel at the Zoo. Tut-tut-tut! Do you suppose Mrs. Marsham ever saw a camel coming toward her in the street like a cab-horse might? Certainly not. Why, after this there's nothing in her story. It's a mere anecdote."

They wandered up to the outskirts of the prison, and saw a fat Jewess being pushed along under arrest for giving false weight. She made some resistance in the narrow entrance, and the guard planted his foot in the small of her back, so that she seemed suddenly to crumple up and fall inside.

"Well, I've often said lightly 'what a heathen' or 'there's a young heathen,' but that brings it home to one," said Mrs. Gainsborough, gravely.

Sylvia paid no attention to her companion's outraged sympathy. She was in the East where elderly obese Jewesses who gave false weight were well treated thus. She was living with every moment of rapturous reality the dreams of wonder that the Arabian Nights had brought her in youth. Yet Tangier was only a gateway to enchantments a hundredfold more powerful. She turned suddenly to Mrs. Gainsborough and asked her if she could stay here while she rode into the interior.

"Stay here alone?" Mrs. Gainsborough exclaimed. "Not if I know it."

This plan of Sylvia's to explore the interior of Morocco was narrowed down ultimately into riding to Tetuan, which was apparently just feasible for Mrs. Gainsborough, though likely to be rather fatiguing.

A dragoman was found, a certain Don Alfonso reported to be comparatively honest. He was an undersized man rather like the stump of a tallow candle into which the wick has been pressed down by the snuffer, for he was bald and cream-colored, with a thin, uneven black mustache and two nodules on his forehead. His clothes, too, were crinkled like a candlestick. He spoke French well, but preferred to speak English, of which he only knew two words, "all right"; this often made his advice unduly optimistic. In addition to Don Alfonso they were accompanied by a Moorish trooper and a native called Mohammed.

"A soldier, is he?" said Mrs. Gainsborough, regarding the grave bearded man to whose care they were intrusted. "He looks more like the outside of an ironmonger's shop. Swords, pistols, guns, spears. It's to be hoped he won't get aggravated with us on the way. I should look very funny lying in the road with a pistol through my heart."

They rode out of Tangier before a single star had paled in the east, and when dawn broke they were in a wide valley fertile and bright with flowers; green hills rose to right and left of them and faded far away into blue mountains.

"I wish you'd tell that Mahomet not to irritate my poor mule by egging it on all the time," Mrs. Gainsborough said to Don Alfonso, who, realizing by her gestures that she wanted something done to her mount, and supposing by her smile that the elation of adventure had seized her, replied "All right," and said something in Moorish to Mohammed. He at once caught the mule a terrific whack on the crupper, causing the animal to leap forward and leave Mrs. Gainsborough and the saddle in the path.

"Now there's a nice game to play!" said Mrs. Gainsborough, indignantly. "'All right,' he says, and 'boomph'! What's he think I'm made of? Well, of course here we shall have to sit now until some one comes along with a step-ladder. If you'd have let me ride on a camel," she added, reproachfully, to Sylvia, "this wouldn't have occurred. I'm not sitting on myself any more; I'm sitting on b.u.mps like eggs. I feel like a hen. It's all very fine for Mr. Alfonso to go on gabbling, 'All right,' but it's all wrong, and if you'll have the goodness to tell him so in his own unnatural language I'll be highly obliged."

The Moorish soldier sat regarding the scene from his horse with immutable gravity.

"I reckon he'd like nothing better than to get a good jab at me now," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "Yes, I dare say I look very inviting sitting here on the ground. Well, it's to be hoped they'll have the 'Forty Thieves' or 'Aladdin' for the next pantomime at Drury Lane. I shall certainly invite Mrs. Marsham and Mrs. Beardmore to come with me into the upper boxes so as I can explain what it's all about. Mrs. Ewings doesn't like panto, or I'd have taken her too. She likes a good cry when she goes to the theater."

Mrs. Gainsborough was settling down to spend the rest of the morning in amiable reminiscence and planning, but she was at last persuaded to get up and mount her mule again after the strictest a.s.surances had been given to her of Mohammed's good behavior for the rest of the journey.

