"You and I are one of the 'also rans,'" Sylvia told Lily. "The great man eyed me with positive dislike."

In the end it was Dorothy Lonsdale who was engaged for the Vanity: she was so much elated that she was reconciled with Lily and told everybody in the dressing-room that she had met a cousin at Oxford, Arthur Lonsdale, Lord Cleveden's son.

"Which side of the road are you related to him?" Sylvia asked. Dorothy blushed, but she pretended not to understand what Sylvia meant, and said quite calmly that it was on her mother's side. She parted with Sylvia and Lily very cordially at Paddington, but she did not invite either of them to come and see her at Lonsdale Road.

Sylvia and Lily stayed together at Mrs. Gowndry's in Finborough Road, for it happened that the final negotiations for Sylvia's divorce from Philip were being concluded and she took pleasure in addressing her communications from the house where she had been living when he first met her. Philip was very anxious to make her an allowance, but she declined it; her case was undefended. Lily and she managed to get an engagement in another touring company, which opened in August somewhere on the south coast. About this time Sylvia read in a paper that Jimmy Monkley had been sentenced to three years' penal servitude for fraud, and by an odd coincidence in the same paper she read of the decree nisi made absolute that set Philip and herself free. Old a.s.sociations seemed to be getting wound up. Unfortunately, the new ones were not promising; no duller collection of people had surely ever been gathered together than the company in which she was working at present. Not only was the company tiresome, but Sylvia and Lily failed to meet anywhere on the tour one amusing person. To be sure, Lily thought that Sylvia was too critical, and therefore so alarming that several "nice boys" were discouraged too early in their acquaintanceship for a final judgment to be pa.s.sed upon them.

"The trouble is," said Sylvia, "that at this rate we shall never make our fortunes. I stipulate that, if we adopt a gay life, it really will be a gay life. I don't want to have soul-spasms and internal wrestles merely for the sake of being bored."

Sylvia tried to produce Lily as a dancer; for a week or two they worked hard at imitations of the cla.s.sical school, but very soon they both grew tired of it.

"The nearest we shall ever get to jingling our money at this game," Sylvia said, "is jingling our landlady's ornaments on the mantelpiece. Lily, I think we're not meant for the stage. And yet, if I could only find my line, I believe.... I believe.... Oh, well, I can't, and so there's an end of it. But look here, winter's coming on. We've got nothing to wear. We haven't saved a penny. Ruin stares us in the face. Say something, Lily; do say something, or I shall scream."

"I don't think we ought to have eaten those plums at dinner. They weren't really ripe," Lily said.

"Well, anyhow, that solves the problem of the moment. Put your things on. You'd better come out and walk them off."

They were playing in Eastbourne that week, where a sudden hot spell had prolonged the season farther into September than usual; a new company of entertainers known as "The Highwaymen" was attracting audiences almost as large as in the prime of summer. Sylvia and Lily paused to watch them from the tamarisks below the Marina.

Suddenly Sylvia gave an exclamation.

"I do believe that's Claude Raglan who's singing now. Do you remember, Lily, I told you about the Pink Pierrots? I'm sure it is."

Presently the singer came round with the bag and a packet of his picture post-cards. Sylvia asked if he had a photograph of Claude Raglan. When he produced one she dug him in the ribs, and cried: "Claudie, you consumptive a.s.s, don't you recognize me? Sylvia."

He was delighted to see her again, and willingly accepted an invitation to supper after the show, if he might bring a friend with him.

"Jack Airdale--an awfully decent fellow. Quite a good voice, too, though I think from the point of view of the show it's a mistake to have a high barytone when they've already got a tenor. However, he does a good deal of accompanying. In fact, he's a much better accompanist than he is singer."

"I suppose you've got more girls than ever in love with you, now you wear a mask?" said Sylvia.

Claude seemed doubtful whether to take this remark as a compliment to his voice or as an insult to his face. Finally he took it as a joke and laughed.

"Just the same, I see," he said. "Always chaffing a fellow."

Claude Raglan and Jack Airdale came to supper in due course. Sylvia liked Jack; he was a round-faced young man in the early twenties, with longish light hair that flopped all over his face when he became excited. Sylvia and he were good friends immediately and made a great deal of noise over supper, while Claude and Lily looked at each other.

