Sylvia & Michael Part 3

The nun hastened to her bedside and asked her what she wanted.

"And yet I had the impudence to resent Arthur's treatment of me," she cried.

The nun shook her forefinger at Sylvia and retired again to her table at the end of the ward.

"Why, I deserved a much worse humiliation," Sylvia went on. "And I got it, too. The fact was that when I ate those rose leaves and became a woman again I was so elated really that I thought everything I had done in the shape of an a.s.s had been obliterated by the disenchantment. Ah, how much, how tremendously I deserve the humiliation which that Russian officer inflicted. And then mercifully came this fever on top of it, and I have got to rise from this bed and confront life from an entirely different point of view. I'm going to start from where I was that afternoon in Brompton Cemetery, when I was speculating about the human soul. Obviously, now I look back at it, I was just then beginning to apprehend that I might, after all, possess a soul with obligations to something more permanent than the body it inhabited. What a fool Philip was! If he'd only nurtured my soul instead of my body. If he'd only not bit by bit dried it up to something so small that it became powerless to compete with the arrogant body that held it. I wonder if he's still alive. But of course he's still alive. He's only forty-six now. Really I'd like to write and explain what happened. However, he'd only laugh--he was always so very contemptuous of souls. Anyway, nothing will ever induce me to believe that my soul hasn't grown in the most extraordinary way during this fever. What a triumph she has had over her poor body. Where's that looking-gla.s.s?"

She called to the nun and begged her to bring the looking-gla.s.s again.

The nun brought it and tried to console Sylvia for the loss of her hair.

"But I'm rejoicing in it," Sylvia declared. "I'm rejoicing in the sight I present to the world. Look here, can't you sit down beside me and tell me something about your religion? I'm absolutely bursting for a revelation. You fast, don't you, and spend long nights and days in prayer? Well, I am in the sort of condition in which you find yourself at the end of a long bout of fasting and prayer. I'm as light as a feather. I could achieve levitation with very little difficulty."

The nun regarded Sylvia in perplexity.

"Have you thanked Almighty G.o.d for your recovery?" she asked.

"No, of course I haven't. I can't thank somebody I know nothing about,"

said Sylvia impatiently. "Besides, it's no good thanking G.o.d for my recovery unless I am sure I ought to be grateful. Mere living for the sake of living seems to me as sensual as any other appet.i.te. Sister, can't you give me the key to life?"

The nun sheltered herself beneath an array of pious phrases; she was like a person who has been surprised naked and hurriedly flings on all the clothes in reach.

"All that you're saying means nothing to me," said Sylvia, sadly. "And the reason of it is that you've never lived. You've only looked at evil from the outside; you've only heard of unbelief."

"I'll make a Novena for you," said the nun, hopelessly. She said it in the same way as she would have offered to knit a woolen vest. "To-day is the a.s.sumption." It was as if she justified the woolen vest by a change in the weather.

Sylvia thanked her for the Novena just as she would have thanked her for the woolen vest.

"Or perhaps you'd like a priest?" the nun suggested.

Sylvia shook her head.

"I don't feel I require professional treatment yet," she said. "Don't look so sad, little Sister. I expect your Novena will help me to what I'm trying to find--if I'm trying to find anything," she added, pensively. "I think really I'm waiting to be found."

The nun retired disconsolate; the next day Sylvia's spiritual problems vanished before the problem of getting up for the first time, of wavering across the ward and collapsing into a wicker chair among three other convalescent patients who were talking and sewing in the sunlight.

The uniformity of their gray shawls and gray dressing-gowns made Sylvia pay more attention to the faces of her fellow-sufferers than she might otherwise have done; she sat in silence for a while, exhausted by her progress across the ward, and listened to their conversation, which was carried on in French, though as far as she could make out none of them was of French nationality. Presently a young woman with a complexion like a slightly shriveled apple turned to Sylvia and asked in her own language if she were not English.

Sylvia nodded.

"I'm English, too. It's pleasant to meet a fellow-countrywoman here.