"He's not to bellow in the poor animal's ear," she stipulated.

Sylvia promised.

"And he's not to go screeching, 'Arra.s.sy,' or whatever it is, behind, so as the poor animal thinks it's a lion galloping after him."

Mrs. Gainsborough was transferring all consideration for herself to the mule.

"And he's to throw away that stick."

This clause was only accepted by the other side with a good deal of protestation.

"And he's to keep his hands and feet to himself, and not to throw stones or nothing at the poor beast, who's got quite enough to do to carry me."

"And Ali Baba's to ride in front." She indicated the trooper. "It gets me on the blink when he's behind me, as if I was in a shooting-gallery. If he's going to be any use to us, which I doubt, he'll be more useful in front than hiding behind me."

"All right," said Don Alfonso, who was anxious to get on, because they had a long way to go.

"And that's enough of 'all right' from him," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "I don't want to hear any more 'all rights.'"

At midday they reached a khan, where they ate lunch and rested for two hours in the shade.

Soon after they had started again, they met a small caravan with veiled women and mules loaded with oranges.

"Quite pleasant-looking people," Mrs. Gainsborough beamed. "I should have waved my hand if I could have been sure of not falling off again. Funny trick, wearing that stuff round their faces. I suppose they're ashamed of being so black."

Mrs. Gainsborough's progress, which grew more and more leisurely as the afternoon advanced, became a source of real anxiety to Don Alfonso; he confided to Sylvia that he was afraid the gates of Tetuan would be shut. When Mrs. Gainsborough was told of his alarm she was extremely scornful.

"He's having you on, Sylvia, so as to give Mohamet the chance of sloshing my poor mule again. Whoever heard of a town having gates? He'll tell us next that we've got to pay sixpence at the turnstile to pa.s.s in."

They came to a high place where a white stone by the path recorded a battle between Spaniards and Moors. Far below were the domes and rose-dyed minarets of Tetuan and a shining river winding to the sea. They heard the sound of a distant gun.

"Sunset," cried Don Alfonso, much perturbed. "In half an hour the gates will be shut."

He told tales of brigands and of Riffs, of travelers found with their throats cut outside the city walls, and suddenly, as if to give point to his fears, a figure leaning on a long musket appeared in silhouette upon the edge of the hill above them. It really seemed advisable to hurry, and, notwithstanding Mrs. Gainsborough's expostulations, the speed of the party was doubled down a rocky descent to a dried-up watercourse with high banks. Twilight came on rapidly and the soldier prepared one of his numerous weapons for immediate use in an emergency. Mrs. Gainsborough was much too nervous about falling off to bother about brigands, and at last without any mishap they reached the great castellated gate of Tetuan. It was shut.

"Well, I never saw the like," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "It's true, then. We must ring the bell, that's all."

The soldier, Mohammed, and Don Alfonso raised their voices in a loud hail, but n.o.body paid any attention, and the twilight deepened. Mrs. Gainsborough alighted from her mule and thumped at the iron-studded door. Silence answered her.

"Do you mean to tell me seriously that they're going to keep us outside here all night? Why, it's laughable!" Suddenly she lifted her voice and cried, "Milk-ho!" Whether the unusual sound aroused the curiosity or the alarm of the porter within was uncertain, but he leaned his head out of a small window above the gate and shouted something at the belated party below. Immediately the dispute for which Mohammed and Don Alfonso had been waiting like terriers on a leash was begun; it lasted for ten minutes without any of the three partic.i.p.ants drawing breath.

In the end Don Alfonso announced that the porter declined to open for less than two francs, although he had offered him as much as one franc fifty. With a determination not to be beaten that was renewed by the pause for breath, Don Alfonso flung himself into the argument again, splendidly a.s.sisted by Mohammed, who seemed to be tearing out his hair in baffled fury.

"I wish I knew what they were calling each other," said Sylvia.

"Something highly insulting, I should think," Mrs. Gainsborough answered. "Wonderful the way they use their hands. He doesn't seem to be worrying himself so very much. I suppose he'll start in shooting in the end."