"How's the consumption, Claudie?" Sylvia asked.

Claude sighed with a soulful glance at Lily's delicate form.

"Don't imagine she's sympathizing with you," Sylvia cried. "She's only thinking about plums."

"He's grown out of it," Airdale said. "Look at the length of his neck."

"I have to wear these high collars. My throat...." Claude began.

"Oh, shut up with your ailments," Sylvia interrupted.

"Hear, hear," Airdale shouted. "Down with ailments," and he threw a cushion at Claude.

"I wish you wouldn't behave like a clown," said Claude, smoothing his ruffled hair and looking to see if Lily was joining in the laugh against him.

Presently the conversation turned upon the prospects of the two girls for next winter, about which Sylvia was very pessimistic.

"Why don't we join together and run a street show--Pierrot, Pierrette, Harlequin, and Columbine?" Airdale suggested. "I'll swear there's money in it."

"About enough to pay for our coffins," said Claude. "Sing out of doors in the winter? My dear Jack, you're mad."

Sylvia thought the idea was splendid, and had sketched out Lily's Columbine dress before Lily herself had realized that the conversation had taken a twist.

"Light-blue crepe de Chine with bunches of cornflowers for Columbine. Pierrette in dark blue with bunches of forget-me-nots, Pierrot in light blue. Silver and dark-blue lozenges for Harlequin."

"Paregoric lozenges would suit Claude better," said Airdale. "O Pagliacci! Can't you hear him? No, joking apart, I think it would be a great effort. We sha'n't have to sing much outside. We shall get invited into people's houses."

"Shall we?" Claude muttered.

"And if the show goes," Airdale went on, "we might vary our costumes. For instance, we might be Baccha.n.a.ls in pink fleshings and vine leaves."

"Vine leaves," Claude e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Vine Street more likely."

"Don't laugh, old boy, with that lung of yours," said Airdale, earnestly.

In the end, before the company left Eastbourne, it was decided, notwithstanding Claude's lugubrious prophecies, to launch the enterprise; when the tour broke up in December Sylvia had made dresses both for Lily and for herself as she had first planned them with an eye only for what became Lily. Claude's hypochondria was appeased by letting him wear a big patchwork cloak over his harlequin's dress in which white lozenges had been subst.i.tuted for silver ones, owing to lack of money. They hired a small piano very much like the one that belonged to the Pink Pierrots, and on Christmas Eve they set out from Finborough Road, where Claude and Jack had rooms near Mrs. Gowndry's. They came into collision with a party of carol-singers who seemed to resent their profane compet.i.tion, and, much to Jack Airdale's disappointment, they were not invited into a single house; the money taken after three hours of wandering music was one shilling and fivepence in coppers.

"Never mind," said Jack. "We aren't known yet. It's a pity we didn't start singing last Christmas Eve. We should have had more engagements than we should have known what to do with this year."

"We must build up the show for next year," Sylvia agreed, enthusiastically.

"I shall sing the 'Lost Chord' next year," Claude answered. "They may let me in, if I worry them outside heaven's gates, to hear that last Amen."

Jack and Sylvia were justified in their optimism, for gradually the Carnival Quartet, as they called themselves, became known in South Kensington, and they began to get engagements to appear in other parts of London. Jack taught Sylvia to vamp well enough on the guitar to accompany herself in duets with him; Claude looked handsome in his harlequin's dress, which prosperity had at last endowed with silver lozenges; Lily danced actively enough for the drawing-rooms in which they performed; Sylvia, inspired by the romantic exterior of herself and her companions, invented a mime to the music of Schumann's "Carnival" which Jack Airdale played, or, as Claude said, maltreated.

The Quartet showed signs of increasing vitality with the approach of spring, and there was no need to think any more of touring in musical comedy, which was a relief to Sylvia. When summer came, they agreed to keep together and work the South Coast.

However, all these plans came suddenly to nothing, because one misty night early in March Harlequin and Columbine lost Pierrot and Pierrette on the way home from a party in Chelsea; a brief note from Harlequin to Pierrot, which he found when he got home, indicated that the loss should be considered permanent.

