"Now there are people who pass from drug to drug with increase of pleasure, but there are others to whom the notion of being drugged becomes suddenly obnoxious and in whom the reaction creates an abnormal activity. Quite suddenly I abandoned my pleasure and became ambitious to express myself in art. I succeeded. I was, for one who begins so late in life, exceptionally successful, and then behold, my very success took on the aspect of yielding to another sedative drug. It never seemed anything but a temporary expedient to defeat the claims of existence. Just as love had seemed a surrender to the exclusively feminine side of me, so art seemed a surrender to the exclusively masculine side. There was always an unsatisfied, unexpressed part of me that girded at the satisfied part. As a result of this, I made up my mind that a happy marriage with children and a household to look after was a better thing than artistic success. Here was obviously another experiment for the benefit of the feminine side. I knew perfectly well that if I had carried out my intention I should not have remained content when the sedative action of the new drug began to cease, and I am grateful now that circumstances interfered. I was jilted by the man who was going to marry me, and the fact that I had already lived with him and refused to marry him dozens of times made the injury to my pride intolerable. In a fit of rage I flung behind me everything—success, love, marriage, friends—and left England to take up again atthe age of thirty-one a life I had forsaken for several years. And now I found that even the mere externals of such a life were horrible. I could not bear the idea of being for sale; while I had no intention of ever giving myself to a man again, I had to drink for my living and dance with drunkards for my cab fare, which, though it may not be a technical prostitution, differs only in degree from the complete sale of the body.
"Scarcely a month had passed when I became seriously ill, and in the dreadful delirium of my fever I imagined that I was damned. I do not think that anybody has the right to accept seriously the mental revelations that are made to a mind beside itself; I think, indeed, it would be a blasphemy to accuse God of taking such a method to rouse a soul to a sense of its being, its duties, and its dangers; and I dread to claim for myself any supernatural intervention at such a time, partly because my reason shies at such a thought and partly because I think it is presumptuous to suppose that God should interest Himself so peculiarly in an individual. It seems to me almost vulgarly anthropomorphic."
"Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?" the priest murmured.
"Yes, yes," Sylvia agreed. "I have expressed myself badly, and of course when I think of it I have been driven ever since the delirium really to accept just that. You can understand, can't you, the dread of presumption in my revolt against pride?
"But by insisting upon what seemed to happen in my delirium I am giving you a wrong impression. It was when I came to myself again in the hospital that I felt changed. I longed then for knowledge of God, but I was afraid that my feeling was simply the natural result of weakness after a severe illness. I almost rejected God in my fear of supposing myself hysterical and egotistical. However, I did try hard to put myself into a state of resignation,and when I came out of the hospital I felt curiously awake to the sense of God and simultaneously an utter indifference to anything in my old life that might interrupt my quest by restoring me to what I was before this illness. While I was ill war had broken out, and I found myself utterly alone. Ordinarily I am sure that such a discovery would have terrified me; now I rejoiced in such loneliness. I deliberately turned my back on England and waited for something from my new life to fill this loneliness. I felt like some one who has swept and garnished a room that he may receive guests. My chief emotion was a tremendous love of the whole world and an illimitable desire to make up for all my cynicism in the past by the depth of this love. I went back to thepensionwhere I had lived before I was ill, and it seemed to me a coincidence that the woman who kept it should be a spiritualist and that for two months my mind should be continuously occupied by what I might call the magic side of things. The result was that, though I was often puzzled by inexplicable happenings, I conceived a distaste for all this meddling with the unknowable, this kind of keyhole peeping at infinity: it seemed to me vulgar and unpleasant. Nevertheless, I was driven back all the time in my meditations on the only satisfactory revelation of God, the only rational manifestation, which was Jesus Christ. Every other explanation crumbled away in my brain except that one fact. Then, although I believe it was only some fortune-telling with cards that first put the notion into my head, I was obsessed with the idea that I must go south. On my way I met a soldier at Kieff who bought me a golden bag for no other reason than because it seemed to him that to give pleasure to somebody else was a better way of spending his money than in gambling or self-indulgence. In the state of mind I was in I accepted this as a sign that I was right to go south. So you see that I had really arrived at the point of view of accepting the theory of a divine intervention in my favor.
"After three months at Odessa—where I read Tolstoi and Dostoievski and found in them, ah, such profundities of the human soul lighted up—against my instinct I went north again; the Germans were advancing upon Warsaw, and circumstances brought me here. On the way, at Jassy, an extraordinary thing happened. I met a girl whom I had tried to adopt six years ago at Granada, but who was taken from me by a blackguard and who since then has what people call sunk very low. It seemed to me that in finding this child again, for she is still really a child, I was being given an opportunity of doing what I had failed to do for that first girl of whom I told you. Then suddenly I conceived the idea that she had never been baptized; when I began to think about her soul, I was driven by an unknown force to this church. When I came in I did not know what to do, and when you asked me if I wanted to make my confession the force seemed to say 'Yes.'"
Sylvia was silent, and the priest finished theConfiteor, which she repeated after him.
"My daughter," he said, "it is the grace of God. I do not feel that in this solemn moment—a moment that fills me as a priest with humility at being allowed to regard such a wonderful manifestation of God's infinite mercy—any poor words of mine can add anything. It is the grace of God: let that suffice. But, wonderful as has been God's mercy to a soul that was deaf so long to His voice, do not forget that your greatest danger, your greatest temptation, may be to rely too much upon yourself. Do not forget at this solemn moment that you can only enjoy this divine grace through the Sacraments. Do not forget that only in the Church can you preserve the new sense of security that you now feel. One who has been granted such mercy must expect harder struggles than less fortunate souls. Do not, by falling back into indifference and neglect of your religious duties, succumb to the sin of pride. By the height of your uplifting willbe measured the depth of your fall, if in your pride you think to stand alone."
When the priest had given her absolution, Sylvia asked him about Queenie; and when he seemed a little doubtful of Queenie's willingness to be a catechumen, she wondered if he were deliberately trying to discourage her in order to mortify that pride he had seemed to fear so much.
"But if she wants to be baptized?" Sylvia persisted.
"Of course I will baptize her."
"You think that I'm too much occupied with her when I have still so much to learn myself?" she challenged.
They were walking down the church toward the door, and Sylvia felt rather like the importunate parishioner whom she had interrupted by her entrance.
"No, no, I think you are quite right. But I fear that you will expect miracles of God's grace all round you," said the priest. "What has happened to you may not happen to her."
"But it must," Sylvia declared. "It shall."
The priest shook his head, and there was a smile at the back of his eyes.
"If you fail?"
"I sha'n't fail."
"Is God already put on one side?"
"I shall pray," said Sylvia.
"Yes, I think that is almost better than relying too much upon the human will."
Two things struck Sylvia when she had left the church and was walking back to the hotel: the first was that the priest had really said very little in response to that long outpouring of her history, and the second was that here in this street it did not seem nearly as easy to solve the problem of Queenie's soul as it had seemed in the church. Yet, when she came to think over the priest's words, she could not imagine how he could have spoken differently.