She pointed to the soldier, who was regarding the dispute with contemptuous gravity. Another window in a tower on the other side of the gate was opened, and the first porter was reinforced. Perspiration was dripping from Don Alfonso's forehead; he looked more like a candle stump than ever, when presently he stood aside from the argument to say that he had been forced to offer one franc seventy-five to enter Tetuan.

"Tetuan," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "Tetuarn't, I should say."

Sylvia asked Don Alfonso what he was calling the porter, and it appeared, though he minimized the insult by a gesture, that he had just invited forty-three dogs to devour the corpse of the porter's grandmother. This, however, he hastened to add, had not annoyed him so much as his withdrawal from one franc fifty to one franc twenty-five.

In the end the porter agreed to open the gate for one franc seventy-five.

"Which is just as well," said Mrs. Gainsborough, "for I'm sure Mohamet would have thrown a fit soon. He's got to banging his forehead with his fists, and that's a very bad sign."

They rode through the darkness between double walls, disturbing every now and then a beggar who whined for alms or cursed them if the mule trod upon his outspread legs. They found an inn called the Hotel Splendide, a bug-ridden tumble-down place kept by Spanish Jews as voracious as the bugs. Yet out on the roof, looking at the domes and minarets glimmering under Venus setting in the west from a sky full of stars, listening to the howling of distant dogs, breathing the perfume of the East, Sylvia felt like a conqueror.

Next morning Mrs. Gainsborough, finding that the bugs had retreated with the light, decided to spend the morning in sleeping off some of her bruises. Sylvia wandered through the bazaars with Don Alfonso, and sat for a while in the garden of a French convent, where a fountain whispered in the shade of pomegranates. Suddenly, walking along the path toward her she saw Maurice Avery.

Sylvia had disliked Avery very much when she met him in London nearly two years ago; but the worst enemy, the most flagitious bore, is transformed when encountered alone in a distant country, and now Sylvia felt well disposed toward him and eager to share with any one who could appreciate her pleasure the marvel of being in Tetuan. He too, by the way his face lighted up, was glad to see her, and they shook hands with a cordiality that was quite out of proportion to their earlier acquaintance.

"I say, what a queer place to meet!" he exclaimed. "Are you alone, then?"

"I've got Mrs. Gainsborough with me, that's all. I'm not married ... or anything."

It was absurd how eager she felt to a.s.sure Avery of this; and then in a moment the topic had been started.

"No, have you really got Mrs. Gainsborough?" he exclaimed. "Of course I've heard about her from Michael. Poor old Michael!"

"Why, what's the matter?" Sylvia asked, sharply.

"Oh, he's perfectly all right, but he's lost to his friends. At least I suppose he is--buried in a monastery. He's not actually a monk. I believe he's what's called an oblate, pursuing the Fata Morgana of faith--a sort of dream...."

"Yes, yes," Sylvia interrupted. "I understand the allusion. You needn't talk down to me."

Avery blushed. The color in his cheeks made him seem very young.

"Sorry. I was thinking of somebody else for the moment. That sounds very discourteous also. I must apologize again. What's happened to Lily Haden?"

Sylvia told him briefly the circ.u.mstances of Lily's marriage at Rio. "Does Michael ever talk about her?" she asked.

"Oh no, never!" said Avery. "He's engaged in saving his own soul now. That sounds malicious, but seriously I don't think she was ever more to him than an intellectual landmark. To understand Michael's point of view in all that business you've got to know that he was illegitimate. His father, Lord Saxby, had a romantic pa.s.sion for the daughter of a country parson--a queer, cross-grained old scholar. You remember Arthur Lonsdale? Well, his father, Lord Cleveden, knew the whole history of the affair. Lady Saxby wouldn't divorce him; so they were never married. I suppose Michael brooded over this and magnified his early devotion to Lily in some way or other up to a vow of reparation. I'm quite sure it was a kind of indirect compliment to his own mother. Of course it was all very youthful and foolish--and yet I don't know...." he broke off with a sigh.