Sylvia & Michael: The later adventures of Sylvia Scarlett. Compton Mackenzie
who ate or smoked cigarettes all day and could hardly speak a word of English or French. Their mother, on the contrary, though she had come to Petersburg as a governess thirty-five years ago, and had lived there ever since, could speak hardly any Russian and only very bad French. Mère Gontran's animals were really more accomplished linguists than she, if it was true, as she asserted, that a collie she possessed could say "good-by," "adieu," and "proschai." Sylvia suggested that the Russian salute had really been a sneeze, but Mère Gontran defied her to explain away the English or the French, and was angry at any doubts being cast on what she had heard with her own ears. In addition to Samuel, the talking collie, there was a senile bulldog called James, who on a pillow of his own slept beside Mère Gontran in her bed, which was in a hut two hundred yards away from the house, at the other end of the garden. High up round the walls were hung boxes for nine cats; into these they ascended by ladders, and none of them ever attempted to sleep anywhere but in his own box, an example to the rest of the pension. There were numerous other animals about the place, the most conspicuous of which were a pony and a goat that spent most of their time in the kitchen with the only servant, a stunted Tartar who went muttering about the house and slept in a cupboard under the stairs. Mère Gontran's other great passion was spiritualism; but Sylvia did not have much opportunity to test her truthfulness in this direction, because at first she was more interested in the guests at the pension, accepting Mère Gontran as one accepts a queer fact for future investigation at the right moment.
The outstanding boarder in Sylvia's eyes was a French aviator called Carrier, who had come to give lessons and exhibitions of his skill in Petersburg. He was a great bluff creature with a loud voice and what at first seemed a boastful manner, until one realized that his brag was a kind of game which he was playing with fate. Underneath it all there lay a deep melancholy and a sense of always being very near to death; but since he would have considered the least hint of this a disgraceful play of cowardice, he was careful to cover what he might do with what he had done, which was, even allowing for brag, a great deal. It was only when Sylvia took the trouble to make friends with him that he revealed to her his fierce ambition to finish with flying as soon as possible, and with the money he had made to buy a little farm in the country.
"Tu sais, la terre vaut mieux que le ciel," he told her.
He was superstitious, and boasted loudly of his materialism; venturing upon what was still largely an unknown element, he relied upon mascots, while preserving a profound contempt for God.
"I've not ever seen him yet," he used to say, "though I've flown higher than anybody."
His chest of drawers was covered with small talismans, some the pledges of fortune given him by ladies, others picked up in significant surroundings or conditions of mind. He wore half a dozen rings, not one of which was worth fifty francs, but all of which were endowed with protective qualities. By the scapulars and medals he carried round his neck he should have been the most pietistic of men, but however sacred their inscriptions, they counted with him as merely more portable guaranties than the hideous little monkeys and mandarins that littered his room.
"When I've finished," he told Sylvia, "I shall throw all this away. When I'm digging in the good earth, my mascot will be my spade, nothing else, je t'assure."
Sylvia asked him why he had ever taken up flying.
"When I was small I adored my bécane; afterward I adored my automobile. On arrive comme ça. Ah, if the fools hadn't invented biplanes, how happy I should be."
Then perhaps a few moments later he would find himself in the presence of an audience, and one heard him at his boasting:
"Bigre! I am sorry for the man who cannot fly. One has not lived if one has not flown. The clouds! One would say a feather-bed beneath. To-morrow I shall loop the loop at five thousand mètres. One might say that all Petersburg will be regarding me."
There were two young acrobatic jugglers staying at the pension, who performed some extremely dangerous acts, but who performed them with such ease that they seemed like nothing, especially as the acrobats themselves were ladylike to a ludicrous degree.
"Oh, Bobbie, say, wouldn't it be fine to fly? Would you be terribly frightened? I should. Oh, I should be frightened."
"Don't you ever feel s-sick?" Bobbie asked the aviator.
For these two young men Carrier reserved his most hair-raising tales, which always ended in Willie's saying to Bobbie:
"Oh, Bobbie, I s-s-imply can't listen to any more. So now! Oh, it does make me feel so funny! Doesn't it you, Bobbie?"
Then arm in arm, giggling like two girls, they used to trip out of hearing, and Carrier would spit in bewilderment. Once he invited Bobbie to accompany him on a flight, at which Willie screamed, flung his arms round Bobbie's neck and created a scene. Yet that same evening they both balanced themselves with lamps on a high ladder, until the audience actually stopped eating for a moment and held its breath.
Sylvia found the long hours of the cabaret very fatiguing; even in old days she had never thought the life anything but the most cruel exaction made by the rich man for his pleasure. She was determined to survive the strain that was being put upon her, but she had moments of depression during which she saw herself going under with the female slaves round her. Her fatigue was increased by having to take the long tram-ride to the cabaret, when the smell of her fellow-passengers was a torture; she could not afford, however, to pay the fare of a droshky twice in one day, and she did not always find somebody to pay for her drive home. The contract with the management stipulated that she should be released from her nightly task at three o'clock; but she was very often kept until five o'clock when the champagne was flowing and when it would have been criminal in the eyes of the management to break up a profitable party. She found that the four hundred and fifty francs a month was not enough to keep her in Petersburg; it had sounded a reasonably large salary in Paris, but it barely paid the board at Mère Gontran's; she was, therefore, dependent for everything above this on the commission of about five francs she received on each bottle of champagne opened under her patronage. Fortunately it seemed to give pleasure to the wild frequenters of this cabaret when a bottle was knocked over on the floor; yet with every device it was not always possible to escape drinking too much.
One day at the beginning of July, Sylvia discussed the future with Carrier, and he advised her to surrender and return to England; he even offered to lend her the money for the fare. It was a hot day, and she had a bad headache; she called it a headache, but it was less local than that: her whole body ached beneath a weight of despair. Sylvia had taken Carrier into her confidence about her broken marriage and explained why it was impossible to return to England yet awhile; he contested all her arguments, and in the mood that she was in she gave way to him. They spoke in French, and arguments always seemed more incontestable in a language that refused to allow anything in the nature of a vague explanation; besides, her own body was responding against her will to the logic of surrender.
"Pride is all very well," said Carrier. "I am proud of being the greatest aviator of the moment, but if I fall and smash myself to pulp, what becomes of my pride? It's impossible for you to lead the life you are leading now without debasing yourself, and then where will your pride be? Listen to me. You have been at the cabaret very little over a month, and already it is telling upon you. It is very good that you are able even for so long to keep men at a distance, but are you keeping them at a distance? For me it is the same thing logically if you drink with men or—" He shrugged his shoulders. "You sell your freedom in either case. N'est pas que j'ai raison, ma petite Sylvie? For me it would be a greater pride to return to England and walk with my head in the air and laugh at the world. Besides, you have a je ne sais quoi that will prevent the world from laughing, but if you continue you will have nothing. When I fall and smash myself to pulp, I sha'n't care about the world's laughter. Nor will you."
Indeed he was right, Sylvia thought. That first impulse of defiance seemed already like a piece of petulance, the gesture of a spoiled child.
"And you will let me, as a good copain, lend you the money for your fare back?"
"No," Sylvia said. "I think I can just manage to earn it by going once more to-night