"I suppose I expected to be congratulated as one iscongratulated upon a successful performance," she said to herself. "That's the worst of a histrionic career like mine: one can't get rid of the footlights even in the confessional. As a matter of fact, I ought to be grateful that he accepted the spirit of my confession without haggling over the form, as from his point of view he might have done most justifiably. Perhaps he was tired and didn't want to start an argument. And yet no, I don't think it was that. He came down like a hammer on the main objection to me—my pride. He was really wonderfully unecclesiastical. It's a funny thing, but I seem to be much less spiritually exalted than I ought to be after such a reconciliation. I seem to have lost for the moment that first fine careless rapture of conversion. Does that mean that the whole business was an emotional blunder and that I'm feeling disappointed? No, I don't feel disappointed: I feel practical. I suppose my friend the priest wouldn't accept the comparison, but it reminds me of how I felt when, after I had first conceived the idea of my Improvisations, I had to set about doing them. Everything has its drudgery: love produces household cares; art, endless work; religion, religious duties. The moment of attraction, the moment of inspiration, the moment of conversion—if they could only endure! Perhaps heaven is the infinite prolongation of such moments.
"And then there's Queenie. It's not much use my leading her to the font as one leads a horse to water, because, though I should regard it as Infant Baptism, the priest would not. Yet I don't see why he shouldn't instruct her like a child. Poor priest! He could hardly have expected such problems as myself and Queenie when he was so anxious to get rid of that old woman who was pestering him. I think I won't bother about Queenie for a bit, until I have practised a little subordination of myself first. She's got to acquire a soul of her own; it's no use my presenting her with a piece of mine."
Queenie had been back from the hairdresser's for a longtime when Sylvia reached the hotel, and was wondering what had become of her friend.
"You've been out alone," she said, reproachfully. "Your headache is better, I think. Yes?"
"My headache?" Sylvia repeated. "Yes, it's much better. I've been indulging in spiritual aspirin."
"I'm glad it's better, because it is our first night at the Petit Maxim to-night. I wonder if I will be having much applause."
"So it is," Sylvia said. "I'd forgotten my approaching triumph with the waiters; it's not likely that there'll be any audience when I appear. At nineP.M.sharp the program of the Petit Maxim opened with Miss Sylvia Scarlett's three songs. The gifted young lady—I've reached the age when it's a greater compliment to be called young than beautiful—played and sang with muchverve. Several waiters ceased from dusting the empty tables to listen, and at the close her exit was hailed by a loud flourish ofserviettes. The solitary visitor who clapped his hands explained afterward that he was trying to secure some attention to himself, and that thirst, not enthusiasm, had dictated his action."
"How you were always going on, Sylvia," said Queenie. "Nobody was ever going to understand you when you talk so quick as that."
"Miss Sylvia Scarlett's first song was an old English ballad set to the music of Handel's 'Dead March.'"
"If we were ever going to have any dinner, we must go and eat now," Queenie interrupted.
"Yes, I don't want to miss the sunset with my last song."
"But what does it matter, if you are paid to sing, if you sing first or last?"
"The brightest star, my dear, cannot shine by daylight."
"But you are stupid, Sylvia. It is no more daylight at nine o'clock."
"Yes, I am very stupid," Sylvia agreed, and, catching hold of Queenie's arms, she looked deep into her eyes. "Believe me, you little fairy thing, that I should be much more angry if you were put first on a program than because I am."
The cabaret Petit Maxim aimed at expressing in miniature the essence of all the best cabarets in Paris, just as Bucharest aimed at expressing in miniature the essence of Paris. The result, though pleasant and comfortable enough, was in either case as little like Paris as a scene from one of its own light operas is like Vienna. What Bucharest and the Petit Maxim did both manage to effect, however, was an excellent resemblance to one of those light operas. Sylvia in the course of her wanderings had once classified the capitals she had visited as metropolitan, cosmopolitan, and neapolitan. Bucharest belonged very definitely to the last group; it stood up like a substantially built exhibition in the middle of a ring of industrial suburbs which by their real squalor heightened the illusion of its unreality. The cupolas of shining bronze and the tiled domes shimmering in the sun like peacocks' tails dazzled the onlooker with an illusion of barbaric splendor; but the city never escaped from the self-consciousness of an exhibition, which was heightened by the pale blue and silver uniforms of the officers, the splendid equipages for hire, and the policemen dressed in chocolate likecommissionnaires, and accentuated by the inhabitants' pride in the expensiveness and "naughtiness" of their side-shows, of which not the least expensive and "naughty" were the hotels. One might conceive the promoter of the exhibition taking one aside and asking if one did not think he had been successful in giving Paris to the Balkans, and one might conceive his disappointment on being told that, magnificent though it all looked, it was no more Paris than Offenbach was Molière.
At the time when Sylvia visited Bucharest the sense of being one of the chorus in a light opera was intensified bythe dramatic plot that was provided by the European war. Factions always grew more picturesque with every mile away from England, the mother of parliaments, where they ceased to be picturesque three hundred years ago when the chief Punchinello's head tumbled into the basket at Whitehall. The comedy of kingship had been prolonged for another century and a half in France, and in France they were a century and a half nearer to the picturesque and already two or three hundred miles away from England. In Italy the picturesqueness grew still more striking with such anachronisms as the Camorra and the Mafia. But it was not until the Balkans that factions could be said to be vital in the good old way. Serbia had shown not so long ago what could still be done with a thoroughly theatrical regal murder; and now here was Rumania jigging to the manipulation of the French faction and the German faction, with just enough possibility of all the plots and counterplots ending seriously by plunging the country into war on one side or the other to give a background of real drama to the operatic form.
At the Petit Maxim the Montagues and Capulets came to blows nightly. Everything here was either Ententophile or Germanophile: there were pro-German waiters, pro-German tables, pro-German tunes, for the benefit of the Germans and pro-Germans who occupied one half of the cabaret and applauded the Austrian performers. Equally there was the Ententist complement. If the first violin was pro-French and played sharp for an Austrian singer, the cornet was pro-German ready to break time to disconcert a French dancer. On the whole, as was natural in what is called "a center of amusement," the pro-French element predominated, and, though it was possible to sing the "Marseillaise" at the cost of a few broken glasses, the solitary occasion when "Deutschland über Alles" was attempted ended in several broken heads, a smashed chandelier, and six weeks in bed for an Austrian contraltowhose face was scratched with a comb by a Frenchartisteunder the influence of ether and patriotism.
Nor was this atmosphere of plot and faction confined to general demonstrations of friendliness or hostility. Bucharest was too small a city to allow deep ramifications to either party; the gossip of the court on the day before became the gossip of the cabaret on the evening after; scarcely one successful conveyance of war material from Germany to Turkey but was openly discussed at the Petit Maxim. Intrigues and flirtations with the great powers increased the self-esteem of Rumania, who took on the air of a coquettish school-girl that finds herself surrounded by the admiration of half a dozen elderly rakes. Her dowry and good looks seemed both so secure that any little looseness of behavior would always be overlooked by the man she chose to marry in the end.
