Sylvia had a fleeting thought that perhaps Gladys and Enid Worsley might have felt like that about her, but in a moment she quenched the fire it kindled in her heart. She was not going to bask in the warmth of self-pity like a spoiled little girl that hopes she may die to punish her brother for teasing her.
“I think, you know,” Olive went on, “that girls like us aren’t prepared to stand sorrow. We’ve absolutely nothing to fall back upon. I’ve been thinking all these days what an utterly unsatisfactory thing lunch at Romano’s really is. The only thing in my life that I can look back to for comfort is summer at the convent in Belgium. Of course we giggled all the time; but all the noise of talking has died away, and I can only see a most extraordinary peacefulness. I wonder if the nuns would have me as a boarder for a little while this summer. I feel I absolutely must go there. It isn’t being sentimental, because I never knew Dorothy in those days.”
Perhaps Olive’s regret for her lost friend affected Sylvia. When she went back to Mulberry Cottage and found that Lily had gone away, notwithstanding her own deliberate provocation of the elopement, she was dismayed. There was nothing left of Lily but two old frocks in the wardrobe, two old frocks the color of dead leaves; and this poignant reminder of a physical loss drove out all the other emotions. She told herself that it was ridiculous to be moved like this and she jeered at herself for imitating Olive’s grief. But it was no use; those two frocks affrighted her courage with their deadness. No kind of communion after marriage would compensate for the loss of Lily’s presence; it was like the fading of a flower in the completeness of its death. Even if she had been able to achieve the selflessness of Olive and take delight in Lily’s good fortune, how impossible it was to believe in the triumph of this marriage. Lily would either be bored or she would become actively miserable—Sylvia snorted at the adverb—and run away or rather slowly melt to damnation. It would not even be necessary for her to be miserable; any unscrupulous friend of her husband’s would have his way with her. For an instant Sylvia had a tremor of compassion for Michael, but it died in the thought of how such a disillusion would serve him right. He had built up this passion out of sentimentality; he was like Don Quixote; he was stupid. No doubt he had managed by now to fall in love with Lily, but it had never been an inevitable passion, and no pity should be shown to lovers that did not love wildly at first sight. They alone could plead fate’s decrees.
Jack Airdale came to see Sylvia, and he took advantage of her despair to press his desire for her to go upon the stage. He was positive that she had in her the makings of a great actress. He did not want to talk about himself, but he must tell Sylvia that there was a wonderful joy in getting on. He would never, of course, do anything very great, but he was understudy to some one or other at some theater or other, and there was always a chance of really showing what he could do one night or at any rate one afternoon. Even Claude was getting on; he had met him the other day in a tail coat and a top-hat. Since there had been such an outcry against tubercular infection, he had been definitely cured of his tendency toward consumption; he had nothing but neurasthenia to contend with now.
But Sylvia would not let Jack “speak about her” to the managers he knew. She had no intention of continuing as she was at present, but she should wait till she was twenty-three before she took any step that would involve anything more energetic than turning over the pages of a book; she intended to dream away the three months that were left to twenty-two. Jack Airdale went away discouraged.
Sylvia met Ronald Walker, who had painted Lily. From him she learned that Fane had taken a house for her somewhere near Regent’s Park. By a curious coincidence, a great friend of his who was also a friend of Fane’s had helped to acquire the house. Ronald understood that there was considerable feeling against the marriage among Fane’s friends. What was Fane like? He knew several men who knew him, and he seemed to be one of those people about whose affairs everybody talked.
“Thank Heaven, nobody bothers about me,” said Ronald. “This man Fane seems to have money to throw about. I wish he’d buy my picture of Lily. You’re looking rather down, Sylvia. I suppose you miss her? By Jove! what an amazing sitter! She wasn’t really beautiful, you know—I mean to say with the kind of beauty that lives outside its setting. I don’t quite mean that, but in my picture of her, which most people consider the best thing I’ve done, she never gave me what I ought to have had from such a model. I felt cheated, somehow, as if I’d cut a bough from a tree and in doing so destroyed all its grace. It was her gracefulness really; and dancing’s the only art for that. I can’t think why I didn’t paint you.”
“You’re not going to begin now,” Sylvia assured him.
“Well, of course, now you challenge me,” he laughed. “The fact is, Sylvia, I’ve never really seen you in repose till this moment. You were always tearing around and talking. Look here, I do want to paint you. I say, let me paint you in this room with Mrs. Gainsborough. By Jove! I see exactly what I want.”
“It sounds as if you wanted an illustration for the Old and New Year,” Sylvia said.