This treachery was a shock to Sylvia, and she was horrified at herself for feeling it so deeply. Ever since that day in Oxford when Lily had sobbed out her griefs, Sylvia had concentrated upon her all the capacity for affection which had begun to blossom during the time she was with Philip and which had been cut off ruthlessly with everything else that belonged to life with him. She knew that she should have foreseen the possibility, nay the probability, of this happening, but she had charmed herself with the romantic setting of their musical adventure and let all else go.

"I'm awfully sorry, Sylvia," said Jack; "I ought to have kept a better lookout on Claude."

"It's not your fault, old son. But, O G.o.d! why can't four people stay friends without muddling everything up with this accursed love?"

Jack was sympathetic, but it was useless to confide in him her feeling for Lily; he would never understand. She would seem to him so little worth while; for him the behavior of such a one meant less than the breaking of a porcelain figure.

"It did seem worth while," Sylvia said to herself, that night, "to keep that frail and lovely thing from this. It was my fault, of course, for I knew both Lily and Claude through and through. Yet what does it matter? What a fool I am. It was absurd of me to imagine we could go on forever as we were. I don't really mind about Lily; I'm angry because my conceit has been wounded. It serves me right. But that dirty little actor won't appreciate her. He's probably sick of her easiness already. Oh, why the h.e.l.l am I not a man?"

Presently, however, Sylvia's mood of indignation burned itself out; she began to attribute the elopement of Claude and Lily to the characters they had a.s.sumed of Harlequin and Columbine, and to regard the whole affair as a scene from a play which must not be taken more deeply to heart than with the pensive melancholy that succeeds the fall of the curtain on mimic emotions. After all, what had Lily been to her more than a puppet whose actions she had always controlled for her pleasure until she was stolen from her? Without Lily she was once more at a loose end; there was the whole history of her sorrow.

"I can't think what they wanted to run away for," said Jack. Sylvia fancied the flight was the compliment both Harlequin and Columbine had paid to her authority.

"I don't find you so alarming," he said.

"No, old son, because you and I have always regarded the Quartet from a strictly professional point of view, and consequently each other. Meanwhile the poor old Quartet is done in. We two can't sustain a program alone."

Airdale gloomily a.s.sented, but thought it would be well to continue for a week or so, in case Claude and Lily came back.

"I notice you take it for granted that I'll be willing to continue busking with them," Sylvia said.

That evening Airdale and she went out as usual; but the loss of the other two seemed somehow to have robbed the entertainment of its romantic distinction, and Sylvia was dismayed to find with what a shameful timidity she now took herself and her guitar into saloon-bars; she felt like a beggar and was humiliated by Jack's apologetic manner, and still more by her own instinctive support of such cringing to the benevolence of potmen and barmaids.

One evening, after about a week of these distasteful peregrinations, the two mountebanks came out of a public house in Fulham Road where they had been forced to endure a more than usually intolerable patronage. Sylvia vowed she would not perform again under such conditions, and they turned up Tinderbox Lane to wander home. This thoroughfare, only used by pedestrians, was very still, and trees planted down the middle of the pavement gave to the mild March evening an effluence of spring. Sylvia began to strum upon her guitar the tune that Arthur Madden and she sang together from the windows at Hampstead on the night she met him first; her companion soon caught hold of the air, and they strolled slowly along, dreaming, she looking downward of the past, he of the future with his eyes fixed on the chimneys of the high flats that encircled the little houses and long gardens of Tinderbox Lane. They were pa.s.sing a wall on their right in which numbered doors were set at intervals. From one of these a tall figure emerged and stopped a moment to say good-by to somebody standing in the entrance. The two musicians with a simultaneous instinct for an audience that might appreciate them stopped and addressed their song to the parting pair, a tall old gentleman with drooping gray whiskers, very much m.u.f.fled up, and an exceedingly stout woman of ripe middle age.