Sylvia could not help teasing some of the young officers that frequented the Petit Maxim. They changed their exquisite operatic uniforms so many times in the day: they accepted with such sublime effrontery the salute of the goose step from a squad of magnificent peasants dressed up as soldiers; they painted and powdered their faces, wore pink velvet bands round theirképisunder noddingpanaches; and not one but could display upon his breast the ribbon of the bloodless campaign against Bulgaria of two years before. When they came jangling into the cabaret, one felt that the destinies of Europe were attached to their sword-belts, as comfort hangs upon the tinkling of a housekeeper'schâtelaine.
"If Italy declares war, we shall declare war; for we are more Roman than they are. If Italy remains neutral, we shall remain neutral, because the Latin races must hold together," the patrons of the Entente avowed.
"Italy will not declare war, and we shall have to fight the Russians. We won Plevna for them and lost Bessarabia as a reward. As soon as Austria realizes that she must giveus Transylvania we shall declare war," said the patrons of the Central Powers.
"We shall remain neutral. Our neutrality is precious to both sides," murmured a third set.
And, after all, Sylvia thought, the last was probably the wisest view, for it would be a shame to spoil the pretty uniforms of the officers and a crime to maim the bodies of the nobler peasants they commanded.
In such an atmosphere Sylvia had to postpone any solution of the spiritual side of Queenie's problem and concentrate upon keeping her out of immediate mischief. The manager of the Petit Maxim had judged the tastes of his clients accurately, and Queenie had not been dancing at the cabaret for a fortnight when one read on the programs, QUEENIE, LA JEUNE DANSEUSE ANGLAISE ET L'ENFANT GÂTÉE DEBUCURESTI. Chocolates and flowers were showered upon her, and her faintest smile would uncork a bottle of champagne. But every morning at three o'clock, when the cabaret closed, Sylvia snatched her away from all the suitors and took her home as quickly as possible to their hotel. She used to dread nightly the arrival of the moment when Queenie would refuse to go with her, but the moment did not come; and the child never once grumbled at Sylvia's sigh of relief to find themselves back in their own bedroom. In order as much as possible to distract her from the importunities of hopeful lovers, Sylvia would always aim at surrounding herself and Queenie with the political schemers, so that the evening might pass away in speculation upon the future of the war and the imminence of Rumanian intervention. She impressed upon Queenie the necessity of seeming interested in the fate of the country of which she was supposed to be a native. They were the only English girls in the cabaret; in fact, the only English actresses apparently anywhere in Bucharest. Sylvia, finding that man is much more of a political animal in the Balkans than elsewhere, took advantage of the general curiosityabout England's personality to get as many bottles of champagne opened for information from her own lips as out of admiration and desire for Queenie's.
From general political discussions it was a short way to the more intimate discussions of faction's intrigue; and Sylvia became an expert on the ways and means of the swarm of German agents who corrupted Bucharest as blue-bottles taint fresh meat. She sometimes wondered if she ought not to convey some of the knowledge thus acquired to the British Legation; but she supposed, on second thoughts, that she was unlikely to know anything that the authorities therein did not already know much better, and, being averse from seeming to put herself forward for personal advantage, she did not move in the matter.
One of the chief frequenters of their company was a young lieutenant of the cavalry, called Philidor, with whom Sylvia made friends. He was an enthusiast for the cause of the Entente, and she learned from him a great deal about the point of view of a Balkan state, so that when she had known him for a time she was able to judge both Rumania as a whole and the individual extravagances and vanities of Rumanians more generously.
"I don't think you quite understand," he once said to her, "the fearful responsibility that will rest upon the Balkan statesman who decides the policy of his country in this crisis. Whatever happens, England will remain England, France will remain France, Germany will remain Germany; but in Rumania, although our sympathies are with you, our geographical position makes us the natural allies of the Germans. Suppose we march with you and something goes wrong. Nothing can prevent us from being Germanized for the rest of our history. You mustn't pay too much attention to the talk you hear about the great power of Rumania and the influence we shall have upon the course of the war. Such talk springs from a half-expressed nervousness at the position in which we find ourselves. We are trying to bolster ourselves upwith the sense of our own importance in the hope that we shall have the wisdom to direct our policy rightly. We are not a great power; we are a little power; and our only chance of becoming a great power would be that Austria should break up, that Russia should crumble away, and that the whole vile country of Bulgaria should be obliterated from the surface of the earth. It is certain that Bulgaria will march with Germany; nothing can stop that except the defeat of Germany this year. Possibly Italy may come in on your side this spring, but tied as we are to her by blood, we are separated from her by miles of alien populations, and Italy cannot help us. Greece is in the same plight as we are—not quite, perhaps, because she can depend for succor upon the sea: we can't. Ah, if you could only open the Dardanelles! If you only had a statesman to see that there lies the key to certain victory in this war. But statesmen no longer exist among you great powers. You've become too big for statesmen and can only produce politicians. The only statesmen in Europe nowadays are to be found in the Balkans, because since every man here is a politician it requires a statesman to rise above the ruck. Paradox though it may seem, statesmen create states; they are not created by them. We have all our history before us in the Balkans, if we can only survive being swallowed up in this cataclysm; but I doubt if we can. To you this country of mine is like a comic opera, but to me, one of the players, it is as tragic as 'Pagliacci.'
"You are right in a way to mock at our aristocracy, though much of that aristocracy is not truly Rumanian, but bastard Greek; yet we have such a wonderful peasantry, and an idealist like myself dreads the effect of this war. All our plans of emancipation, all our schemes for destroying the power of the great landowners," and in a whisper he added, "all our hopes of a republic are doomed to failure. I tell you, my dear, it's tragic opera, not comic opera."
"But if you are a republican, why do you wear the uniform of a crack cavalry regiment?" Sylvia asked.
"Oh, I've thought that out," Philidor replied. "I belong to a good family. If I proclaimed my opinions openly, I should merely be put on one side. Aristocratic rule is more powerful in Rumania than anywhere in Europe except Prussia. The aristocrats have literally all the capital of the country in their hands; our peasants are serfs. As an avowed republican I could do nothing to spread the opinions that I believe to be the salvation of my country and the preservation of her true independence; we are a young state—not a state at all, in fact, but a limited liability company with a director imported from the chief European firm of king-exporters—and we have still to realize our soul as by fire."
"The soul of a country," Sylvia murmured. "It's only the aggregate of the human souls that make it, but each soul could be the microcosm of the universe."
"True, true," Philidor agreed. "And the soul of Rumania is the soul of a girl who's just out, or of a boy in his first year at college. Hence all the prettiness and all the complacent naughtiness and all the imitation of older and more worldly people and all the tyranny and contempt for the rights of the poor, the want of consideration for servants really. Though I must be young like the rest and dress myself up and lead the life of my friends, I am always hoping to influence them gradually, very gradually. Perhaps if I were truly a great soul I should fling over all this pretense; but I know my own limitations, and all I pray is that when the man arises who is worthy to lead Rumania toward liberty and justice I shall have the wit to recognize him and the courage to follow his lead."
"But you said just now," Sylvia reminded him, "that all the European statesmen were to be found in the Balkans."
