Sinister Street Volume Ii Part 88

Mulberry Cottage was just the bower of greenery that Michael had supposed he would find in early June.

"Actually roses," he exclaimed. "Or at least there will be very soon."

"Oh, yes. Glory de Die-Johns. That was always Pa's favorite. That and a good snooze of a Sunday afternoon was about what he cared most for in this world. But my Captain he used to like camellias, and gardenias of course--oh, he had a very soft corner in his heart for a nice gardenia.

Ah dear, what a masher he was to be sure!"

Sylvia had evidently seen them walking up the garden path, for leaning over the railings of the balcony she was waiting for them.

"Here's quite a stranger come to see you," said Mrs. Gainsborough, with a propitiatory glance in Sylvia's direction.

"I rather want to have a talk with you," said Michael, and he, too, found himself rather annoyingly adopting a deprecating manner.

Sylvia came slowly down the balcony steps.

"I suppose you want my help," she said, and her underlip had a warning out-thrust.

"I'll get on with my fal-lals," Mrs. Gainsborough muttered, and she bundled herself quickly indoors.

Sylvia and Michael sat down on the garden-seat under the mulberry tree whose leaves were scarcely yet uncurling. Michael found a great charm in sitting close to Sylvia like this: she and Stella both possessed a capacity for bracing him that he did not find in anyone else. Sylvia was really worth quarreling with; but it would be very delightful to be friends with her. He had never liked a person so much whom he had so little reason to like. He could not help thinking that in her heart Sylvia must like him. It was a strangely provocative fancy.

"Lily and I have parted," he began at once.

"And why do you suppose that piece of information will interest me?"

Sylvia asked.

Michael was rather taken aback. When he came to consider it, there did seem no good reason why Sylvia should any longer be interested after the way in which Lily had been s.n.a.t.c.hed away from her. He was silent for a moment.

"But it would have interested you a short time ago," he said.

"No doubt," Sylvia agreed. "But luckily for me one of the benefits conferred by my temperament is an ability to throw aside things that have disappointed me, things that have ceased to be useful--and what applies to things applies even more strongly to people."

"You mean to say you've put Lily right out of your life?" Michael exclaimed.

He was shocked by the notion, for he did not realize until this moment how much he had been depending upon Sylvia for peace of mind.

"Haven't you put her out of _your_ life?" she asked, looking round at him sharply. Until this question she had been staring sullenly down at the gra.s.s.

"Well, I had to," said Michael.

"You're bearing up very well under the sad necessity," she sneered.

"I don't know that I am bearing up very well. I don't think that coming to you to talk about it is a special sign of fort.i.tude."

"What do you want me to do?" Sylvia demanded. "Get her back into your life again? Isn't that the phrase you like?"

"Oh, no, that's unimaginable," said Michael. "You see, it was really the second time. Once six years ago, and again now, very much more--more utterly. You said that your temperament enables you to throw off things and people. Mine makes me bow to what I fancy are irremediable strokes of fate."

"Unimaginable! Irremediable! We're turning this interview into a Rossetti sonnet," Sylvia scoffed.

"I was thinking about that poem Jenny to-day. It's funny you should mention Rossetti."

"Impervious youth!" she exclaimed.

"It's hopeless for you to try to wound me with words," Michael a.s.sured her, with grave earnestness. "I was wounded the day before yesterday into complete immunity from small pains."

"I suppose you found her ..."

Michael flushed and gripped her by the wrist.

"No, no, don't say something brutal and beastly!" he stammered. "You know what happened. You prophesied it. Well, I thought you were wrong, and you were right. That's a victory for you. You couldn't wish for me to be more humbled than I am by having to admit that I wasn't strong enough to keep her faithful for six weeks. But we did agree, I think, about one thing." He smiled sadly. "We did agree that she was beautiful.

You were as proud of that as I was, and of course you had a great deal more reason to be proud. You did own her. I never owned her, and isn't that your great objection to the relation between man and woman?"

"What are you trying to make me do?" Sylvia asked.

"I want you to have Lily to live with you again."

"To relieve yourself of all responsibility, I suppose," she said bitterly.

"No, no; why will you persist in ascribing the worst motive to everything I say? Isn't your jealousy fed full enough even yet?"

Sylvia made the garden-seat quiver with an irritable movement.

"You will persist in thinking that jealousy solved all problems," she cried.

"Oh, don't let us turn aside into what isn't very important. You can't care whether I think you're jealous or not."

"I don't care in so far as it is your opinion," Sylvia admitted. "But I object to inaccurate thinking. If your life was spent in a confusion of all moral values as mine is, you would be anxious for a little straightforward computation for a change."

"Perhaps you are right," Michael admitted, "in thinking that I'm asking you to look after Lily to relieve myself of a responsibility. But it's only because I see no chance of doing it in any other way. I mean--it's not laziness on my part. It's a confession of absolute failure."

"In fact, you're throwing yourself on my mercy," Sylvia said.

"Yes; and also her," he added gently.

"Am I such a moral companion--such an enn.o.bling influence?"

"I would sooner think of her under your influence than think of her drifting. What I want you to understand is that I'm not consigning her to you for sentimental reasons. I would sooner that Lily were dragged down by you at a gallop than that she should sink slowly and lazily of her own accord. You have a strong personality. You are well-read. You are quite out of the common, and in the life you have chosen, so far as I have had experience, you are unique."

Sylvia stared in front of her, and Michael waited anxiously for the reply.

"Have you ever read Petronius?" she asked suddenly.

"Yes, but what an extraordinary girl you are--have you ever read Petronius?"

"It's the only book in which anyone in my position with my brains could behold herself. Oh, it is such a nightmare. And life is a nightmare, too. After all, what is life for me? Strange doors in strange houses.

Strange men and strange intimacies. Scenes incredibly grotesque and incredibly beastly. The secret vileness of human nature flung at me. Man revealing himself through individual after individual as utterly contemptible. What can I wors.h.i.+p? Not my own body soiled by my traffic in it. Not any religion I've ever heard of, for in all religions man is set up to be respected. I tell you, my dear eager fool, it is beyond my conception ever, ever, ever to regard a man as higher than a frog, as less repulsive than--ugh! it makes me shudder--but oh, my son, doesn't it make me laugh...." She rocked herself with extravagant mirth for a moment. Then she began again, staring out in front of her intensely, fiercely, speaking with the monotonous voice of a visionary. "So I wors.h.i.+p woman, and in this nightmare city, in this nightmare life, Lily was always beautiful; only beautiful, mind you. I don't want to wors.h.i.+p anything but beauty. I don't care about purity or uprightness, but I must have beauty. And you came blundering along and kidnapped my lovely girl. You came along, thinking you were going to regenerate her, and you can't understand that I'm only able to see you in the shape of a frog.

It does amuse me to hear you talking to me so solemnly and so earnestly and so n.o.bly ... and all the time I can only see a clumsy frog."

"But what has all this to do with Petronius? There's nothing in that romance particularly complimentary to women," Michael argued.