Arthur began to sketch out for himself a most radiant future, and as he talked Sylvia thought again how incredible it was that he should be older than herself. Yet was not this youthful enthusiasm exactly what she required? It was just the capacity of Arthur’s for thinking he had a future that was going to make life tremendously worth while for her, tremendously interesting—oh, it was impossible not to believe in the decrees of fate, when at the very moment of her greatest longing to be needed by somebody she had met Arthur again. She could be everything to him, tend him through his illness, provide him with money to rid himself of the charity of Mrs. Lebus and the druggist, help him in his career, and watch over his fidelity to his ambition. She remembered how, years ago at Hampstead, his mother had watched over him; she could recall every detail of the room and see Mrs. Madden interrupt one of her long sonatas to be sure Arthur was not sitting in a draught. And it had been she who had heedlessly lured him away from that tender mother. There was poetic justice in this opportunity of reparation now accorded to her. To be sure, it had been nothing but a childish escapade—reparation was too strong a word; but there was something so neat about this encounter years afterward in a place like Sulphurville. How pale he was, which, nevertheless, made him more romantic to look at; how thin and white his hands were! She took one of them in her own boy’s hands, as so many people had called them, and clasped it with the affection that one gives to small helpless things, to children and kittens, an affection that is half gratitude because one feels good-will rising like a sweet fountain from the depth of one’s being, the freshness of which playing upon the spirit is so dear, that no words are enough to bless the wand that made the stream gush forth.
“I shall come and see you all day,” said Sylvia. “But I think I ought not to break my contract at the Plutonian.”
“Oh, you’ll come and live here,” Arthur begged. “You’ve no idea how horrible it is. There was a cockroach in the soup last night, and of course there are bugs. For goodness’ sake, Sylvia, don’t give me hope and then dash it away from me. I tell you I’ve had a hell of a time in this cursed hole. Listen to the bed; it sounds as if it would collapse at any moment. And the bugs have got on my nerves to such a pitch that I spend the whole time looking at spots on the ceiling and fancying they’ve moved. It’s so hot, too; everything’s rotted with heat. You mustn’t desert me. You must come and stay here with me.”
“Why shouldn’t you move up to the Plutonian?” Sylvia suggested. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll get one of the doctors to come and look at you, and if he thinks it’s possible you shall move up there at once. Poor boy, it really is too ghastly here.”
Arthur was nearly weeping with self-pity.
“But, my dear girl, it’s much worse than you think. You know those horrible birds’ bath-tubs in which they bring your food at third-rate American hotels, loathsome saucers with squash and bits of grit in watery milk that they call cereals, and bony bits of chicken, well, imagine being fed like that when you’re ill; imagine your bed covered with those infernal saucers. One of them always used to get left behind when Julie cleared away, and it always used to fall with a crash on the floor, and I used to wonder if the mess would tempt the cockroaches into my room. And then Lebus used to come up and make noises in his throat and brag about Sulphurville, and I used to know by his wandering eye that he was looking for what he called the cuspidor, which I’d put out of sight. And Mrs. Lebus used to come up and suck her teeth at me until I felt inclined to strangle her.”
“The sooner you’re moved away the better,” Sylvia said, decidedly.
“Oh yes, if you think it can be managed. But if not, Sylvia, for God’s sake don’t leave me alone.”
“Are you really glad to see me?” she asked.
“Oh, my dear, it was like heaven opening before one’s eyes!”