"I still say that, but our statesmen—we have only two—dare not in the presence of this war think of anythingexcept the safety of the country. Republicanism would be of little use to a Rumania absorbed either into the Dual Monarchy or into the Czardom of Russia or ravaged by the hellish Bulgarians. I tell you that we see precipices before our steps whichever way we turn for the path; but because we are young we dress ourselves up and gamble and sing and dance and swagger and boast; we are young, my dear girl—very, very young, perhaps not old enough for our death to be anything but pathetic."
"You're in a very pessimistic mood to-night," Sylvia said.
"Who could be anything but gloomy when he looks round a room like this? A crowd of French, Rumanian, and Austrian cocottes dancing to 'Tipperary' in this infernal tinkling din—forgive my frankness, but you know I don't includeyouin thegalère—while over there I see a cousin of my own, a member of one of our greatest families, haggling with a dirty German agent over the price of sending another six aeroplanes to Turkey disguised as agricultural implements; and over there I see a man, who I had always hoped was an honest editor, selling his pen to the fat little German baron that will substitute poison for ink and bank-notes for honest opinions; and over there are three brother officers with three girls on their knees singing the words of 'Tipperary' with as much intelligence as apes, while they brag to their companions of how in six weeks they will be marching to save France."
"They don't miss much by not understanding the words," Sylvia said, with a smile.
"I don't understand how a woman like you can tolerate or endure this life," Philidor exclaimed, fanatically. "Why don't you take that pretty little sister of yours out of it and back to England? I don't understand how you can stay here with your country at war."
"That's too long a story to tell you now," Sylvia said. "But between ourselves she's not really my sister."
"I never supposed she was," Philidor answered. "She's not English, either, is she?"
Sylvia looked at him sharply.
"Have you heard any one else say that?" she asked.
"Nobody else here knows English as well as I do."
The dance stopped, and Queenie, leaving her partner, came up to their table with a smile.
"You're happy, anyway," said Philidor.
"Oh yes. I'm so happy. She is so sweet to me," Queenie cried, embracing Sylvia impulsively.
A French girl sitting at the next table laughed and murmured an epithet in argot. Sylvia's cheeks flamed; she was about to spring up and make a quarrel, but Philidor restrained her.
"Do you wonder that I protest against your exposing yourself to that sort of thing?" he said. "What are you going to do? It wouldn't be quite you, would it, to hit her over the head with a champagne-bottle? Let the vile tongue say what it pleases."
"Yes, but it's so outrageous, it's so—ah, I've no words for the beastliness of people," Sylvia exclaimed.
"May I dance this dance?" Queenie interrupted, timidly.
"Good heavens! Why do you ask me, girl? What has it to do with me? Dance with the devil if you like."
Queenie looked bewildered by Sylvia's emphasis and went off again in silence.
"And now you see the only person that's really hurt is your little friend," Philidor observed. "You're much too sure of yourself to care about a sneer like that, and she didn't hear what the woman called you, or perhaps understand it if she heard."
Sylvia was silent; she was thinking of once long ago when Lily had asked her if she could dance with Michael; now she blushed after nine years lest he might have thought for a moment what that woman had said.
"You're quite right," she agreed with Philidor. "This is a damnable life. Would you like to hear Queenie's story?"
"There's no need for you to defend yourself to me," he laughed.
"Ah, don't laugh about it. You mustn't laugh about certain things. You'll make me think less of you."
"I was only beinggauche," he apologized. "Yes, tell me her story."
So Sylvia told him the sad history, and when she had finished asked his advice about Queenie.
"You were talking just now about your country as if she were a child," she said, eagerly. "You were imagining her individuality and independence destroyed. I feel the same about this girl. I want to make her really English. Do you think that I shall be able to get her a passport? We're saving up our money now to go to England."
Philidor said he did not know much about English regulations, but that he could not imagine that any consul would refuse to help when he heard the story.
"And the sooner you leave Rumania the better. Look here. I'll lend you the money to get home."
Sylvia shook her head.
"No, because that would interfere with my part of the story. I've got to get back without help. I have a strong belief that if I accept help I shall miss my destiny. It's no good trying to argue me out of a superstition, for I've tried to argue myself out of it a dozen times and failed. No, if you want to help me, come and talk to me every night and open a bottle or two of champagne to keep the manager in a good temper; and stand by me if there's ever a row. I won't answer for myself if I'm alone and I hear things said like what was said to-night."
Philidor promised he would do that for her as long as he was quartered in Bucharest, and presently Queenie came back.
"Don't look so frightened. I'm sorry I was cross to you just now."
"You were being so savage," said Queenie, with wide-open,wondering eyes. "What was happening?"
"Something stung me."
"Where?"
"Over the heart," Sylvia answered.
When they were back in their room Queenie returned to the subject of Sylvia's ill-temper.
"I could not be thinking it was you," she murmured. "I could not be thinking it."
"It was something that passed as quickly as it came," Sylvia said. "Forget about it, child."
"Were you angry because I was being too much with that boy? If you like, I shall say to him to-morrow that I cannot dance with him longer."
"Please, Queenie, forget about it. Somebody said something that made me angry, and I vented my anger on you. It was of no importance."
Queenie looked only half convinced, and when she was in bed she turned for consolation to the little chromolithographs that were always at hand. She had the custom of wearing a lace nightcap, and, sitting up thus in bed while her rapt gaze sought in those fairy landscapes the reflection of her own visions, she was remote and impersonal as a painted figure in some adoring angelic company. Sylvia felt that the moment was come to raise the question of the spiritual mood with which Queenie's outward appearance seemed in harmony, and that it was her duty to suggest a way of positively capturing and forever enshrining the half-revealed wonders of which these pictures spoke to her. Sylvia fancied that Queenie's development had now only reached as far as her own at about fifteen, and, looking back to herself at that age, she thought how much it might have meant to her if somebody could have given expression to her capacity for wonder then. Moreover, it was improbable that Queenie would grow much older mentally, and it was impossible for Queenie to reach her own present point of view by her own long process of rejecting every other point of view in turn. Queenie would never reject anything of her own accord, and it seemed urgent tofortify her with the simple and in some eyes childish externals of religion, which precisely, on account of such souls, have managed to endure.
"The great argument in favor of the Church seems to me," Sylvia thought, "that it measures humanity by the weakest and not by the strongest link, which of course means that it never overestimates its power and survives assaults that shatter more ambitious and progressive organizations of human belief. Well, Queenie is a weak enough link, and I sha'n't feel happy until I have secured her incorporation first into the Church, and, secondly—I suppose into the state. Yet why should I want to give her nationality? What is the aim of a state? Material comfort, really—nothing else. I'm tempted to give her to the Church, but deny her to the state. Alas! it's a material world, and it's not going to be spiritualized by me. The devil was sick, etc. No doubt at present everything promises well for a spiritual revival after this orgy of insane destructiveness. But history with its mania for repetition isn't encouraging about the results of war. As a matter of fact, I've got no right to talk about the war at present. I choked and spluttered for a while in some of its vile back-wash, and Bucharest hasn't managed to get the taste out of my mouth. Queenie," she said, aloud, "you know that during these last weeks I've been going to church regularly?"
Queenie extricated herself from whatever path she was following in her pictures and looked at Sylvia with blue eyes that were intensely willing to believe anything her friend told her.
"I knew you were always going out," she said. "But I thought it was to see a boy."
