Sylvia & Michael: The later adventures of Sylvia Scarlett. Compton Mackenzie
her chair.
By this time the management thought it would soon lose what it had made that evening and ordered the cabaret to be closed. The girls, who were anxious to escape, ran to be paid for their champagne. Sylvia swayed and nearly fell in the rush; her companion kept her head and exacted from the management every copeck. Then she dragged Sylvia with her to a droshky, put her in, and said good night.
"Tu ne viens pas avec moi?" Sylvia cried.
"Non, non, il faut que j'aille avec lui."
"Avec l'homme qui te regardait du loge?"
"Non, non, avec mon ami."
She gave the address of the pension to the driver and vanished in the confusion. Sylvia fancied that this girl was lost forever, and wept to herself all the way home, but without shedding a single tear; her body was like fire. There was nobody about in the pension when she arrived back; she dragged herself up to her room and lay down on the bed fully dressed. It seemed that all reality was collapsing fast, and she clutched the notes stuffed into her corsage as the only solid fact left to her, the only link between herself and home. Once or twice she vaguely wondered if she were really ill, but her mental state was so much worse than the physical pain that she struggled feebly to quieten her nerves and kept on trying to assure herself that her own unnatural excitement was nothing except the result of the unnatural excitement at the cabaret. She found herself wondering if she were going mad, and trying to piece together the links of the chain that would lead her to the explanation of this madness.
"What could have made me go mad suddenly like this?" she kept moaning.
It seemed that if she could only discover the cause of her madness she should be able to cure it. All her attention was soon taken up in watching little round red devils that kept rising out of the floor beside the bed, little round red devils that swelled and ripened like tomatoes, burst, and vanished. Her faculties concentrated upon discovering a reasonable explanation for such a queer occurrence; many explanations presented themselves, hovered upon the outskirts of her brain, and escaped before they could be stated. There was no doubt in Sylvia's mind that a reasonable explanation existed, and it was tantalizing never to be able to catch it, because it was quite certain that such an explanation would have been very interesting; at any rate, it was a relief to know that there was an explanation and that these devils were not figments of the imagination. As soon as she had settled that they had an objective existence, it became rather amusing to watch them; there was a new variety now that floated about the floor like bubbles before they burst.
Suddenly Sylvia sat up on the bed and listened; the stairs were creaking under the footsteps of some heavy person who was ascending. It must be Carrier. She should go out and call to him; she should like him to see those devils. She went out into the passage dove-gray with the dawn, and called. Ah, it was not Carrier; it was that man who had stared from the box at her friend! She closed the door hurriedly and bolted it; every sensation of being ill had departed from her; she could feel nothing but an unspeakable fear. She put her hand to her forehead; it was dripping wet, and she shivered. The devils were nowhere to be seen; dawn was creeping about the room in a gray mist. The door opened, and the bolt fell with a clatter upon the floor; she shrank back upon the bed, burying her face in the pillow. The intruder clanked up and down the room with his sword, but never spoke a word; at last, Sylvia, finding that it was impossible to shut him out by closing her eyes and ears to his presence, sat up and asked him in French what he wanted and why he had broken into her room like this. All her unnatural mental excitement had died away before this drunken giant who was staring at her from glazed eyes and leaning unsteadily with both hands upon his sword; she felt nothing but an intense physical weariness and a savage desire to sleep.
"Why didn't you wait for me at the cabaret?" the giant demanded, in a thick voice.
Sylvia estimated the distance between herself and the door, and wondered if her aching legs would carry her there quickly enough to escape those huge freckled hands that were silky with golden hairs. Her heart was beating so loudly that she was afraid he would hear it and be angry. "You didn't ask me to wait," she said. "It was my friend whom you wanted. She's still there. You've made a mistake. Why don't you go back and look for her?"
He banged his sword upon the floor angrily.
"A trick! A trick to get rid of me," he muttered. Then he unbuckled his sword, flung it against a chair, and began to unbutton his tunic.
"But you can't stay here," Sylvia cried. "Don't you understand that you've made a mistake? You don't want me. Go away from here."
"Money?" the giant muttered. "Take it."
He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a bundle of notes, and threw them on the bed, after which he took off his tunic.
"You're drunk or mad," Sylvia cried, now more exasperated than frightened. "Go out of my room before I wake up the house."
The giant paid not the least attention, and, seating himself on a chair, bent over to unlace his boots. Sylvia again tried to muster enough strength to rise, but her limbs were growing weaker every moment.
"And if you're not the girl I wanted," said the giant, looking up from his boots, "you're a girl, aren't you? I've paid you, haven't I? A splendid state the world's coming to when a cocotte takes it into her head to argue with a Russian officer who pays her the honor of his attentions. The world's turning upside down. The people must have a lesson. Come, get off that bed and help me undo these boots."
"Do you know that I'm English?" Sylvia said. "You'll find that even Russian officers cannot insult Englishwomen."
"A cocotte has no nationality," the giant contradicted, solemnly. "She is common property. Come, if you had wished to talk, you should have joined my table earlier in the evening. One does not wish to talk when one is sleepy."
The English acrobats slept next door to Sylvia, and she hammered on the partition.
"Are you killing bugs?" the giant asked. "You need not bother. They never disturb me."
Sylvia went on hammering; her arms were getting weaker, and unless help came soon she should faint. There was a tap on the door.
"Come in," she cried. "Come in at once—at once!"
Willie entered in purple silk pajamas, rubbing his eyes.
"Whatever is it, Sylvia?"
"Take this drunken brute out of my room."
"Bobbie! Bobbie!" he called. "Come here, Bobbie! Bobbie! Will you come? You are mean. Oh, there's such a nasty man in Sylvia's room! Oh, he's something dreadful to look at!"
The drunken officer stared at Willie in amazement, trying to make up his mind if he were an alcoholic vision; his judgment was still further shaken by the appearance of Bobbie in pajamas of emerald-green silk.
"Oh, Willie, he's got a sword!" said Bobbie. "Oh, doesn't he look fierce? Oh, he does look fierce! Most alarming I'm sure."
The intruder staggered to his feet.
"Foutez-moi le camp," he bellowed, making a grab for his sword.
"For Heaven's sake get rid of the brute," Sylvia moaned. "I'm too weak to move."
The two young men pirouetted into the middle of the room, as they were wont to pirouette upon the stage, with arms stretched out in a curve from the shoulder and fingers raised mincingly above an imaginary teacup held between the first finger and thumb. When they reached the giant they stopped short to sustain the preliminary pose of a female acrobat; then turning round, they ran back a few steps, turned round again, and with a scream flung themselves upon their adversary; he went down with a crash, and they danced upon his prostrate form like two butterflies over a cabbage.
The noise had wakened the other inhabitants of the pension, who came crowding into Sylvia's room; with the rest was Carrier and they managed to extract from her a vague account of what had happened. The aviator, in a rage, demanded an explanation of his conduct from the officer, who called him a maquereau. Carrier was strong; with help from the acrobats he