"Bravo!" said the old gentleman, in a tremulous voice, as he tapped his cane on the pavement. "Polly, this is devilish appropriate. By gad! it makes me feel inclined to dance again, Polly," and the old gentleman forthwith postured with his thin legs like a cardboard antic at the end of a string. The fat woman standing in the doorway came out into the lamplight, and clasping her hands in alarm, begged him not to take cold, but the old gentleman would not stop until Polly had made a pretense of dancing a few steps with him, after which he again piped, "Bravo," vowed he must have a whisky, and invited Sylvia and Jack to come inside and join them.

"Dashwood is my name, Major-General Dashwood, and this is Mrs. Gainsborough."

"Come along," said Mrs. Gainsborough. "The captain--"

"She will call me Captain," said the general, with a chuckle. "Obstinate gal! Knew me first when I was a captain, thirty-six years ago, and has never called me anything since. What a woman, though!"

"He's very gay to-night. We've been celebrating our anniversary," Mrs. Gainsborough explained, while the four of them walked along a gravel path toward a small square creeper-covered house at the end of a very long garden.

"We met first at the Argyll Rooms in March, 1867, and in September, 1869, Mulberry Cottage was finished. I planted those mulberry-trees myself, and they'll outlive us both," said the general.

"Now don't let's have any more dismals," Mrs. Gainsborough begged. "We've had quite enough to-night, talking over old times."

Mulberry Cottage was very comfortable inside, full of mid-Victorian furniture and ornaments that suited its owner, who, Sylvia now perceived by the orange lamplight, was even fatter than she had seemed at first. Her hair, worn in a chignon, was black, her face was rosy and large, almost monumental, with a plinth of chins.

The general so much enjoyed having a fresh audience for his tales, and sat so long over the whisky, that Mrs. Gainsborough became worried.

"Bob, you ought to go. You know I don't like to argue before strangers, but your sister will be getting anxious. Miss Dashwood's quite alone," she explained to her guests. "I wonder if you'd mind walking back with him?" she whispered to Sylvia. "He lives in Redcliffe Gardens. That's close to you, isn't it?"

"If we can have music all the way, by gad! of course," said the general, standing up so straight that Sylvia was afraid he would b.u.mp his head on the ceiling.

"Now, Bob dear, don't get too excited and do keep your m.u.f.fler well wrapped round your throat."

The general insisted on having one more gla.s.s for the sake of old times, and there was a short delay in the garden, because he stuck his cane fast in the ground to show the size of the mulberry-trees when he planted them, but ultimately they said good night to Mrs. Gainsborough, upon whom Sylvia promised to call next day, and set out for Redcliffe Gardens to the sound of guitars.

General Dashwood turned round from time to time to shake his cane at pa.s.sers-by that presumed to stare at the unusual sight of an old gentleman, respectable in his dress and demeanor, escorted down Fulham Road by two musicians.

"Do you see anything so d.a.m.ned odd in our appearance?" he asked Sylvia.

"Nothing at all," she a.s.sured him.

"Sensible gal! I've a very good mind to knock down the next scoundrel who stares at us."

Presently the general, on whom the fresh air was having an effect, took Sylvia's arm and grew confidential.

"Go on playing," he commanded Jack Airdale. "I'm only talking business. The fact is," he said to Sylvia, "I'm worried about Polly. Hope I shall live another twenty years, but fact is, my dear, I've never really got over that wound of mine at Balaclava. Damme! I've never been the same man since."

Sylvia wondered what he could have been before.

"Naturally she's well provided for. Bob Dashwood always knew how to treat a woman. No wife, no children, you understand me? But it's the loneliness. She ought to have somebody with her. She's a wonderful woman, and she was a handsome gal. Damme! she's still handsome--what? Fifty-five you know. By gad, yes. And I'm seventy. But it's the loneliness. Ah, dear, if the G.o.ds had been kind; but then she'd have probably been married by now."

The general blew his nose, sighed, and shook his head. Sylvia asked tenderly how long the daughter had lived.

"Never lived at all," said the general, stopping dead and opening his eyes very wide, as he looked at Sylvia. "Never was born. Never was going to be born. Hale and hearty, but too late now, damme! I've taken a fancy to you. Sensible gal! d.a.m.ned sensible. Why don't you go and live with Polly?"

In order to give Sylvia time to reflect upon her answer, the general skipped along for a moment to the tune that Jack was playing.