"Great heavens! child, do you seriously think that I should so much object to men's getting hold of you if I were doing the same thing myself in secret? Haven't you yet realized that I can't do things in secret?"
"Don't be cross with me again. I think you are cross, yes?"
Sylvia shook her head. "What I want to know is: did you ever go to church in your life, and if you did do you ever think about wanting to go again?"
"I was going to church with my mother when I was four; my stepmother was never going to church, and so I was never going myself until two years ago at Christmas. There was a girl who asked me to go with her, and it was so sweet. We looked at all the dolls, and there was a cow, but some woman said, quite loudly: 'Well, if this is the sort of women we was meeting on Christmas night, I'm glad Christmas only comes once in the year.' My friend with me was verymaquillée. Too much paint she was having, really, and she said to this woman such rude things, and a man came and was asking us to move along farther. And then outside my friend sat down on the steps and cried and cried.Ach, it was dreadful! She was making a scene. So I was not going more to church, because I was always remembering this and being unhappy."
On the next day Sylvia took Queenie to the mission church and introduced her to the priest; afterward they often went to Mass together. It was like taking a child; Queenie asked the reason of every ceremony, and Sylvia, who had never bothered her head with ceremonies, began to wish she had never exposed herself to so many unanswerable questions. It seemed to her that she had given Queenie nothing except another shadowy land in which her vague mind would wander without direction; but the priest was more hopeful, and undertook to give her instruction so that she might be confirmed presently. When the question was gone into, there was no doubt that she had been baptized, for by some freak of memory she was able to show that she understood the reason of her being called Concetta from being born on the 8th of December. However, the revelation of her true name to the priest gave Queenie a horror of his company, and nothing would induce her to go near him again, or even to enter the church.
"This was going to bring me bad luck," she told Sylvia. "That name! that name! How was you so unkind to tell him that name?"
Sylvia was distressed by the thought of the fear she had roused and explained the circumstances to the priest, who, rather to her irritation, seemed inclined to resort placidly to prayer.
"But I can only pray when I am in the mood to pray," she protested; and though she was aware of the weakness of such a habit of mind, she was anxious to shake the priest out of what she considered his undue resignation to her failure with Queenie.
The fact was that the atmosphere of the Petit Maxim was getting on Sylvia's nerves. Apart from the physical revolt that it was impossible not to feel against the fumes of tobacco and wine, the scent of Eau de Chypre and Quelques Fleurs, the raucous chatter of conversation and the jangle of fidgety tunes, there was the perpetual inner resentment against the gossip about herself and Queenie. Sylvia did not lose any of her own joy at being able to rest in the high airs of Christian thought away from all this by reading the books of doctrine and ecclesiastical history that the priest lent her; but she was disappointed at her inability to provide any alternative for Queenie except absolute dependence upon herself. She was quite prepared to accept the final responsibility of guardianship, and she made it clear to the child that her ambition to have a permanent sister might be considered achieved. What she was not prepared to do was to invoke exterior aid to get them both back to England. She reproached herself sometimes with an unreasonable egotism; yet when it came to the point of accepting Philidor's offer to lend her enough money to return home, she always drew back. Life with Queenie at Mulberry Cottage shone steadily upon the horizon of her hopes, but she had no belief in the value of that life unless she could reach it unaided and offer its freedom as the fruit of her own perseveranceand indomitableness. She was annoyed by Queenie's forebodings over the revelation of her name, and her annoyance was not any the less because she had to admit that her own behavior in holding out against accepting the means of escape from Rumania was based upon nothing more secure than a superstitious fancy.
The Petit Maxim closed at Easter; at the beginning of May the whole company was re-engaged for an open-air theater called the Petit Trianon. Sylvia and Queenie were still many francs short of their fares to England and were forced to re-engage themselves for the summer. The new place was an improvement on the cabaret because, at any rate during the first half of May, it was too cold for the public to enjoy sitting about in a garden and drinking sweet champagne. After a month, however, all Sylvia's friends went away, some to Sinaia, whither the court had moved; others, and among them Philidor, were sent to the Austrian frontier; the expedition to the Dardanelles and the intervention of Italy had brought Rumania much nearer to the prospect of entering the war. Meanwhile in Bucharest the German agents worked more assiduously than ever to promote neutrality and secure the passage of arms and munitions to Turkey.
At the end of May the manager of the Petit Trianon, observing that Sylvia had for some time failed to take advantage of the warmer weather by gathering to her table a proper number of champagne-drinkers, and having received complaints from some of his clients that she made it impossible to cultivate Queenie's company to the extent they would have liked, announced to her that she was no longer wanted. Her songs at the beginning of the evening were no attraction to the thin audience scattered about under the trees, and he could get a cheaper first number. This happened to be Lottie, who was engaged to thump on the piano for half an hour at two hundred francs a month.
"I never knew that I was cutting you out," Lottie explained. "But I've been playing for nearly four monthsat a dancing-hall in a low part of the town and I only asked two hundred in desperation. He'll probably engage you again if you'll take less."
Sylvia forced herself to ask the manager if he would not change his mind. She hinted as a final threat that she would make Queenie leave if he did not, and he agreed at last to engage her again at three hundred francs instead of three hundred and fifty, which meant that she could not save a sou toward her going home. At the same time the manager dismissed Lottie, and everybody said that Sylvia had played a mean trick. She would not have minded so much if she had not felt really sad about the fat girl, who was driven back to play in a low dancing-saloon at less than she had earned before; but she felt that there was no time to be lost in getting Queenie away from this life, and if it were a question of sacrificing Queenie or Lottie, it was certainly the fat girl who must go under.
Since the manager's complaint of the way she kept admirers away from her friend, Sylvia had for both their sakes to relax some of her discouraging stiffness of demeanor. One young man was hopeful enough of ultimate success to send Queenie a bunch of carnations wrapped up in a thousand-franc note. Normally, Sylvia would have compelled her to refuse such a large earnest of future liberality; but these months upon the verge of penury had hardened her, and she bade Queenie keep the money, or rather she kept it for her to prevent its being frittered away in petty extravagance. Queenie could not hold her tongue about the offering; and the young man, when he found that the thousand francs had brought him no nearer to his goal than a bottle of champagne would have done, was loud in his advertisement of the way Sylvia had let Queenie take the money and give nothing in return. Everybody at the Petit Trianon was positive that Sylvia was living upon her friend, and much unpleasant gossip was brought back to them by people who of course didnot believe it themselves, but thought it right that they should know what all the world was saying.
This malicious talk had no effect upon Queenie's devotion, but it added greatly to Sylvia's disgust for the tawdry existence they were both leading, and she began to play with the idea of using the thousand francs to escape from it and get back to England. She was still some way from bringing herself to the point of such a surrender as would be involved by temporarily using this money, but each time that she argued out the point with herself the necessity of doing so presented itself more insistently. In the middle of July something occurred which swept on one side every consideration but immediate flight.