What are you going to do about the war?"

"I don't suppose much action on my part will make any difference," said Sylvia, with a laugh. "I don't suppose I could stop it, however hard I tried."

The Englishwoman laughed because she evidently wanted to be polite; but it was mirthless laughter, like an actor's at rehearsal, a mere sound that was required to fill in a gap in the dialogue.

"Of course not," she agreed. "I was wondering if you would go back to England as soon as you got out of hospital."

"I shall if I can rake together the money for my fare," Sylvia said.

"Oh, won't your family pay your fare back? Didn't you get that in the agreement?"

"I don't possess a family," Sylvia said.

"Oh, aren't you a governess? How funny!"

"It would be very much funnier if I was," said Sylvia.

"My name is Eva Savage. What's yours?"

Sylvia hesitated a moment and then plunged.

"Sylvia Snow."

Immediately afterward, with an access of timidity, she supplemented this by explaining that on the stage she called herself Sylvia Scarlett.

"On the stage," repeated the little governess. "Are you on the stage?

You are lucky."

Sylvia looked at her in surprise, and realized how much younger she was than a first glance at her led one to suppose.

"I came out to Russia when I was nineteen," Miss Savage went on. "And of course that's better than staying in England to teach, though I hate teaching."

Sylvia asked how old she was now, and when she heard that she was only twenty-four she decided that illness must be the cause of that shriveled rosy skin that made her look like an old maid of fifty.

They talked for a while of their illness and compared notes, but it seemed that Miss Savage must have had a mild attack, for she had been brought into the hospital some time after Sylvia and had already been up a week.

"I'm going to ask the Sister in charge to let me sleep in the bed next to yours," said Miss Savage. "After all, we're the only two English girls here."

Sylvia did not feel at all sure that she liked this plan, but she did not want to hurt her companion's feelings and agreed without enthusiasm.

Presently she asked if the other two women spoke English, and Miss Savage told her that one was a German-Swiss, the wife of a pastry-cook called Benzer, and that the other was a Swedish ma.s.seuse; she did not think that either of them spoke English, but added in a low voice that they were both very common.

"Interesting?"

"No, common, awfully common," Miss Savage insisted.

Sylvia made a gesture of impatience: her countrywomen always summed up humanity with such complacent facility. At this moment a little girl of about thirteen, habited like the rest in a gray shawl, came tripping down the ward, clapping her hands with glee.

"How lovely war is!" she cried in French. "I am longing to be out of hospital. I've been in the other ward, and through the window I saw thousands and thousands of soldiers marching past. _Maman_ cried yesterday when I asked her why _papa_ hated soldiers. He hates them.

Whenever he sees them marching past he shakes his fist and spits. But I love them."

This child had endeared herself to the invalids of the hospital; she was a token of returning health, the boon of which she seemed to pledge to every one in the company. Even the grim Swedish ma.s.seuse smiled and spoke gently to her in barbaric French. Moreover, here in this quiet hospital the war had not yet penetrated; it was like a far-distant thunder-storm which had driven a number of people who were out of doors to take shelter at home; as Miss Savage said to Sylvia:

"I expect everybody got excited and afraid; yet it all seems very quiet, really, and I shall stay here with my family. There's no point in _making_ oneself uncomfortable."

Sylvia agreed with Miss Savage and decided not to worry about her fare back to England, but rather to stay on for a while in Russia and get up her strength after leaving the hospital; then when she had spent her money she should work again, and when this war was over she could return to Mulberry Cottage with one or two Improvisations added to her repertory. Now that she was out of bed, life seemed already simple again, and perhaps she had exaggerated the change in herself; she wished she had not spoken to the nun so intimately; one of the disadvantages of being ill was this begetting of an intimacy between the nurse and the patient, which grows out of bodily dependence into mental servitude; it was easy to understand why men so often married their nurses.

"I am not sure," said Sylvia to herself, "that the right att.i.tude is not the contempt of the healthy animal for one of its kind who is sick.

There's a sort of sterile sensuality about nursing and being nursed."