"Nothing between you and him?" he asked, presently, indicating Jack with his cane.

Sylvia shook her head.

"Thought not. Very well, then, why don't you go and live with Polly? Give you time to look round a bit. Understand what you feel about playing for your bread and b.u.t.ter like this. Finest thing in the world music, if you haven't got to do it. Go and see Polly to-morrow. I spoke to her about it to-night. She'll be delighted. So shall I. Here we are in Redcliffe Gardens. d.a.m.ned big house and only myself and my sister to live in it. Live there like two needles in a haystack. Won't ask you in. d.a.m.ned inhospitable, but no good because I shall have to go to bed at once. Perhaps you wouldn't mind pressing the bell? Left my latch-key in me sister's work-basket."

The door opened, and the general, after bidding Sylvia and Jack a courteous good night, marched up his front-door steps with as much martial rigidity as he could command.

On the way back to Finborough Road, Sylvia, who had been attracted to the general's suggestion, postponed raising the question with Jack by telling him about her adventure in Redcliffe Gardens when she threw the bag of chestnuts through the window. She did not think it fair, however, to make any other arrangement without letting him know, and before she went to see Mrs. Gainsborough the next day she announced her idea and asked him if he would be much hurt by her backing out of the busking.

"My dear girl, of course not," said Jack. "As a matter of fact, I've had rather a decent offer to tour in a show through the East. I should rather like to see India and all that. I didn't say anything about it, because I didn't want to let you down. However, if you're all right, I'm all right."

Mrs. Gainsborough by daylight appealed to Sylvia as much as ever. She told her what the general had said, and Mrs. Gainsborough begged her to come that very afternoon.

"The only thing is," Sylvia objected, "I've got a friend, a girl, who's away at present, and she might want to go on living with me."

"Let her come too," Mrs. Gainsborough cried. "The more the merrier. Good Land! What a set-out we shall have. The captain won't know himself. He's very fond of me, you know. But it would be more jolly for him to have some youngsters about. He's that young. Upon my word, you'd think he was a boy. And he's always the same. Oh, dearie me! the times we've had, you'd hardly believe. Life with him was a regular circus."

So it was arranged that Sylvia should come at once to live with Mrs. Gainsborough in Tinderbox Lane, and Jack went off to the East.

The general used to visit them nearly every afternoon, but never in the evening.

"Depend upon it, Sylvia," Mrs. Gainsborough said, "he got into rare hot water with his sister the other night. Of course it was an exception, being our anniversary, and I dare say next March, if we're all spared, he'll be allowed another evening. It's a great pity, though, that we didn't meet first in June. So much more seasonable for jollifications. But there, he was young and never looked forward to being old."

The general was not spared for another anniversary. Scarcely a month after Sylvia had gone to live with Mrs. Gainsborough, he died very quietly in the night. His sister came herself to break the news, a frail old lady who seemed very near to joining her brother upon the longest journey.

"She'll never be able to keep away from him," Mrs. Gainsborough sobbed. "She'll worry and fret herself for fear he might catch cold in his coffin. And look at me! As healthy and rosy as a great radish!"

The etiquette of the funeral caused Mrs. Gainsborough considerable perplexity.

"Now tell me, Sylvia, ought I or ought I not to wear a widow's veil? Miss Dashwood inviting me in that friendly way, I do want to show that I appreciate her kindness. I know that strictly we weren't married. I dare say nowadays it would be different, but people was much more old-fashioned about marrying ballet-girls when I was young. Still, it doesn't seem hardly decent for me to go gallivanting to his funeral in me black watered silk, the same as if I were going to the upper boxes of a theater with Mrs. Marsham or Mrs. Beardmore."

Sylvia told Mrs. Gainsborough that in her opinion a widow's cap at the general's funeral would be like the dash of mauve at the wedding in the story. She suggested the proper thing to do would be to buy a new black dress unprofaned by visits to the upper boxes.

"If I can get such an out size in the time," Mrs. Gainsborough sighed, "which is highly doubtful."

However, the new dress was obtained, and Mrs. Gainsborough went off to the funeral at Brompton.