All day long a warm and melancholy fog had suffused the suburbs of Bucharest, from which occasional scarves of mist detached themselves to float through the high center of the town, dislustering the air as they went, like steam upon a shining metal. Sylvia had been intending for some time to visit Lottie and explain to her the circumstances in which she had been supplanted by herself; such a day as this accorded well with such an errand. As with all cities of its class, a few minutes after one left the main streets of Bucharest to go downhill one was aware of the artificiality of its metropolitan claims. Within five hundred yards of the sumptuous Calea Victoriei the side-turnings were full of children playing in the gutter, of untidy women gossiping to one another from untidy windows, and of small rubbish heaps along the pavement: and a little farther on were signs of the unquiet newness of the city in the number of half-constructed streets and half-built houses.
Lottie lived in one of these unfinished streets in a tumble-down house that had survived the fields by which not long ago it had been surrounded. A creeper-covered doorway opened into a paved triangular courtyard shaded by an unwieldy tree, along one side of which, at an elevation of about two feet, ran Lottie's room. As Sylvia crossed the courtyard she could see indistinct forms moving aboutwithin, and she stopped for a moment listening to the drip of the fog above the murmur of human voices. She did not wish to talk to Lottie in front of strangers and turned to go back; but the fat girl had already observed her approach and was standing on the rotten threshold to receive her.
"You're busy," Sylvia suggested.
"No, no. Come in. One of my friends is an English girl."
"But I wanted to talk to you alone. I wanted to explain that I couldn't refuse to sing again at the Trianon; I've been worrying about you all this time."
"Oh, that's all right," Lottie said, cheerfully. "I never expected anything else."
"But the other girls—"
"Oh, the other girls," she repeated, with a contemptuous laugh. "Don't worry about the other girls. People can always afford to be generous in this world if it doesn't hurt themselves and does hurt somebody else. One or two of them came here to condole with me, and I'm sure they got more pleasure out of seeing my wretched lodging than I got out of their sympathy. Come in and forget all about them."
Sylvia squeezed her pudgy hand gratefully; it was a relief to find that the object of so much commiseration had grasped the shallowness of it.
"Who are your friends?" she whispered.
"The man's a juggler who wants an engagement at the Trianon. He's a Swiss called Krebs. The girl's an English dancer and singer called Maud. You'll see them both up there to-night for certain. You may as well come in. What a dreary day, isn't it?"
Sylvia agreed and was aware of ascribing to the weather the faint malaise that she experienced on following Lottie into her room, which smelled of stale wall-paper and musty wood, and which, on account of the overhanging tree and the dirty French windows, was dark and miserable enough.
"Excuse me getting up to shake hands," said Krebs, in excellent English. "But this furniture is too luxurious."
He was lying back, smoking a cigarette in an armchair all the legs of which were missing and the rest of it covered with exudations of flocculence that resembled dingy cauliflowers. Sylvia saw that he was a large man with a large undefined face of dark complexion. He offered a huge hand, brutal and clumsy in appearance, an inappropriate hand for a juggler, she thought, vaguely. His companion, crudely colored and shapeless as a quilt, sprawled on another chair. Everything about this woman was defiant; her harsh accent, the feathers in her hat, her loose mouth, her magenta cheeks, her white boa, and her white boots affronted the world like an angry housemaid.
"This is a fine hole, this Rumania," she shrilled. "Gawd! I went to the English consul at Galantza, expecting to be treated with a little consideration, and the —— pushed me out of his office. Yes, we read a great deal about England nowadays, but I've been better treated by everybody than what I have by the English. Stuck-up la-di-da set of ——, that's what they are, and anybody as likes can hear me say so."
She raised her voice for the benefit of the listeners without that might be waiting anxiously upon her words.
"Don't kick up such a row," Krebs commanded; but Maud paid no attention to him and went on.
"England! Yes, I left England ten years ago, and if it wasn't for my poor old mother I'd never go back. Treat you as dirt, that's what the English do. That consul threw me out of his office the same as acommissionnairemight throw any old two-and-four out of the Empire. Yes, they talk a lot about patriotism and all pulling one way, but when you ask a consul to lend you the price of your fare to Bucharest, you don't hear no more about patriotism. As I said to him, 'I suppose you don't think I'm English?' and he sat there grinning for answer. Yes, I reckon when they christened that talking chimpanzee at the Hippodrome'Consul' it was done by somebody who'd had a bit of consul in his time. What's a consul for? That's what I'm asking. As I said to him, 'What are you for? Are you paid,' I said, 'to sit there smoking cigarettes for the good of your country?' 'This ain't a workhouse,' he answered, very snotty. 'You're right,' I said. 'No fear about any one ever making that mistake. Why, I reckon it's a bloody sleeping-car, I do.' And with that I slung my hook out of it. Yes, I could have been very rude to him; only it was beneath me, the uneducated la-di-da savage! Well, all he's done is to put me against my own country. That'shiswar work."
The tirade exhausted itself, and Sylvia, unwilling to be Maud's sponsor at the Petit Trianon that evening, made some excuse to leave. While she was walking across the courtyard with Lottie, she heard:
"And who's she? I'll have to tellheroff, that's very plain. Did you see the way she looked down her nose at me? Nice thing if any one can't say what they think of a consul without being stared at like a mummy byher."
Sylvia asked Lottie if she had known this couple long.
"I've known him a year or two, but she's new. I met them coming up from the railway station this morning. The girl was stranded without any money at Galantza, and Krebs brought her on here. He's a fine juggler and conjurer. Zozo he calls himself on the stage."
Sylvia's heart throbbed as she climbed the streets that led toward the high center of the city away from the hot mists below: it was imperative to get Queenie out of Rumania at once, and while she walked along she began to wonder if she could not procure an English passport, the delight of possessing which would counterbalance for Queenie the shock of hearing that the dreaded Zozo was in Bucharest.
"It's such a ridiculous name for a bogy," Sylvia thought. "And the man himself was not a bit as I picturedhim. I'd always imagined some one lithe and subtle. I wonder what his object was in helping that painted hussy he was with. Queer, rather."
She reached the British Consulate, but was told rather severely to direct herself to the special office that occupied itself with passports.
"Do you want a visa for England?" the clerk inquired.
"Yes, and I also want to inquire about a new passport for my sister, who's lost hers."
"Lost her passport?" the clerk echoed; he shuddered at the information.
"It seems to upset you," Sylvia said.
"Well, it's a pretty serious matter in war-time," he explained. "However, we have nothing to do with passports at the Consulate."
The clerk washed his hands of Sylvia's past and future, and she left the Consulate to discover the other office. By the time she arrived it was nearly five o'clock, and the clerk looked hurt at receiving a visitor so late.
"Do you want a visa for England?" he asked.
She nodded, and he pointed to a printed notice that hung above his desk.
"The morning is the time to make such applications," he told her, fretfully.
"Then why are you open in the afternoon?" Sylvia asked.
"If the application is favorably entertained, the recommendation is granted in the afternoon. You must then take your passport to the Consulate for the consular visa, which can only be done in the morning between twelve and one."
It was like the eternal competition between the tube-lifts and the tube-trains, she thought.
"But they told me at the Consulate that they have nothing to do with passports."
"The Consulatehasnothing to do with passports until the applicant for a visa has been approved here."
"Then I must come again to-morrow morning?" Sylvia asked.
