“Well, we came to Sulphurville,” said Arthur. He hesitated for a moment. Obviously there had been a woman. “We came to Sulphurville,” he went on, “and played at the hotel you’re playing at now—a rotten hole,” he added, with retrospective bitterness. “I don’t know how it was, but I suppose I got keen on the gambling—anyway, I had a row with the other people in the show, and when they left I refused to go with them. I stayed behind and got keen on the gambling.”
“It was after the row that you took to roulette?” Sylvia asked.
“Well, as a matter if fact, I had a row with a girl. She treated me rather badly, and I stayed on. I lost a good deal of money. Well, it wasn’t a very large sum, as a matter of fact, but it was all I had, and then I fell ill. I caught cold and I was worried over things. I cabled to my mother for some money, but there’s been no reply. I’m afraid she’s had difficulty in raising it. She quarreled with my father’s people when I went on the stage. Damned narrow-minded set of yokels. Furious because I wouldn’t take up farming. How I hate narrow-minded people!” And with an invalid’s fretful intolerance he went on grumbling at the ineradicable characteristics of an English family four thousand miles away.
“Of course something may have happened to my mother,” he added. “You may be sure that if anything had those beasts would never take the trouble to write and tell me. It would be a pleasure to them if they could annoy me in any way.”
A swift criticism of Arthur’s attitude toward the possibility of his mother’s death rose to Sylvia’s mind, but she repressed it, pleading with herself to excuse him because he was ill and overstrained. She was positively determined to see henceforth nothing but good in people, and in her anxiety to confirm herself in this resolve she was ready not merely to exaggerate everything in Arthur’s favor, but even to twist any failure on his side into actual merit. Thus when she hastened to put her own resources at his disposal, and found him quite ready to accept without protest her help, she choked back the comparison with Jack Airdale’s attitude in similar circumstances, and was quite angry with herself, saying how much more naturally Arthur had received her good-will and how splendid it was to find such simplicity and sincerity.
“I’ll nurse you till you’re quite well, and then why shouldn’t we take an engagement together somewhere?”
Arthur became enthusiastic over this suggestion.
“You’ve not heard me sing yet. My throat’s still too weak, but you’ll be surprised, Sylvia.”
“I haven’t got anything but a very deep voice,” she told him. “But I can usually make an impression.”
“Can you? Of course, where I’ve always been held back is by lack of money. I’ve never been able to afford to buy good songs.”