He undid the leather strap that supported his satchel and handed it to Sylvia.
“To-morrow,” he said, “if I’m still alive, I’ll come here and find out what you think of them. But you’ve no idea how threatening that ‘if’ is. It gets longer and longer. I can’t see the end if it anywhere. It was very long last night. The dot of the ‘i’ was already out of sight. It’s the longest ‘if’ that was ever imagined.”
He rose hurriedly and left the café; Sylvia never saw him again.
The poems of this strange and unhappy creature formed a record of many years’ slow debasement. Many of them seemed to her too personal and too poignant to be repeated aloud, almost even to be read to oneself. There was nothing, indeed, to do but burn them, that no one else might comprehend a man’s degradation. Some of the poems, however, were objective, and in their complete absence of any effort to impress or rend or horrify they seemed not so much poems as actual glimpses into human hearts. Nor was that a satisfactory definition, for there was no attempt to explain any of the people described in these poems; they were ordinary people of the streets that lived in a few lines. This could only be said of the poems written in French; those in English seemed to her not very remarkable. She wondered if perhaps the less familiar tongue had exacted from him an achievement that was largely fortuitous.
“I’ve got an idea for a show,” Sylvia said to Mrs. Gainsborough. “One or two old folk-songs, and then one of these poems half sung, half recited to an improvised accompaniment. Not more than one each evening.”
Sylvia was convinced of her ability to make a success, and spent a couple of weeks in searching for the folk-songs she required.
Lily and Hector came back in the middle of this new idea, and Hector was sure that Sylvia would be successful. She felt that he was too well pleased with himself at the moment not to be uncritically content with the rest of the world, but he was useful to Sylvia in securing an audition for her. The agent was convinced of the inevitable failure of Sylvia’s performance with the public, and said he thought it was a pity to waste such real talent on antique rubbish like the songs she had chosen. As for the poems, they were no doubt all very well in their way; he was not going to say he had not been able to listen to them, but the public did not expect that kind of thing. He did not wish to discourage a friend of M. Ozanne; he had by him the rights for what would be three of the most popular songs in Europe, if they were well sung. Sylvia read them through and then sang them. The agent was delighted. She knew he was really pleased because he gave up referring to her as a friend of M. Ozanne and addressed her directly. Hector advised her to begin with the ordinary stuff, and when she was well known enough to experiment upon the public with her own ideas. Sylvia, who was feeling the need to do something at once, decided to risk an audition at one of the outlying music-halls. She herself declared that the songs were so good in their own way that she could not help making a hit, but the others insisted that the triumph belonged to her.
“Vous avez vraiment de l’espièglerie,” said Hector.
“You really were awfully jolly,” said Lily.
“I didn’t understand a word, of course,” said Mrs. Gainsborough. “But you looked that wicked—well, really—I thoroughly enjoyed myself.”