"To-morrow morning," the clerk repeated, bending over with intrepid fervor to the responsible task upon which he was engaged. Sylvia wondered what it was: the whole traffic of Europe might hang upon these few minutes.
"I'm sorry to interrupt you again," she said. "But in addition to requiring a visa, my sister wants a new passport."
She decided not to say anything about a lost passport, the revelation of which had so much shocked the man at the Consulate.
"Miss Johnstone," the clerk called in a weary voice to somebody in an inner office, "kindly bring Form AQ—application for renewal of expired passport."
A vague-looking young woman, who seemed to have been collecting native jewelry since her arrival in Bucharest, tinkled into the office.
"There aren't any AQforms left, Mr. Mathers," she said, plaiting, as she spoke, a necklace of coins into another of what looked like broken pieces of mosaic.
"It really is too bad that the forms are not given out more regularly," Mr. Mathers cried, in exasperation. "How am I to finish transferring these Greeks beginning withCtoK? You know how anxious Mr. Iredale is to get the index in order, and theF's haven't been checked with thePh's yet."
"Well, it's Miss Henson's day off," said Miss Johnstone, "so it's not my fault, is it? I'm sure I hate the forms! They're always a bother. Won't an APone do for this lady? We've a lot of them left, and there's only a difference in one question."
"Excuse me," Sylvia asked. "Did you mention a Mr. Iredale?"
"Mr. Iredale is the O.C.P.T.N.C. for Bucharest," said Mr. Mathers.
"Not Mr. Philip Iredale, by chance?" she went on.
That transposition of Greek initials had sounded uncommonly like Philip.
"That's right," the clerk replied.
"Oh well, I know him. I should like to see him personally."
"See Mr. Iredale? But he's the O.C.P.T.N.C."
"Does that confer invisibility?" she asked. "I tell you I'm a friend of his. If you send up my card I'm sure he'll see me."
"But he never sees anybody," Mr. Mathers objected. "I'm afraid you didn't understand that he's the Officer Controlling Passenger Traffic from Neutral Countries in Bucharest. If he was to see everybody that came to this office, he wouldn't be able to controlhimself, let alone passenger traffic. No, really, joking apart, madam, Mr. Iredale is very busy and by no means well."
"He's worn out," put in Miss Johnstone, who, having by now plaited four necklaces into a single coil, was swinging the result round and round like a skipping-rope. "His nerves are worn out. But if you like, I'll take up your card."
"You might ask him at the same time if he wants all the Greek names entered underYtransferred toG, will you?" said Mr. Mathers. "Oh, and Miss Johnstone," he called after her, "there seems to be some confusion betweenTchandTs. Ask him if he's got any preference. Awful names the people in this part of Europe get hold of," he added to Sylvia. "Even Mr. Iredale can't transpose the Russians, and of course the War Office likes accuracy. There was rather a strafe the other day because a man traveling from here to Spain got arrested three times on the way, owing to his name being rather like a suspect spelled differently by us, the French, and the Italians. As a matter of fact, the original suspect's dead, but his name was spelled a fourth way in the notification that was sent around, and so it's not realized yet."
"It must be rather like that whispering game," Sylviasaid. "You know, where somebody at one end of the room starts a sentence and it comes out quite differently at the other."
Sylvia could not make out why she did not feel more nervous when she was following Miss Johnstone up-stairs to meet Philip for the first time since she had run away from him, thirteen years ago. The fact was that her anxiety to escape from Rumania with Queenie outweighed everything else, and she was so glad to find somebody she knew in a position of authority who would be able to help her in the matter of Queenie's passport that any awkwardness was quenched in relief. The discovery of Philip was such an encouraging answer by destiny to the reappearance of Zozo.
He came forward to greet her from behind a large roll-top desk, and she saw that he looked tired and ill, yet, except for his baldness, not really much older.
"Would you have recognized me, Philip?" she asked.
He was far more nervous than she was, and he stumbled a good deal over Mr. Mathers's questions.
"I'll tell him you're too busy now to answer," said Miss Johnstone at last in a cheerful voice.
This was a happy solution of the problem ofTsandTch, and Philip gratefully accepted it.
"And I dare say I might find time to help him with the transpositions, if you're very anxious to get them done."
"Oh, will you? Yes, thank you, that would be excellent."
Miss Johnstone turned to leave the room; one of her necklaces broke under the strain of continuous plaiting, and a number of tiny green shells peppered the floor.
"There, that's the third time it's done that to-day," she exclaimed. "I'm so sorry."
Sylvia, Philip, and she gathered up as many as were not trodden upon in the search, and at last Miss Johnstone managed to get out of the room.
"No wonder you're worn out," said Sylvia, with a smile.It seemed quite natural to comment rather intimately like this upon Philip's health. "But you haven't answered my question. Would you have recognized me?"
"Oh yes, I should have recognized you. I only saw you last year at the Pierian Hall."
"Did you go to see me there?" she exclaimed, touched by his having wanted to see her act without letting her know anything about his visit.
"Yes, I enjoyed the performance; it was excellent. I wonder why you're in Bucharest. Wouldn't you be better in England in war-time?"
"I think it's much more surprising to find you here," she said.
"Oh, I was sent out here to look after passports."
"But, Philip, why were you chosen as an expert on human nature?"
She could not resist the little stab; and he smiled sadly.
"I knew the country," he explained. "I'd done some excavating here, so the War Office made me an honorary captain and sent me out."
"Are you a captain? What fun! Do you remember when I wanted you to enlist for the South African War and you were so annoyed? But I suppose you're shocked by my reviving old memories like this. Are you shocked, Philip?"
"No, no, I'm not shocked. I'm still rather overcome by the suddenness of your visit. What are you doing here?"
"I'm singing at the Trianon. All the winter I was at the Petit Maxim."
"Those places," he said, with a look of distaste.
"It would take too long to explain to you why," she went on. "But you can't disapprove of my being there more than I do myself; and it's for that very reason that I want a visa for England."
"Of course you shall have one immediately. You're much better at home in these detestable times."
"But I also want something else. I want a passport for a friend—an English girl."
"Hasn't she got a passport? Does she want hers renewed?"
"I'd better tell you the whole story. I expect that since you've become the U.V.W.X.Y.Z. of Bucharest you've listened to plenty of sad stories, but you must pay special attention to this one for my sake. I don't know why I say 'for my sake'—it's rather an improper remark for a divorced wife. Philip, do you remember in my show at the Pierian an Improvisation about a girl who had been horribly ill treated as a child and was supposed to be lost in a great city?"
"Yes, I think I do; in fact, I'm sure I do. I remember that at the time I was reminded of our first meeting in Brompton Cemetery." He blinked once or twice very quickly, and coughed in his old embarrassed way.
"Well, that's the girl for whom I want a passport."
Sylvia told him Queenie's story in detail from the time she met her first in Granada to the present moment under the shadow of Zozo's return.
"But, my dear Sylvia, I can't possibly procure an English passport for her. She's not English."
"I want her to be my sister," Sylvia pursued. "I'm prepared to adopt her and to be responsible for her. Any difference in the name she has been generally known by can easily be put down to the needs of the stage. I myself want to take once more my own name, Sylvia Snow, and I thought you could issue two passports, one to Sylvia Snow, professionally known as Sylvia Scarlett, and the other to Queenie Snow, known professionally as Queenie Walters. Surely you won't let mere pedantry interfere with a deed of charity?"
"It's not a question of pedantry. This is war-time. I should render myself liable to—to—a court martial for doing a thing like that. Besides, the principle of the thing is all wrong."
"But you don't seem to understand."
"Indeed I understand perfectly," Philip interrupted. "This girl was born in Germany."
"Of an Italian father."
"What papers has she?" he asked.
"None at all. That's the whole point. She couldn't get even a German passport if she wanted to. But she doesn't want one. She longs to be English. It's the solitary clear ambition that she has. She was living in England before war broke out, and she only came away to help this girl who was kind to her. Surely the most rigid rule can be unbent to fit a special case?"
"I could not possibly assume the responsibility," Philip declared.
"Then you mean to say you'll condemn this child to damnation—for that's what you're doing with your infernal rules and regulations? You're afraid of what will happen to you."
"Excuse me, even if I were certain that nothing could possibly be known about the circumstances in which this passport was issued, I should still refuse the application. Everybody suffers in this war; I suffer myself in a minor degree by having to abandon my own work and masquerade in this country as what you well call a U.V.W.X.Y.Z."
"But even if we grant that in some cases suffering is inevitable," Sylvia urged, eagerly, "here's a case where it is not. Here's a case where, by applying a touch of humanity, you can save a soul. But I won't put it that way, because I know you have no use for souls. Here's a case where you can save a body for civilization, for that fetish on whose account you find yourself in Bucharest and half Europe is slaughtering the other half. You are not appealing to any divine law when you refuse to grant this passport: you are appealing to a human law. Very well, then. You are in your own way at this moment fighting for England; yet when somebody longs to be English you refuse her. If there is any reality behind your patriotism,if it is not merely the basest truckling to a name, a low and cowardly imitation of your next-door neighbor whose opinion of yourself you fear as much as he fears your opinion of him, if your patriotism is not just this, you'll be glad to give this child the freedom of your country. Philip, you and I made a mess of things. I was to blame for half the mess; but when you married me, though you married me primarily to please yourself, there was another motive behind—the desire to give a lonely little girl a chance to deal with the life that was surging round her more and more dangerously every day. Now you have another opportunity of doing the same thing, and this time without any personal gratification. It isn't as if I were asking you to do something that could possibly hurt England. I tell you I will be responsible for her. If the worst came to the worst and anything were found out, I could always take the blame and you could never be even censured for accepting my word in such a case."
Sylvia could see by Philip's face that her arguments were doing nothing to convince him, yet she went on, desperately:
"And if you refuse this, you don't merely condemn her, you condemn me, too. Nothing will induce me to abandon her to that man. By your bowing down to the letter of the regulation you expose me for the second time to the life that you drove me to before."
Philip made a gesture of protest.
"Very well, then I won't accuse you of being responsible on the first occasion, certainly not wantonly. But this time, if I'm driven to the same life, itwillbe your fault and your fault alone. I'm not going to bother about my body if I think that by destroying it I can save a soul. I shall stick at nothing to preserve Queenie—at nothing, do you hear? You have the chance to send us both safely back to England. Philip, you won't refuse!"
"I'm sorry. It's terribly painful for me to say 'no.'But it's impossible. Only quite recently the Foreign Office sent round a warning that we were to be specially careful in this part of the world. No papers of naturalization are issued in time of war. Why, I'm sent here to Bucharest for the express purpose of preventing people like your friend obtaining fraudulent passports."
"The Foreign Office!" Sylvia scoffed. "How can you expect people not to be Christians? It was just to redeem mankind from the sin that creates Foreign Offices and War Offices and bureaucrats and shoddy kings and lawyers and politicians that Christ died. Oh, you can sneer! but your belief is condemned out of your own mouth. You puny little U.V.W.X.Y.Z. with your nose buried in your own waste-paper basket, with a red tapeworm gnawing at your vitals, with some damned fool of a narrow-headed general for an idol, you have the impertinence to sneer at Christianity. Do you think that after this war people are going to be content with the kind of criminal state that you represent? Life is not a series of rules, but a set of exceptions. Philip, forgive me if I have been rude, and let this girl have a passport, please, please!"
"You must not think," Philip answered, "that because I plead the necessities of war in defense of what strikes you as mere bureaucratic obscurantism that therefore I am defending war itself; I loathe war from the bottom of my heart. But just as painful operations are often necessary in accidents which might easily have been avoided, yet which having happened must be cured in the swiftest way, so in war-time for the good of the majority the wrongs of the nation must take precedence over the wrongs of the individual. I sympathize profoundly with the indignation that you feel on account of this girl, but the authorities in England, after due consideration of the danger likely to accrue to the state from the abuse of British nationality by aliens, have decided to enforce with the greatest strictness the rules about the granting of passports."
"Oh, don't explain the reasons to me as if I were a baby," Sylvia burst in. "The proposition of the Foreign Office is self-evident in its general application. My point is with you personally. You are not a professional bureaucrat who depends for his living on his capacity for dehumanizing himself. In this case you have a special reason to exercise your rights and your duties as an amateur. You are as positive as you can ever hope to be positive about anything, even your absurd positivist creed, that while no harm can result to your country, a great mercy will be conferred upon an individual as the result of enlightened action."
"It is precisely this introduction of the personal element," Philip said, "that confirms me in refusing your request. You are taking advantage of—our—of knowing me to gain your point. As a stranger you would not stand the least chance of doing this, and you have no business to make the matter a personal one. You don't seem to realize what such a proceeding would involve. It is not merely a question of issuing a passport as passports used to be issued before the war on the applicant's bare word. A whole set of searching questions has to be answered in writing, and you ask me to put my name to a tissue of lies. Go back to England yourself. You have done your best for this girl, and you must bow before circumstances. She has reached Rumania, and if she does not try to leave it, she will be perfectly all right."
"But have you appreciated what I told you about this man who has just arrived? He's a German-Swiss, and if he's not a spy, he has all the makings of one. Suppose he gets hold of Queenie again? Can't you see that on the lowest ground of material advantage you are justified—more than justified, you owe it to your country to avoid the risk of creating another enemy?"
"My dear Sylvia," said Philip, more impatiently than he had spoken yet, "it is none of my business to interfere with potential agents of the enemy. I have quite enoughto do to keep pace with the complete article. If your little friend is in danger of being turned into a spy, it seems to me that you have stated the final argument against granting your request."
"If she were with me, she could never become a spy; but if I were to leave her helpless here, anything might happen. I am struggling for this child's soul, Philip, more bitterly than I ever struggled for my own. Your mind is occupied with the murder of human bodies: my mind is obsessed with the destruction of human souls."
"Well, if I accept your own definition of your attitude," Philip answered, "perhaps you will admit that logically a passport occupies itself with the body, and that Christians do not consider nationality necessary to salvation. I can't make out your exalted frame of mind. You used to be rather sensible on this subject. But if, as I gather, you have taken refuge in that common weakness of humanity—religion—let me recommend you to find therein the remedy for your friend's future."